Jerry Seinfeld accepted an honorary CLIO Award at a ceremony in New York City held annually during Advertising Week.
In front of a room full of people working in the advertisement industry, this is how he began his acceptance speech: “I love advertising because I love lying.”
And then, Seinfeld dropped the bomb: “I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy.”
As much as he received the award because he himself worked in the ad business as a longtime spokesman for American Express, he definitely seems quite critical towards the industry. And surprisingly, the audience cheered to his controversial statements!
This might all be brushed-off as a couple of witty jokes and forgotten as soon as new sales “need” to be made… but hopefully this message planted seeds and will drive people to question what’s the point of selling garbage for a living.
By Elina St-Onge, Collective Evolution;
And here is yet another great acceptance speech from Jerry Seinfeld, which could be entitled “All awards are stupid”:
