"I love advertising because I love lying."
In a normal world, when people get the CLIO award, they thank the whole world, their parents and sometimes God for achieving the honorary trophy. Not so Jerry Seinfeld in New York during the Advertising Week. Although the award is seen as the “world’s most recognized international awards competition for advertising, design, digital and communications,” Seinfeld plays the honor down for having been the longtime spokesman for American Express.
“I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy.”
What an honest statement. What a harsh reality. What a burst of laughter. Don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you, someone like his clients might have said. However, he just let’s it all out and probably makes the whole celebration audience think for the first time in their lives.
Having moderated the dmexco conference some weeks ago, I have to admit that some people also asked, if I hadn’t been too honest when I mentioned that most of the digital advertising companies can be happy that venture capital and private investors exist, as otherwise 80% of the digital parties today would not happen.
Sometime, it is just good to keep the spirit of self-reflecting sarcasm up to drive the future business growth. So, have fun watching Jerry Seinfeld making almost everybody in the room laugh…