I hate what reading Academic writing does to my own writing.
It's overly loquacious and often up its own ass.
And some of that seems to seep over here.
Again, I hate that.
Language should be deliberate.
You shouldn't have to deconstruct a message.
If you do, I haven't done my job correctly.
That's a problem because I love my job.
I love calling a spade a spade.
Or calling crap...well, crap.
This is in the attempt to be stupidly clear.
Without clarity these are just the ramblings of a raving lunatic.
I also think this academic viewpoint leads to a lot of problems we have in the industry today.
Everybody is talking with words that don't really mean anything.
Buzzwords, jargon, general shite.
This kind of speech doesn't make goals clear.
It doesn't help with communication.
It helps build up a barrier between us (gods of advertising) and them (plebeian consumers).
It's a barrier that doesn't really need to exist, but it makes us feel better.
My opinion (however humble that may be) is that this stuff doesn't need to be that difficult.
We are making it hard on ourselves.
The creep of academia is certainly not something advertising needs.
It needs inquisitive people.
It needs agile people.
It needs people who love simplicity*.
Leave that to the academic journals (which I hopefully won't be reading for a very long while).*Not just in the helvetica/clean design sense.
(With apologies to Dave Trott for using his writing style. It's loads better than most others, IMHO.)