Hasta La Creative!

Steffan Postaer has just compared advertising to fly-fishing. Norman Maclean would not be pleased.

Brand advertising in its highest form is like fly-fishing: sleek, urbane, wise. Think glorious anthems, the launch of new campaigns. Fishing with lures is one step down. It’s brand advertising, packaged and distilled. Though not a lavish opus, it still requires craftsmanship. Grinder TV, the churn and burn of most advertising, is like fishing with live bait –messy, very effective, yet still true fishing. And then you have snagging. Perhaps unfairly, direct marketing is accused of being equally vicious in terms of “catching” customers.

Despite agency rhetoric about “proprietary tools” and “ROI” there is, as far as I know, no known form of marketing that can snag a customer from the general population. We still have to angle for consumers, attracting them with lures, hooking them with promises. That is why advertising, in its purist form, is an art, a lot like fly-fishing.

I happen to agree with Postaer that advertising and fishing are connected at the hip waders. But his hierarchical breakdown leaves me wondering about my own place in the ecosystem.

While I mull that over, here’s some “purity of the sport” video footage to ogle: