Friday, February 25, 2022

Attention span or just the loss of understanding

For a while now, I feel the world is changing. You might say to yourself, "is he on something?" of course, the world is changing. There is a plague rampaging throughout the world, a war in the Ukraine, and don't get us started on climate changes. Well, that's all true, but I am talking about a different change, one that may be caused by all of the above. The one that makes people out there simply obtuse. It seems that good, smart, creative as we knew and loved it, is becoming scares and I, for one, do not or will not believe that the advertising world is now hiring less creative or talented people. Something has happened to our audiences. It looks like the demand from our clients is becoming less and less creative and more and more blunt. So it got me thinking, what is the real cause? Is it all that is happening in the world now? War? Plague? Climate changes? Well, if it were, one would think that things will change is those areas as well, no? Alas, nothing really does. But, in the advertising world it seems to do change. In an overstimulated world where advertising is one of the leading stimulants, I would expect it to be the opposite. Because in order to preform and basically survive, it has to still reinvent itself all the time, and yet, it seems that it rarely does anymore. You can still see great creative work in contests or professional magazines, (proving, creative people still do exist) but not out there, where it matters. But hey, it may be just me :)

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Why did the headless chicken cross the road?

If one catches Covis 19 but doesn't get it checked, are they really sick? I'm not diminishing the importance nor am I ignoring the Covid 19 pandemic, but, I do think it has been blown out of proportion by the world's media. I don't recall a news coverage, not even in the darkest days of HIV, which had a daily count of the dead and infected. All we are missing now, are huge time displays located in every large city, displaying the daily "countdown", making it a true Netflix science fiction flick. Here in Israel, we're headed into a third lockdown and all I can think of, is: "is all this self-inflicted?" I don't mean by not taking care of each other, or not wearing a mask. I am talking about the self-inflicted media panic and disarray which made us all run like headless chickens, instead of managing this pandemic in a responsible and logical manner. So... why did the headless chicken cross the road? Well, it did so because it can't see the road with no head, all it can do is listen, and we all know nowadays electric cars are silent, so it really didn't have a praying chance :-( So do we keep on listening? And if we do, who should we listen to? The media? The government? Ourselves? I am not sure. Don't get me wrong I don't want to catch this virus either, but I also don't want to act like a headless chicken, I kind of like my head. And let's face it (no pun intended), without it how could we ever wear a mask?

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

If everyone thinks outside... what's left in the box?

Well, not much apparently. The race for solutions (for everything) from "outside the box" left us with just a bigger emptier box. The idea behind the concept is to look further beyond one's normal way of thinking, in order to come up with different answers to the same questions. Coming from the ad world, I am no stranger to the concept. Even now facing the Covid 19 virus everyone is trying to "think outside the box" and come up with creative solutions, but what about some good and straight up inside the box ideas? Maybe like, Idon't know, wearing a mask? keeping a social distance? not crowding? Shocking I know, but it was always right there inside the box. I think it is not only the thinkers but ruther the implementers of the ideas, i.e us that must retune to the box. Return to do what we can do easly. Stop listening to all the "outside the box" noise that comes from people who are trying desperetly to catalogue us in boxes. Don't get me wrong I am all for thinking and always looking for better and smarter solutions but... as long as it is done by us for us.

Monday, November 9, 2020

Houston we have a problem

So...

I have watched The Social Dilemma. I think it was my social duty. Not that anything really took me by surprise there, but still it got me thinking about the social part. It's been 8 months since Covid 19 entered our lives. We have gone through epidemics before (and still do) Aids, Sars, etc, and some that are still with us and will probably be for a long time such as Cancer and heart diseases. But the one thing different is the social effect. True, Aids had a massive social effect but still, it was different.

I am not talking about the after-effects. As an optimist, I believe that we will look back at all this like any other major bump on the way. But, the effects we are experiencing now are pretty heavy. As a social person, I feel the past 8 months (on and off) were to me as a life sentence. Closed most of the time between 4 walls, no parties, no restaurants, no traveling whatsoever, no sitting with friends in coffee shops... all we got left are our social networks (and Netflix of course).

As someone who's living by myself, it has been an experience. If at first, we thought we knew ourselves, we now had the dubious opportunity to enjoy our own company. Or maybe even see ourselves as other people see us, and hopefully, like what we see.

Well, I do like what I see (so far), but I am not going to tell you we are going to get out stronger than we went in. Because we simply don't know. And even as an optimist, we did lose an entire social year.

So I think the real social dilemma or question is:

Is online social really social? 

Great Minds?