Not much has changed. From Mr. Whipple to Papa Johns.

A few days ago we served as company to our friend Charles (AKA 'chuckles') as he ventured in a local bar's open stage night in which he performed a couple of songs plus doing a small stand-up comedy set. In the latter, 'chuckles' was talking about how the Papa John's pizza commercials always star the company's owner, founder and CEO (I would guess he is Papa John), and at the end of every ad he says "better ingredients, better pizza, Papa Johns".
Charles was so right. And I was sitting there thinking of all the times I had been annoyed by those commercials. Every time I was sitting in my couch thinking 'why do we need to see this guy? Why does he have to tell me anything? Who is he? I care about the pizza, not the CEO of the company. They make pizza, not insurance. So, why is this guy making the ad better? How, in their minds, can they think that by starring the company's president they will sell more pizzas? Why do I need an asshole telling me that they have better ingredients? If they do, don't I find that by myself when I order the pizza?

But at the bar, I found myself alone. Nobody seemed to care.

Maybe Luke Sullivan was the only one who found Mr. Whipple so obnoxious. Hell, maybe someone even liked Mr. Whipple.
And here's the big dilemma, the stuff that we find so annoying, all that we think shouldn't have been even thought of at an office, the stuff we say 'how can they pay someone to do that?'. That stuff, is being liked by people. And that's scary. It's scary that people like it as much as it's scary that there is a creative director out there approving this shit, and of course, clients who are buying it.
I guess that even though we find ourselves alone in our interests and in what we think is good and exciting work, we must keep pushing towards more quality in the concepts of advertising, and into a world where CEO's don't have to tell people what their product is like, but that we can show it to them in a cool engaging way. People may still not care, maybe they won't notice it. But we'll be happier. And less annoyed.