The Father, the son, and the holy post

There’s an oddly human tendency to prefer the things that came before. It might be why dessert never lives up to the great fanfare of complicated appetizers, hyped up by an overly talkative chef let out of the kitchen for good behavior. But that was then and this is now - when your stomach’s full and your bank account’s empty. So it’s with immense pleasure that many in the advertising world look back on the 1980s, a time of large block letters and lengthy copy blocks, as the halcyon days of marketing. When selling sold.

This was a time when the only tweeting was done between yard birds, fed up with their share of paltry seed, craving something more artisanal for a change. These interspecies dialogues explained the proliferation of birdhouses at this time, an olive branch to the flying homeless, stuck on branches and brambles, totally missing the simple joys of a roof over their heads. The only face book described when the nearsighted among us got a hold of a smutty periodical, incapable of making out the eye-popping visuals unless the pages were extremely close. It was considered a mitzvah of sorts when the very same magazines contained cologne samples, since a close reading such as this made actually applying eau unnecessary. This was a time when tick tock was the sound your creaky grandfather clock made every second of the brutal workday. It was when social media meant shaking imaginary hands with your television set or tongue kissing your radio after a big news story.

Anyone can write a script that’s mildly interesting. These titans of teletype, fauntelroys of font, counts of copy, all believe that the highest tier of advertising artistry remains the holy trinity of print, television and radio. These are obviously people who’ve never fallen over awestruck upon gazing at a punny hashtag from the right angle. Back in the good old days you had to pay 140 characters - finding desks for them and plenty of assignments to keep them satisfied. Not anymore.

Ads are much better today. Why bother filling a bus shelter with loads of text when you're never going to look up from your phone? Plus, who takes the bus anyway?

Many in the industry scoff at social media, deriding its relevance. They slur it as click bait. Yet something tells me, call it a fisherman’s hunch, that these very same critics load up their lures with worms before casting a line into their own personal river of dreams.