There’s a charmageddon going on in advertising. It’s our job to stop it.

Folks in our industry love to kill things.

Radio is dead. TV is dead. Stores are dead. Brands are dead. Advertising is dead.

So boring. Who still does that?

But charm is dead in advertising. Or, at the very least, it is dying. Charmageddon is upon us!

Everywhere else? Charm is alive and well. Thriving, actually.

We’ve never been so entertained: too many great shows, hysterical memes, fascinating podcasts. New music pours out of streaming and TikToks. And the quality of the average piece of entertainment has never been so high either — from writing to visuals. One person can be a whole studio.

This content is anchored on charming personalities. Millions will spend hours watching people reacting to other people’s videos — because they are funny, smart, interesting, weird… Charming.

People’s attention is waning? Movies, games and podcasts are actually becoming lengthier. Same with the streams and videos from the most successful content creators. People will pay attention, as long as they’re being charmed.

People can only understand the obvious, the spelled out? Boloney. We’ve never been so knowledgeable and capable of processing tons of information. We enjoy connecting the dots, filling the gaps, being in the joke.

In summary: we are more demanding than ever about our content.

Charm has never been so pervasive. And, still, advertising is increasingly charmless.

It states the obvious. It is short for shortness’ sake. It is just there, words over smiling people, without any point of view — looking dull or plain bad, on average.

The result: surveys show people are much more annoyed by advertising than before. This leads to a decline in trustworthiness, our most precious asset.

Advertising is not competing with other advertising. It is up against this golden era of charming entertainment.

Charmageddon, I tell you.

How did we get here?

Many people in marketing and advertising are taking the easy way out and pretending it is only inevitable. You know the types:

- The “lower common denominator” gang, who believes that simplification, so as to appeal to the largest possible number of people, equals creative mediocrity;

- The pseudoscientists, presenting marketing as something as rational as physics, with exhausting sheety-looking decks;

- The adtech gurus, so beholden to questionable metrics, while ignoring content, context and the quality of each impression.

In general, media is the baseline, not the ace in the hole. Everyone needs it. And everyone can just buy it.

Let them brute force people with competent but bland messages. Let them add more to the cultural landfill where banners go to die in ignominy.

You, my marketer friend, aim for the impressive, not impressions. You are meant to charm people.

If you could choose charm, why wouldn’t you?

Charm is not about being deceptive. It’s about earning people’s attention and making them like your brand before you even tell them what you’re selling.

Think about it: between two similar brands, why would you choose the less charming one?

Now think about yourself: if you have a switch for your personal charm, would you ever turn it off?

Charm will get you out of trouble. It will open doors. It will make others think fondly of you.

It has worked like that for me and I sure wish I could have it on, all the time; if only my mother had sent me to charm school.

It is not my job to be nonstop charming, though — it is the brand’s.

No two charms are (or should be) the same.

Every brand has its own unique charm, waiting to be unveiled.

Maybe it is about how unapologetically old-school it is. Or honest. Or just plain weird.

It can come from the founders. The heritage. The factory floor. The research and development.

It can come from the people who are already buying it. Or the place it has in popular culture.

I wasn’t there, but apparently Swiss philosopher Henri-Fréderic Amiel once said: “Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.”

So charm must resonate with likeminded people. They must see themselves in it, and feel good about it.

Cheeky beats amusing. Grumpy beats happy. Self-effacing beats perfect.

One who tries to be charming to EVERYONE is just desperate. And bound to be ignored.

Charm or harm.

On the agency side, it is our duty to help brands in discovering this charm and to bring it to the surface, across every touchpoint.

This takes tenacity: whenever that brand is not leveraging its charm, it is harming itself.

This counts for big films, customer support, performance banners and, yes, even AI prompting.

Charm or harm.

It is also our duty to make a solid case for taking on such risk.

It is safer to stick to “safe and competent”: a joke might not land, or someone might feel left out. But modern testing solutions can come in handy: messaging and tonality can be gauged for traction, and iterated towards the Goldilocks zone of the brand’s charm.

Just never forget to be nice and thoughtful.

“I never did believe in miracles (but I’ve a feeling it’s time to try)”

I wasn’t there, but apparently Christine McVie, of Fleetwood Mac, once said: “I dearly remember the old days… We had this one-of-a-kind charm. We were gregarious, charming and cheeky onstage. Very cheeky. We’d have a good time.”

And, guess what, the band went on to sell a bazillion records.

Brands having a good time, while selling their stuff? And people having a good time, in the presence of such brands? It’s about time.