Advertising's bad manners.

I was lucky enough to go to school in the sleepy hollow of Pietermaritzburg at Maritzburg College. And at Maritzburg College, manners were not suggestions or recommendations. No Sir. We had to learn all boarder seniors’ names (280-odd) and greet each and every one by name. Whenever we left the school grounds, we had to wear our blazers and our school basher, and if we did not lift the basher and greet every stranger we walked past, well, there was literal hell to pay.

On a softer note, my mother chose to adopt the repetition technique; drumming into my brother and my head that manners maketh man.

But regardless of the teacher, the lessons remain, and I hope everyone agrees, manners are important.

Why, then, does advertising suffer from such bad manners?

Pretend for a second that families still gather in the living room to watch the 8pm show on television. Dallas, Prison Break, 24, The OC. Whatever floats your boat. The formula of the time was 43 minutes of television during each 60-minute slot. And, of course, ads. Lots of ads. 17 minutes of ads per hour, to be precise.

Advertisers, for the most part, respected the fact that they were uninvited guests in families’ living rooms. They never broke the door down and stormed in à la Kramer from Seinfeld. Advertising was more subtle, delicate and respectful of the audience's time. Entertaining adverts that seduced the audience. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the good ads in numbers. Lunch Bar, Chomp, Vodacom, Volksie bus, Castrol, BMW, Standard Bank’s ideas don’t keep office hours, the Tex ad with the shotgun and goodness, even Mainstay Cane had good advertising. Advertising campaigns that moms, dads, sisters and kids enjoyed. Advertising with songs, jingles, characters and stories. Advertising with ideas. Advertising that earned the audience’s attention.

Advertising that, as an univinted guest, used to have manners. Does it still? Not so much.

Nowadays, advertising has moved on from seduction to stalking. From showmanship to salesmanship. From good dialogue between characters to a spokesperson talking to the camera and at the audience. From archetypes to stereotypes. From whispering to shouting. From respecting the audience to assuming the audience is a little bit thick. The jokes have become crass or slapstick, the acting is over the top, the writing is repetitive and unoriginal, while each category seems stuck in its convention, and (deep sigh) there is still a lot of dancing.

Yes. Nowadays, advertising has lost its manners.

Advertising is now the guy who interrupts you while you’re mindlessly walking through the mall asking if he can have 2 minutes of your time to request a donation you’re sure will never reach the starving children in Borneo he pretends to care about. Or the fragrance lady asking if they can spray you with a no-name-brand-cheap perfume that will stick in your nostrils for 3 days. Or the you-know-who who knocks at your front door and asks to come tell you about their religion even after you’ve said no thanks 3 times and already told them you believe in another God.

And so dear readers (see, manners?), even if you are trying to make something to interrupt their feed or stop their scrolling or retarget for the 5th time or grab their attention… Can we, as an industry, do it with a little more grace and some manners? And maybe that begins with a little self-respect for our craft and a little more respect for our audience.

Here’s a not-so-secret secret. The audience doesn’t hate ads, of this I will bet my life. The audience hates bad ads. They hate ads that aren’t deserving of their time or their attention. They hate ads that rudely interrupt and barge in uninvited. But if you care a bit more about what you make, maybe they will care a bit more about what you make too?

My mum is no longer with us, but she would have approved of this even though my creative director won’t: Manners maketh ads.

This article first appeared in MarkLives.com