George Bernard Shaw famously commented that “England and America are two countries separated by a common language”.

For as long as I can remember the UK and US advertising industries have run on parallel but distinctly different paths.

Given recent events in the US, a debate on ‘what is the ad business for’ is overdue. Is it about creating messages and experiences (including ads), designed specifically to help drive clients’ businesses and placed in environments that will help achieve that aim? Or is it about producing ads quickly, and cheaply, to be placed automatically, using spurious metrics, regardless of client needs?

The ad industry has always been framed by different factions shouting ever louder – from the pages of the trades and conference platforms. No change there then – from the days of arguments around commission versus fees, to the ‘no longer a need for account people’ and the merits and demerits of social media this has always been a business fuelled by strong, imaginative opinions.

Taken from ‘The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint’ by Dr Karen Nelson-Field. What follows is based on my 1½ page contribution to an excellent 371 page book

If a week is a long time in politics, and a day is an age in the wacky world of online media, I’m not sure what 266 years and a week is. On the 20^th January 1759 Dr Samuel Johnson published an article in the 40^th Edition of The Idler (insert your own joke here as to the modern equivalent of The Idler; maybe it’s the WPP Work-from-Home Manual). In it he said:

“Whatever is common is despised. Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick.” 

Leo Burnett is no more, the agency now part of Publicis Groupe is being merged with Publicis Worldwide to form Leo.

So what?

In my office hangs a six-word, framed message. It was given to me in 1990 at a Leo Burnett company strategy meeting at which I had spoken about the threat to the traditional advertising ecosystem posed by what were then known as media independents. The message was written by the agency’s creative leadership, after Ogden Nash. In its entirety it reads:

“Don’t worry media. We need ya.”