Who Cares? Why Care?
06 November 2025
Last month Advertising: Who Cares? (AWC) the movement started by myself and Nick Manning in 2024 held its second event – a Summit.
My LinkedIn feed filled with lovely posts, not just around the content created by our workstream leaders and their teams over 8 months, but with praise for the whole notion of a volunteer movement.
It is indeed remarkable that very busy people, in senior jobs and with a lot of plates to keep spinning have been prepared to give up their time, for free.
It seems a fair conclusion that many do indeed care about advertising; as a cultural phenomenon as much as a way to earn a living.
The ad business has always been a mix of science and creativity, of logic and emotion. At its best it can stir you. At its worst it can annoy you and interrupt you even as you studiously ignore it.
We have our four-year old grandson and family living with us for a few weeks. We have watched all sorts of TV shows (many funded by advertising), we’ve been to the cinema, we’ve looked at printed Marvel comics (which he chose) and then the other day he happened to be watching my phone when the Honda Cog ad from 2003 dropped into my feed.
He’s been hassling me to watch ‘the film with the car in bits’ more times than is good for him. 22 years after it came out. An ad that predates YouTube, and AI and allegedly took 606 takes. An ad so perfect that even the voice over (the voice over has seven words over the 2 minutes) featured a then-recognisable talent (Garrison Keillor). To choose Joe Nobody would have been to betray what went before.
Did anyone in procurement argue about using Keillor? Who knows, but I very much doubt it. If you’re producing art you don’t spend time fussing about the cost of the brushes.
Yeah yeah, old hat not relevant to today, blah blah.
This week the 2025 John Lewis Christmas ad dropped. It’s lovely, a professional piece of communication put together by professionals. I may wonder why they’ve gone a week earlier than last year (come on, I’m a media guy) but there’s no doubting the quality of the content.
What John Lewis has done, first with Adam and Eve and now with Saatchis, is recognise a good thing and stick with it. I have no idea what financial return the JL company has received over the years since they reinvented Christmas advertising, but I bet it’s considerable.
Honda on the other hand – can anyone remember or quote a Honda ad from the last 22 years? Does anyone these days associate Honda with precision engineering excellence, the Cog message?
Consistency works better and for longer than one-off tactical thoughts.
Honda could have owned precision engineering. Surely that would have been a valuable association on which to build.
We work in an endlessly fascinating industry staffed by interesting, varied talented people. People who can convince a brave client that it’s a really good idea to drop 250,000 balls from the top of a hill in San Francisco to dramatize colour. People who can turn the aggravation of waiting longer for your pint into a positive. People who can make confusing two similar-sounding words into a campaign for a boring insurance price comparison site, and then into part of the language.
We care about these things because (quite aside from adding to the gaiety of life) they work for our clients. Regardless of the impressions bought, the likes gathered, the clicks. They work.
There is simply no comparison to sitting watching Cog in all its 2-minute glory versus being interrupted by a YouTube ad featuring a chopped-up Cog, produced on the whim of some soul-less media buyer who’s convinced the client he really needs ‘to maximise reach and frequency’.
The best advertising is about ideas with numbers; creativity married to metrics. Reduce the art down to numbers alone and it loses. Link art and science and you make both work better.
At its best advertising works, gloriously. It builds businesses. It funds quality media forms that people like to watch or read. It brightens city streets. It allows us to stay in touch with friends the world over. It funds the world’s greatest ever source of knowledge and information. It opens the door to creativity and allows the talented to flourish from their bedrooms.
It does all of these things and more – online, offline, it’s a matter of balance.
It also allows me to sit in a chair with a four-year-old on my lap and watch a 2-minute thing of beauty, 22 years later. And to watch him being fascinated by it.
Is it any wonder so many of us care?
A brilliant post, Brian. Have you thought of turning from media to copywriting?
Thank you! And, no!
Great post Brian. Incidentally the creative team credited with Honda Cog, Mat and Ben, started their careers at Leo Burnett London.
Thank you and I did not know that! Maybe there was an early prototypical Austin Rover version….!
Thanks to Brian and the ‘Who Cares’ initiative. Kudos. So necessary if we are to sustain any value in our anxious, dystopian industry.
These days, the more I listen to the frantic dialogue about creativity vs AI efficiency, the more annoyed – even pissed off – I get
.
AI – even before Super AI (or The Entity, as Hollywood has named it) is undoubtedly a major and inevitable step forward. Something to be applauded.
BUT, it is based on ultra-swift scanning of existing available information and knowledge.
NOT speculative, often agonising, doubting thought about ideas and their value.
About deep philosophical, often existential interrogation of the future, not just the past.
It’s worth remembering that the origin of philosophy, speculation about the very meaning of life (and perhaps what comes afterwards) can be ascribed to the ancient Greek philosophers.
Smart, interrogative brains gazing at the stars and wondering about existence and the universe.
Fortunately not overwhelmed by over-frequent, facile communications often lacking in insight and therefore relevance to their target audiences.
There is obviously a role for both, but creativity and the brilliant ideas it so often generates is human by definition and historically proven.
The key is to appreciate both, and meld the two into even more powerful, relevant and persuasive communication. 1+1=3 ,at the very least.
We simply need to bring the past, present and future together to mould the future.
Good luck with that..
Thanks Mike.
There’s a podcast I did with Lucy Jameson of Uncommon Studio which is on our site (www.advertisingwhocares.org) in which she makes a similar point.