Better to be authentically boring than fake and contemptible.

He was a master in the art of persuasion, and I was pumping him for wisdom.

He hated what he called “cheesy ads”.

And he was clearly having fun with me.

So when I asked, “What’s worse than cheesy advertising,” his response was “old cheese in a sweaty gym sock.”

I laughed out loud.

“So why does anyone write a cheesy ad?”

I’ll never forget that grin spreading across his face as he clapped his hands and danced a little jig.

“Cuz’ it’s easy (clap clap clap) to be cheesy (clap clap clap.)”

Bad Advertising Campaigns: Easy. Phony.

Cheese.

Good in sandwiches. Awful in advertising.

“Cheesy” means “fake.”

Fake emotions. Fake feeling. Fake sentiment.

Cheesy ads disrespect your audience.

Their subtle message is, “You’re so gullible you’ll be persuaded by these pretend feelings.”

The only authentic emotion a cheesy ad evokes is the contempt we feel for the advertiser.

On the other hand, create an ad with authentic emotion and it will be impossible to forget…

Consider…

“Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

You remember that line even if you’ve never seen the ad. It was low-budget, poorly acted and visually boring. But was it cheesy?

Absolutely not.

28 years after it first aired, that message is still unforgettable because the emotion is real.

You don’t need a giant advertising budget to create great ads; you need authentic emotion.

You don’t need to carpet-bomb your target audience with repetition if you can touch their hearts. A simple, direct message with authentic emotion is worth 10,000 phony impressions.

That Millennial BS Detector

If — for whatever reason — you cannot add authentic emotion to your message, at least show some respect to your audience and refrain from resorting to cheesy, ok?

And if your target audience is under 35, authentic emotion is even more essential. (Millennials in particular seem to be repelled by contrived emotion.)

Remember: Contrived emotion — aka: “cheese” — provokes contempt from your audience. Authentic emotion says, “We respect you. We relate to you. We are you.”

As the expert said — the only thing worse than a cheesy ad is old cheese in a sweaty gym sock.

Better to be authentically boring than fake and contemptible.