“As we move to an age where the only true advertisements are recommendations, what is the role of the traditional advertisement going forward? Recommendations I understand. They can come in many shapes and forms. People you know and trust telling you about products and services they like … A matching engine that takes your “buying” intentions and connects them with someone else’s “selling” intentions.”

[JP Rangaswami via gaping void]

AdRants points us to a wonderful 4 min bit of a George Carlin performance:

“More than half of what comes out of your mouth in that client presentation is mindless, pointless, idiotic sounding, space-filling blather. Don’t you want meetings to be shorter? Aren’t you sick of fake words that mean nothing? Wouldn’t you rather be actually creating something rather than killing it with the boatload of words you throw at it before you ever show it to the client? Of course you would. So stop talking like an idiot.”

I’ve been working hard in recent years to do more listening than talking in meetings with clients. I’m not there. I still talk too much. But I’m making progress.

The experiment I’m dying to try is to record (audio) one of the client presentations. And then transcribe it. That is when we will see just how mindless and pointless most of our blather is. The simple truth is, we can’t hear how dumb we sound while we’re talking.