In April, Nick Manning and I started a grassroots movement called ‘Advertising: Who Cares?’ (AWC) because of a number of serious, even existential, threats to not only the craft but ultimately the business of advertising.

About a month ago (September 12^th) we launched the Advertising: Who Cares? movement with a 4-hour long event at London’s Royal Society of Arts. We had an exceptional speaker line up; we sold every seat; we paid no-one and spent nothing. We took no sponsorship money. We raised money for NABS, the advertising industry charity.

This all demonstrates a few things to me. Not least on the importance of encouraging free debate and discussion, something that rarely happens at sponsored conferences where speaker selection and sponsors are intertwined – but that’s for another post.

Advertising reflects society, it doesn’t drive it, which would go some way to explaining why the industry today is so divisive. Everything is black or white, you’re for me or against me. You love or you hate. Compromise is for wimps. Discussion wastes time, debate is the enemy of progress.

In April, Nick Manning and I had one of our regular two-old-guys-in-a-coffee-shop-moaning-about-the-state-of-the-ad-industry sessions. This one was a little different – for two reasons.

Elon Musk’s decision to start legal action against the World Federation of Advertisers (the WFA) and their working group the now-sadly-departed Global Alliance for Responsible Media (X was a proud GARM member) on the basis that advertisers are not advertising on X is, to use a word of the moment, ‘weird’.

Last week the ad business came together to celebrate creative excellence at the annual Cannes Festival.

Or: last week the ad tech giants along with a number of circling bankers and assorted money men came together in Cannes to celebrate the takeover of the ad business by a combination of machines and mathmen.

Since Nick Manning and I started what has become the Who Cares? movement we have been asked by various people what our motivation is, and why such a thing is necessary.

Prose.

It’s about a month since a Cog Blog co-authored with Nick Manning appeared, and kicked off what has become known as the ‘Who Cares?’ movement.

… at the very beginning. A very good place to start”. [Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers]

The last Cog Blog post, co-authored with Nick Manning created a stir. Described by some as a ‘call to arms’ and no doubt by others as ‘two old blokes desperately seeking relevance’ (which by the way we neither need nor want), the point we were, and are making is that for many in the advertising industry the advertising itself has become an after-thought.

The craft of advertising faces a crisis. And without the craft the business per se is in trouble, adrift in a sea of creative and media sameness without verifiable, solid data to cling on to.

During a video interview with Havas Global’s Managing Director Jon Waite (soon to be released as an asiCast, watch this space) Jon referenced an event he had been at during which a poll of the audience revealed that 79% were familiar with attention metrics. When members of the audience were asked how many adopted an ‘always on’ approach when it came to using these data the number dropped to 1. Not even 1%, just 1.

Harold Macmillan, UK Prime Minister in the 1960s was once asked by a journalist what was the most difficult thing about being Prime Minister. His reply: “Events dear boy, events.” It may be unfashionable to say so but the most difficult thing about being a media agency in the 2020s is not systems, algorithms or even blog posts from smarty-arsed consultants but relationships with clients.

This post is made up of elements that have appeared previously on ‘The Media Leader’ in two separate pieces in February 2024

For some while now the industry has faced a problem with its basic metrics. I say ‘faced’ although the truth is we haven’t faced up to the issue at all, doing that curious media dance of sticking our fingers in our ears, twirling round three times, clicking our heels, and hoping the problem will go away.

Take share-of-voice, or SoV.

Opening one of the sessions at last November’s asi Conference in Nice, Richard Marks (who, with Mike Sainsbury does a sterling job putting the event together each year) made the point that he has never known a time when the politics of measurement is so all-pervasive.

He’s right – and it is disturbing.

One of the unintentionally hilarious things about LinkedIn is the number of earnest posts telling us all what we can learn from this event or that occurrence. ‘5 Things Every Marketer Should Take From King Charles’ Coronation’. The fact that I feel the need to explain I made this up says it all.

Full Disclosure: I am a Non-Exec Director of MESH, mentioned here.

In his speech to this year’s MRG Conference Phil Smith, DG of the UK advertiser association, ISBA made the point that advertising isn’t quite as powerful a force as its creators like to think.

Earlier this month I chaired the advertising session at the annual asi video and audio measurement conference in Nice. This post is based on my opening remarks.

This session is all about looking at the world of audience measurement from an advertising, and advertiser perspective.

I believe we are fast approaching a tipping point. We have for years inhabited a world within which the most important, some would say the only thing that mattered was how many ‘somethings’ you bought, and at what price.

This post is based on an article in The Media Leader published on 23rd October 2023

I didn’t go to Adwanted’s ‘The Future of Media’ event the other week – it seems inappropriate for an old guy who started his career in the full-service era to attend anything with ‘future’ in the title. As one delegate put it: “This is The Future of Media, not the future of 1980s ad agencies.” 

I did consider titling this post ‘The Future of Agencies?’ With a question mark. As in: ‘Is there one? But on reflection I settled on the above. There is a future, but my old friends and colleagues need to get their skates on.

I come from a generation that grew up professionally in full-service ad agencies – where everything, including creative, planning, media, even in some cases packaging and market research was all done under the one ad agency roof orchestrated by account people.

I mention this as the concept of integration of media with creative is hardly new. It’s where we started.

A version of this post appeared in The Media Leader on 12^th September.

The media and advertising world is measuring the wrong things.

And – we may be measuring some of the right things whilst fooling ourselves that what we’re measuring means something it doesn’t.