• by Gavin O'Malley , June 22, 2016

Wendy Clark, CEO of DDB North America, just proposed a challenge to the brand leaders gathered in Cannes: Stop making more ads, and, instead, start making more “good” ads.

“Good work is interesting, compelling, [and] share-worthy,” Clark told a packed house at Lumiere Theatre on Tuesday. “It makes people react … it makes people feel something,” she said. “Use a definition like that to define what good work is.”

Unfortunately, “as the market has expanded, we have too many clients and too many agencies that have simply and quite mindlessly pursued a goal of just more,” Clark lamented. That has made for a “quantity game of content.”

On average, in fact, U.S. consumers are now exposed to 6,000 brand images every day.

“If that’s the case, more cannot be a strategy,” Clark insisted. Quite frankly, many if not most brands have become rude and annoying.

“Clients too often are force-fitting themselves into a conversation,” commented Clark. They are “inviting themselves into a conversation where they don’t belong; where there’s nothing material that they can contribute; where it’s not useful; where it’s not interesting; where it’s not compelling; where it’s not share-worthy … and that ultimately becomes annoying.”

So? “So, the goal for all of us … the standard we have to hold ourselves accountable to is more good,” Clark concluded. “Not just more, [but] more good.”