Saatchi (and Others) on Google’s Data for Advertisers

Maurice, Lord Saatchi has an op-ed piece in the Financial Times that’s a model of fatuous windbaggery. Allegedly, the advertising mogul is writing about Google’s data collection system, but who can tell?

In 900 words, he quotes or cites:

Orson Welles (scorpion/frog fable)
Unilever founder (half of advertising wasted)
Viscount Rothermere (newspaper/bath water parable)
Newton (physical laws)
Freud (Law of Ambivalence)
Henry Ford (faster horse quip)
Aristotle (natural law and perception)

So much collective wisdom, so little sense. His point is that while Google’s

systematic, logical computation can lead the advertiser into an earthly paradise of universal enlightenment

people don’t always respond in logical ways, so relying on data alone to eliminate unncessary advertising won’t work.

If Saachti paid for a minion to write this, his money was wasted. If he wrote it himself, his time was wasted. And this from the man who gave the world “The world’s favourite airline” and “Labour isn’t working.”

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