Ep 370 - Dad I Want To Hear Your Story

Sitting Under A Tree with Aidan Jones

Yesterday I got an ad for this garbage book called 'Dad I Want To Hear Your Story'. It's not even a book that you read, it's a book that you give to your Dad that he writes his life story in. There are all these questions about your first kiss or your school years or whatever the fuck stupid bullshit these people put in there to try and seduce people into thinking that you can skip the years of work it takes to build up a good relationship with your loved ones and all you need to do is BUY THIS BOOK!! THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK MADE MY DAD LOVE ME AGAIN!!

The ad creeped me out for that reason, but also even more so because the Instagram page that was hosting it was full of the same guy saying the same words to a camera, but with all different intonations, different music, and wearing different hats and sunglasses on his face. It feels as if whoever is selling this thing is doing A/B market testing on their own face, trying to find the optimal combination of sounds and images required to sell these cynical, loveless items.

As I wade into the world of advertising and marketing ahead of the festival season (the show opens a month from the 17th!!!) I am more and more aware of this kind of stuff. I'm even using some of it to sell my tickets, but I am also very conscious of trying to keep it at arm's length, because throughout the world of marketing there exists this idea that you can sell anything with the right ad campaign. There are people all over online message boards and social media apps talking about how they can increase your Lead Generation and Sales Performance and ROI without ever talking about what products anyone might actually be selling, and that kind of mindset is liable to destroy a person if it gets a hold of you.

And boy has it gotten a hold of these book-selling losers on Instagram.