Industry Icon Chuck Porter Shares His Thoughts on Advertising Today
Chuck Porter, the co-founder of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, remains one of the most recognizable names in advertising, even if he is now (mostly) retired from the industry. Throughout his career, Chuck has been a leader in the ad industry. He served as Chairman of the 4As, a board member for Advertising Week, and has chaired award juries at virtually every major award show. In 2015, Chuck was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. In addition to his role at CP+B, Chuck served as Chief Strategist for CP+B’s parent company MDC Partners (which later became Stagwell), helping lead its agency acquisition strategy.
An entrepreneur and investor, these days you can also find Chuck dabbling in show business. THE FAILURE CABARET, a show he produced, was a huge hit in NYC at Studio 54 and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Continuum recently sat down with Chuck to get his thoughts on the state of the advertising world today and what AI can and can’t do for the industry.
You were one of the first people to talk about the importance of storytelling, given what you see with today’s consumers, do you think storytelling still should be the root of advertising?
Yes, I believe that a brand is a story. Whether it’s Nike or Tide detergent, people have a story about each brand in their head. Storytelling is a fundamental human truth—stories are how people learn and how they engage. That said, we tell stories differently now.
I’ve been reading the author Jenny Ofill. Her first novel was the Department of Speculation, which came out in 2014. I just finished Weather, which was published in 2020. Her approach to writing is very different than what we’re used to. She doesn’t write in flowing prose the way novels have been written forever. Her style is more short sentences, almost fragments of thoughts and observations. Yet, when put together they tell a compelling story. I think in many ways, this is where writing is heading. We’ll still tell stories, but more and more it might just be a series of short blurbs.
Is this a good thing in your opinion, this change in storytelling, or is it a sad acknowledgement that our attention spans have just gotten smaller and smaller?
I’m not here to judge whether it’s good or bad. I mean, I think everything used to be better than it is now but that’s just me. I don't think anything good has been invented since the 1960s, except for caller ID, I really liked caller ID.
But seriously, I don't think it's depressing. I just think it is where we are heading, and it is still the thoughts that connect the story.
In terms of storytelling, it’s much harder to engage people in a story than it was 20 or 30 years ago when TV was all advertisers needed. If you were Domino's or Burger King and you ran enough ads, you could be pretty sure that people would begin to get who you were and what you stood for. Now, brands are competing so intensely for attention that they have to present themselves clearly and quickly.
“storytelling is a fundamental human truth—stories are how people learn and how they engage.”
We can’t talk about storytelling without mentioning how it is changing and will continue to change due to AI. What are your thoughts on AI?
I think AI can be a really strong tool. I can give it an idea and ask it to come up with 100 different ways to say it, and maybe five of them will be good. That’s helpful. But really it can only recreate what’s been successful before; it can’t do the unexpected. AI is not John Lennon, right? He was a pretty original guy; he did things that no had ever done before. Will we eventually be able to make an AI John Lennon? Will AI be able to create the surprising and unexpected that’s never been done before? Maybe, in a year or ten years, if it keeps learning as fast as it’s learning. But based on what we know today, I think it’s unlikely that AI is ever going to be the one that comes up with the big, surprising ideas. Of course, I reserve the right to say one month from now that I was wrong.
You’ve been in this industry for a long time, do you think now is a good time to start an agency?
A year ago, I would have said yes, but now I’m not sure. Things are changing so fast in large part because no one is quite sure what AI is going to do. It’s funny that we’re having this conversation right after Oppenheimer came out. There are similarities. AI could be a genie in a bottle or a Pandora’s box or both. People have a lot of theories, but no one really knows how it’s going to change things in the ad industry and elsewhere.
Honestly, if I were a young person right now, rather than going into advertising, I would probably get into intellectual property law, trademark law, copyright law, because that's where all the action will be. AI was recently asked to create images that looked like George Clooney in a bar without actually being George Clooney in a bar and the images were shockingly good. In the next few years, we’re going to have to figure out what is intellectual property that is protected and what’s not.
“If I were still in the advertising business, I wouldn't look at scale as being a positive thing. I would look at tightness and manageability as being the ultimate goal.”
We have been talking about the creative side of branding. How important are data and analytics in the creative process?
Our view at CP+B back in the day was that we didn't look at data to create messages, because we didn't think it was good at that. But we did look at the results. We paid a lot of attention to what was working and what wasn't as soon as the internet allowed us to do that. You didn't have to make a $4 million commercial and wait; you could make things faster and cheaper and you could float them online and see if people reacted to it.
I think getting results data is critically important. Trying to use analytics to create messaging, however, is still a mistake. It’s like I said about generative AI, all the data can really do—whether it’s being analyzed by a person or a piece of AI—is to look into the past and say what worked. It can’t come up with something truly new, and it can’t predict the unexpected.
As a final thought, do you have one piece of advice for people in the advertising and branding world right now?
This is probably going to put some people off, but I think going forward, small will be better. Smart small organizations that are flexible and nimble is what’s needed. If I were still in the advertising business, I wouldn't look at scale as being a positive thing. I would look at tightness and manageability as being the ultimate goal.
August 8, 2023
