Polarization and Performative Outrage in Adland

DEI's wokification of advertising continues to divide and conquer a once vibrant industry.

According to the the ad school where this spec piece was concepted, this is a “vile” idea that has caused “silent trauma” to many.

Adhouse Advertising School is a portfolio shop that helps equip aspiring creatives for a career in Advertising. According to their website, they offer “AFFORDABLE CLASSES. AWARD-WINNING TEACHERS. ACCESS TO AGENCIES.”

Seems like a fairly noble pursuit. After all, some ad schools are incredibly expensive and students usually only enroll in them after 4 costly years of college. So, as someone who benefited from another affordable ad school, Mike Whitlow’s Book Shop (Whitlow, sadly, recently passed away), I understand what a help a shop like Adhouse can be - especially for creatives who might come from modest means.

To be a teacher in a portfolio school, such as Adhouse, is often a side hustle. And that’s nothing to sneeze at, as any creative in national advertising knows, because ad agencies work you hard - very hard. So that means a creative who signs up for teaching students at night is usually working double time. And the money from teaching? You could certainly earn far more freelancing on the side. Yet I imagine the love of the job - seeing students land hard-to-get gigs at prominent national ad agencies - is partly why some raise their hand and decide to teach.

One of the things ad school teachers will do on behalf of their students is promote their work. Creating a good portfolio is only half the battle, so the school also tries to create student showcases, or, in this case, may use social media to bring attention to a student and their ideas.

So when Adhouse student, Anoop Chaganty (who it appears is a person of color), made a spec ad with a polar bear standing next to the words “White Lives Matter” for the World Wildlife Fund, Adhouse teacher, Rich Wakefield, enthusiastically posted Chaganty’s spec ad on LinkedIn. You can read what Wakefield’s post said yourself (below).

In any case, you may like Adhouse advertising student, Anoop Chaganty’s, spec ad. You may think it’s terrible. You may think it’s tonally a big miss. But regardless, judging from Wakefield’s post, the only intent here seems to be to genuinely show off what he believed was a timely, contextual idea by his student, Chaganty - understandable given the buzz around Ye’s controversial stunt.

Indeed, effective advertising often plays off the culture, after all. Wakefield expressed his subjective opinion - and all creative is subjective. Just watch a focus group debate through a one-way glass window, as people react in the most unexpected ways to your idea, and you’ll quickly be convinced of that.

In any case, clearly, creating “silent trauma” doesn’t seem to be the goal of this particular LinkedIn post by Wakefield.

The nature of creativity means sometimes, despite your best intentions, you just get it wrong. Just ask Pepsi and Kendall Jenner. Sometimes you try something and it just isn’t received how you hoped in the consumer’s mind. This too is the hit and miss nature of creativity.

Yet one thing you don’t want to do as a brand, client or a creative, is start gripping the bat out of fear. The best ideas often ride a thin line between genius and off-tone. Disruptive and offensive.

And all those facts aside, it’s a freaking spec ad, people.

By a student.

At an ad school.

Posted by a teacher who believed he was showing off his student’s creativity.

Have we lost our ever-loving minds?

Of course, as one who studies the sickly fascinating - and depressing - mind virus known as wokeness, the DEI/social justice crowd doesn’t care about intent. To them, an act of “unconscious bias” is as bad as a conscious one.

In other words, according to the twisted woke worldview, manslaughter - i.e. the accidental running over a pedestrian - should be treated the same as premeditated murder. (Let’s hope these merciless folks never get their vengeful hands on our penal code.)

In any case, because we live in a very silly, but also very scary moment in American history, mistakes (if you even agree this ad is an egregious one) get blown way way out of any sensible proportion.

And indeed, that’s what happened here: a performative crap-posting digital bonfire in the comments beneath Wakefield's LinkedIn post, ignited. Apparently the rancor got so intense, the post was pulled down by Wakefield.

In response to all this, Adhouse Advertising School, apparently sensing their business might be seconds from being forever labeled racist and hence, boycotted, acted fast and did what you knew they would: offered the standard, obligatory, inauthentic, sycophantic apology (below).

The “traumatized” woke only receive fake apologies because that’s what they deserve, since their outrage is also equally fake. After all, wokeness isn’t about racial healing. It’s about gaining power over others.

Of course, quick to the scene of this latest social justice dust up, because they apparently lack real work to do, was an unsundry mix of the supposedly traumatized, the usual virtue-signaling “allies” and, of course, the woke bully enforcers who demand that someone’s life be destroyed for the unintentional offense of Polar Beargate.

Chief Experience Design Officer, Walter T. Geer, apparently the leader of the outrage campaign has been helming the ongoing negotiation with the hostages, er, leaders at Adhouse Advertising School. And it seems negotiations are going well, according to Geer’s own post below.

But of course, now that Adhouse is bowing to the pressure of the roughly 3 people who truly found Polar Beargate offensive, the woke will be sure to keep demanding more reparations from Adhouse (you know, the dastardly school that helps aspiring creatives who can’t afford those very expensive ad schools.)

But then, social justice must be done, you see.

Geer’s recent post below says of his convo with Adhouse Advertising School’s leaders, that “we had an incredible conversation.”

But he adds, (and there’s always a but with the woke)… “While I agree that these students are owed an apology, we have to remember that no bias of any kind should be taught within any classroom.”

Except anti-white bias, right Mr. Geer? That kind of bias is just fine and dandy to teach. In fact, it’s taught in every last ad agency in America. After all, as DEI reminds us: all white people are racist and are oppressors of people of color. So, some bias is perfectly okay, as long as it’s directed at the right group.

Geer’s campaign for cosmic justice was joined by others who were quick to perform their outrage (below).

The woke always rush to cast the first stone because they believe themselves to be without sin.

“I have no words” says Melissa R. Ebanks. That comment is right up there with that other cliche response of the woke: “that’s not it”.

Actually, Dan, contrary to your profile line above, the “ding dong” is anyone who’s inner-critic isn’t self-censoring their every last thought, lest they be mobbed by someone like you.

And, of course, this train wreck wouldn’t be complete without the usual grievance merchants/woke ambulance chasers showing up to the LinkedIn scene of the non-crime. After all, where would some folks’ career be if they didn’t point out racism, sexism, oppression, whiteness, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, ableism… blah blah blah. Check out this perfectly unhelpful and over-sized response to Wakefield’s post:

The “Michael Bay of business” knows blowing $%&# up gets clicks.

Despite the lengthy apology from Adhouse, Geer’s comments (below) seem to indicate he still wants more done. There will need to be diversity hires, ostensibly, so the wokification process and politicization of Adhouse Advertising School can be completed. But still, it’s not enough. Apparently not even the very public beat down of a couple of fallible, but likely decent human beings, is sufficient.

But then again, power is toxic and the woke can’t get enough of it. And after all, the God of social justice demands people are absolutely obliterated for their unintentional mistakes.

This, by the way, is love according to the woke - loving someone enough to hate them so thoroughly they are reduced to less than zero.

Some folks have apparently never heard of mercy. And preemptive shame on Adhouse Advertising School should they fold to the pressure to dump their teacher over this.

And a warning, to all those who would cast the first stone, by the standard you judge others, so you will be judged. Showing mercy to others means mercy will be shown to you. Pick up that digital stone at your own risk.

There’s much more performative wokeness going on here, too many screen grabs to post, actually. People thumbing up each other’s fake outrage. All the usual copious public back slapping as each narcissist vies for the lead woke enforcer role.

Meanwhile, a real human being is being destroyed, while the woke tell us what we should be concerned about is some unspecified group of people who have been “harmed”.

And soon, the woke mob will move onto to their next kill. The blood-thirsty onlookers will dissipate. And the wreckage of someone’s life will become barely a footnote in anyone’s mind.

So, what is the lesson here?

Well, for one, wokeness is just sound and fury signifying nothing - except the rewarding of flatulent grandstanding - by the very worst among us.

And two, wokeness makes a fool out of us all. After all, it’s only possible because everyone plays along - each performing their part in the destruction of real people, never perceiving that a piece of their own humanity has been destroyed in the process.

And once again, what could have been a simple conversation offline between a couple of people, where understanding and real reconciliation might happen, it instead becomes a Broadway tragedy that plays out before thousands who watch with rapt attention, too afraid to say what we all know: this is bullying, cruelty… madness and it needs to stop.

And until more bravely refuse to play along, it won’t stop, because division is actually the point. That, and creating a spectacle that instills a paralyzing fear.

This is the hideous power dynamics of wokeness - fueled by DEI - on full display. Power that can be leveraged for personal advancement on the back of others’ destruction.

It’s a divisive concoction, that sadly, few in the ad industry - and our society - can resist.