Bill Murray on Brands

Key takeaways:

Well I don't know if brands should be more like Bill Murray, but there's no question they should suck less.

...there's a way to sell you things to make the exchange more of a human one.

Whole response:

Well I don't know if brands should be more like Bill Murray, but there's no question they should suck less. I think if you just hold that though in front of yourself, like a marching brand trumpet player has the music mounted on his trumpet, about how to make ads suck less, then that will inform your daily life. It will be the last thing you think before you go to bed, and the first thing you think about in the morning, and you will add up the cumulative data of which ads are bearable to you, which ads you respond to. Ads aren't bad in themselves. It's just the attitude. We all have to go to the store, we all have to have groceries, but there's a way to sell you things to make the exchange more of a human one. Sometimes you buy things from someone because you like their style. They watch with some fascination about the way YOU choose. If you think the ad will work backwards to what you're trying to tell them in the first place.

This comes from Murray's recent AMA on Reddit. You can read it all here.