Stupid words.

For years,decades, I earned my daily bread in the advertising trade, working inadvertising agencies. My job was on the creative side, developing strategies thatwould most effectively lure customers, then turning them into ads in whatevermedia was required. The goal was always to use ideas and words and pictures andmusic to arouse interest and keep viewers or readers or listeners watching orreading or listening long enough to absorb whatever message we wished toconvey. We always believed the audience deserved some level of respect inexchange for our intrusion into their lives.

But mostpeople in the advertising business, like most people in most businesses, do notcare all that much. They don't care if the advertising is creative or entertaining or inventiveor unexpected. They are just putting in the time, putting their emphasis onlooking and sounding good in the endless supply of meetings, both within theagency and with clients. They do not want to rock the boat; “give the clients what they want,” is the force that motivates them.

And thatis why most advertising falls somewhere between invisible and inane.

That iswhy some guy in a tie somewhere decided that holding a “sale” is no longer goodenough. That the public is no longer interested in discounted prices. Thatcalling a sale a “sales event” would excite the audience (for whom they havelittle respect) into showing up in frenzied droves and parting with theirmoney. After all, isn’t the very idea of an “event” exciting? Wouldn’t itdeserve three—no, four—exclamation points in social media?

While thisearth-shattering development has little effect on audiences, it somehow resonateswith advertisers. So it’s, so long to a “sale,” and hello to a “sales event.”Car companies, in particular, have made adding “event” to a “sale” mandatory,it seems. And “sales event” has disseminated, propagated, and circulated untilit is ubiquitous.

Mostpeople probably don’t even notice it, just as they don’t notice most of thedumbed-down, simple-minded advertising messages that interrupt every aspect oftheir lives. But no one, I daresay, is so excited, so electrified, sohypnotized by a “sales event” as opposed to a mere “sale” that they rush rightout and gleefully part with their money.

I could bewrong. I haven’t been in a client meeting in years. But one thing’s for sure—somebodyis stupid when it comes to “sales events.” It could be me.