As our series Advertising Towards Dummies continues, we have reached the part where Thumper has agreed to be interviewed. He has been in advertising and marketing for over 8 years now with clients around the world. Thumper is very intuitive as to what and why products and services sell. His expertise in the field is a calibration of experience, yield, and divergence. He is one of these creative directors who have a natural love and skill for his work. Thumper has worked with the fashion industry, restaurants, clubs, hotels and resorts. The list goes on… Having lived in Europe and the United States I think has contributed to his expertise.

Let’s get right to it.

Thank you for joining us. Advertising is such a large field and can cover a variety of tasks. Can you give us a summary of your daily dues? What do you do exactly?

Thumper: Thank you for the opportunity! I’d like to say that I enjoy reading this series very much and I hope to be able to contribute something of value to the great discussion you have started.

I run a marketing consulting business that is geared towards startups and small and medium-sized enterprises. If I had to put what I do into one line, I’d say that I help build brands. My tasks include a variety of skillsets, and what I end up doing for each client strongly depends on the case. I have created and helped create advertising campaigns on most levels – from graphic design to copywriting, from conceptualizing a marketing plan to media buying, from initially analyzing the market to measuring the result of a campaign.

I have to say that this is not typical for the industry. It is what comes from having my own business and deciding on a case-to-case basis to what level I am able to contribute to the client’s cause. It also depends on the size of the venture – larger companies usually have structures in place and hire me for certain aspects of an existing campaign plan only. Both types of clients (large and small) have their advantages and disadvantages – where bigger corporations have a hierarchy, a time-consuming structure of command, and various hoops in place, a smaller company is usually more fun to work with because I have more of an impact on the results.

How did you get into this industry, and what was the driving force behind your choice?

I started my business back in 2002 after having studied Economics and Marketing. It was a big step for me and obviously not the typical path to get started in advertising. Usually, you would get a job at an advertising agency or marketing firm and work your way up.

The first ad I remember to have created was back in senior highschool. I had been writing for the school paper for a while. It was called Sometimes because it was issued very irregularly. The other thing I liked to do was doodle in class – yes, this is the typical story that almost every graphic designer will tell you.

One day we noticed a decline in sales for the Sometimes. We tied that to nobody actually knowing that a new issue was out. The decision was to advertise it from now on using posters across the school… I did the posters.

My decision to go to college for economics instead of graphic design was based on another thing though. I knew early on that I wanted to go “entrepreneur” rather than “cubicle career”. My opinion was that I would need to know how to run a business – graphic design was extremely fun as a practical skill but marketing had always interested me as well. I had always preferred reading the Harvard Review over any novel… Go figure.

We talked about ethics in advertising a lot in this series. What is your take on it?

This is a very interesting point. The question is, what is considered to be ethical? I think most agree that an ad should not lie. If a pill does not cure a migrane, then please don’t advertise it as a migrane killer. But what if that pill helped 70% of all people who took it in a study? This is where it gets tricky. You have a product, you’ve invested millions of dollars into its research and development, and it does its job – but only in two thirds of all cases. This is a constant issue in the medical and beauty field – no person is the same, no matter how much we put them into demographic and social groups.

Is it ethical to advertise the safety of a car when it is not 100% safe? Nothing is 100% safe, no car will ever be able to protect its inmates from any possible crash. If there is a test on safety in some magazine and a certain car model is the winner, then it gets a badge that will almost always be used in the advertising for this model. Is it unethical to pronounce “safest car 2009″ when the term “safest” only refers to a compaison of other cars, but not to the general meaning of safety?

The fashion industry. If you wear those D&G sunglasses, does that raise your coolness factor? Does it make you a better person? Most certainly not, but the brand does carry an image that has been carefully built for decades. It’s called brand image and it is always geared to what the target audience wants to be like. This is achieved through emotional advertising: brand communication that has been manufactured to touch on the target’s emotions. Show them what they could be like with this brand, build expectations, differentiate.

In my opinion, this all boils down to education. A lack of information will always be used against you, be it in commerce or in politics. If you have a television set, you’ll know this and agree with me. Sadly, today not many people qualify for the term “educated”. A lack of education on one side always means an advantage for those who are educated; who often enough abuse this advantage for their own benefit.

This is the pessimistic way of looking at it. It’s Darwinism. On the other hand, today people have more options and possibilities to become what they want than ever before. We know more today than we ever knew in history. It’s all at our fingertips, ready for the taking. The variable in there is “us” – we need to want to be educated. Not everybody wants to.

As a rule, most ads are not deceptive. They merely emphasize on the benefits of the advertised product or service. This is the definition of advertising. When you go to a job interview, you dress up, practice your keyphrases, and try to make an impression – you are advertising yourself. Do you say that you sometimes have trouble getting up in the morning? Do you say that you don’t really want this job and you could care less about the company, but you need the money?

Everybody, including your future boss, knows that there are days where you’d rather not get up. It is human nature; it’s implied. On the same token, every grown-up knows that advertising is by definition in favor of the advertised product. Our job as consumers is to educate our children to be aware of this fact.

When does it go too far? Do you think there should be stricter rules and regulations when it comes to advertising?

There are regulations in place about fair advertising. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is usually the first to take something down if it is deceptive. Of course, the system isn’t perfect. Often enough, I see an ad that just makes me shake my head.

What I think should be reconsidered is advertising that is aimed towards children. We are far from being able to say that all parents fulfill their duty to educate their kids about advertising. I am a strong advocate of education starting at very early ages; I consider myself very thankful and lucky that I have been raised this way. We didn’t have a TV by choice. I read instead – books, not magazines (reading a magazine is consuming, not reading). I grew up being aware of the world around me – or so I think – and I believe this is the right way to go about raising children. Honestly, I didn’t always appreciate not being able to chime in on the various discussions about the newest episode of some series in school. I hated it. But looking back, I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.

I think this is the real problem in the world today. We fail to educate our children enough. I think there should be better systems in place to educate parents about educating their kids. I also think that advertising towards children is not fair because of this fact.

The question is, what is the right way to approach this? Should we ban advertising towards kids? Should we cap a multi-billion-dollar vertical’s means to communicate their products with the market? Should we at least put a cap on their methods? I believe this is a problem and it should be addressed on both ends; the parents’ and the advertisers’. I don’t see this happening anytime soon though. Once again, it’s up to us to educate our children. Nobody else will do it for us.

What would a world without advertising be like?

Honestly, I think very boring and sad. Advertising drives the economy. It creates demand. Demand creates jobs. Jobs create wealth. Wealth creates innovation. Innovation creates competition. Competition creates more innovation. Take advertising away… What do you have left?

I don’t know for sure but it certainly wouldn’t be as entertaining as it is today.