Monday 20 August 2012

Chaotic,Evasive,Bungling - That's Marketing and Advertising for You!


Torrents of criticism for Marketing Leaders exist.
Most Advertising Agency leaders are unforthcoming and highly selective in their accountability.
Their accountability falls well short of the standards expected by Clients. Marketing and Advertising providers aren't necessarily the slick, smooth operators they can seem when they bid for work. What we also have discovered by now is having shareholders, a whizzy logo and a global footprint is no guarantee of competence. Add to that the fact that Public Trust of Advertising and Marketing is at an all time low. Urgent improvements, both the the way advertising agencies are run and the way they are accountable is needed if public and market confidence is restored.
The fraud on the internet will add to the distrust!
Advertising Agencies have treated consumers as a Ponzi scheme. Success in marketing and advertising has been bought by promises with costs far in excess of reality. We have hoped for a tomorrow in which record sales growth will yield record levels of marketing expenditures to cover the promises when they come due . The problem?....tomorrow never comes!!
Our legacy to our successors should not be temporary austerity but a permant, massive reform of Marketing and Advertising. We have to be unflinching and utterly practical in recognising the scale of the challange.
All this would mean an attitude in both Marketing and Advertising strongly focused on performance and accountability.
We are all but guaranteed overspending and slow growth if we cannot hold both both Marketing and Advertising to account. Our economic crisis is not the moment to delay reform but to accelerate it by questioning the received wisdom in every aspect of our economy, especially Marketing and Advertising.
Our Financial, political,business and media elites are under attack as never before.After a perfect storm of venality, we are experiencing a great reckoning. Morality, personal integrity, which used to seem antique or quaint values, are back on the agenda.
After it emerged that big banks were selling dodgy derivatives and lying about their balance sheets in 2008, trust in all institutions, not just financial houses, began to unravel. If bankers, the people we trust with our money, could lie, steal and cheat, and expect to get away with it because their institutions were too big to fail, what was going on in the other citadels of power?
We must hasten to properly develop interactive opportunities already proven.

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