What advertising can learn from introverts

When I was younger I was a pretty quiet kid, not weirdly so I’d like to stress, but quiet enough that when family and friends would visit my parents a phrase that was often said in my direction was “you’re just listening taking it all in aren’t you”.

This phrase was usually directed at me when my older brother who was pretty extroverted, or loud, had done something wrong like being kicked out of Science class for a term or making his car do a roly-poly, and was said in the context of “you’re learning from his mistakes”.

And it was true, I was listening and looking at what was going on and taking it all in, and learning from it, making sure I didn’t make the same mistakes.

There are a lot of articles about how you should manage introverts and extroverts differently and each have their own benefits, this is of course true, however thinking about this story got me thinking about introversion in advertising in a different way.

Yes we need not to apply the idea of introverts and extroverts to people who are making the communications, but moreover we should be applying it to the communications being created and how we create them.

To me advertising has been an extrovert for too long, talking about what we want to talk about, not listening to what people are saying, always thinking we’re right.

As a planner I see my role as taking stock, listening to what people (or consumers) are saying and doing, making sure we don’t make the same mistakes as others, meaning that we’re making work that people actually want.

I see my job as making the advertising process more introverted.