Remember when cigarettes were cool because marketing told you so? Remember when a bunch of celebrities with milk moustaches said milk was good for us, so we drank it until it came out our ears?

You trusted the campaign.

But the world has changed. It always does. Now all of us—including your target audience—are smarter.

Today, only 8% of audiences say they automatically assume that advertising is true. In other words, the public innately knows when they are being sold to—and they fight back.

They turn to social media and influencers to guide them through purchase options. Why? Because sitting in their bedrooms, talking in the soft glow of a ring light they purchased on Amazon, they seem unvarnished. Guileless. Authentic.

To the modern marketer, it can seem as if the power of solid copywriting and beautiful, functional design is gone.

To grab that power back, marketers and agencies look to make standout—or, better yet, unforgettable—content. To do that, though, they adopt aggressive tactics that they think help them speak to the moment (cultural, political, etc.) without listening to how audiences feel or live their lives in those moments.

The result? Bad ROI for the campaign, terrible buzz for the client and deeper distrust from the public. (Remember that Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner?)

These are the most visible symptoms of agencies that can’t adapt to today’s more discerning audiences. They’re not the only signs, though. This take-no-prisoners, have-no-scruples business model is often marked by:

• Sketchy outsourcing: it’s usually poorly trained freelancers, and you’ll be able to tell by the lacking quality of the creative, or how the work ignores best practices for the content
• Revolving Door Hiring: you’ll know it by the number of an agency’s “alumni” posting about their new opportunities on LinkedIn all at once
• Blatant AI Dependence: as an agency’s in-house talent pool dries up, they turn to ChatGPT, Bard, Orca and more to generate text. AI is great to have as a tool in the creative toolbox, but when your agency is using it for the final product they put in front of you, watch out

The only way this happens is when marketers and agencies actively let themselves forget that great advertising doesn’t create itself. It comes from a talented group of people committed to the deliverable and the client.

When a marketing firm is a revolving door of employees who can’t, and don’t, take the time to understand the honest advantage of a product or service that their clients are trying to sell—opting instead to take the easy, automated route to short-term success (if they succeed at all)—you get campaigns dishonest campaigns.

And when campaigns are dishonest at their core, audiences see straight through the bull.

Our strategic teams are dedicated to our clients and work as a collaborative group to create trust: trust between the client and the audience. Our work is a source of pride to our clients and to us. We build relationships that pay dividends to our clients.

Trust us. Mascola is the agency for you. Contact us today.