The professional role of Marketing and Advertising Management has been undermined by the total lack of true accountability and other problems that link this management to the short-term interests of the advertising agencies themselves. Maximum profit seeking has increasingly taken precedence over long-term accountability together with a complete understanding, and implementation, of the communications process!
Are we at all surprised that the current advertising crisis has come this far? Let's
be honest: the warning voices have been around for a long time,
the fact that these warnings were consistently ignored has now brought about the near collapse of the system.
We live in a schizophrenic world and we will be held accountable for our sins.
The reasons why the writing on the wall was ignored has to do with the denying of inconvenient truths and also because nobody really felt responsible or capable of action.
The advertising/marketing bodies either lacked the authority or the competency to deal with the challenges of a global advertising system that has gone horribly wrong!
Furthermore, individual advertising agencies have not shown the initiative to address a fundamentally flawed and restrictive process of communication together with a total lack of accountability. Additionally none of the advertising agencies and the media have shown any evidence of long term vision.
Additionally the regulatory functions, such as they are have been abused by many within the industry, consciously or unconsciously to the great detriment of Clients and their Customers.
The professional role of Marketing and Advertising Management has been undermined by the total lack of true accountability and other problems that link this management to the short-term interests of the advertising agencies themselves.
Maximum profit seeking has increasingly taken precedence over long-term accountability together with a complete understanding, and implementation, of the communications process!
Markets work best when consumers are well informed about the products they are purchasing and companies are genuinely incentivised to compete for new business on the basis of transparent products that perform in the marketplace. Sadly, this hasn't been the case with the current Marketing and Advertising available because of a number of factors, clutter, lack of interaction, no accountability, no exchange of information etc etc.
Radical reforms are needed to build an accountable commercial commercial programme with consumers interests at its very heart.
The bubbles that always exist in every market. One of the most famous bubbles in the advertising world is the Saatchi & Saatchi bubble which nearly convinced every one that they, and they alone, were responsible for the election win of Margaret Thatcher, they were not. Nevertheless they had Clients flocking to them in the quite mistaken belief that they, the Saatchi brothers, could increase their sales.
Now, along comes another bubble, The Martin Lindstrom bubble. Lindstrom is the so called guru of Neuro-marketing which makes the whole process of selling sound so simple. Utter rubbish yet more Clients will be persuaded to part with millions of dollars before they too will see this as nothing but another bubble. His very existence proves yet again that our current methods of marketing are inaccurate and very very questionable. The article on Lindstrom is headlined "Now the buyer must beware". The sad fact is that "the buyer" has always been aware, they are turning away from the clutter, and meaningless chatter of current advertising in their millions, a very similar bubble occurred a few years ago, this particular bubble was called "subliminal advertising" and was a complete farce and hoax! Neuro-marketing is an even bigger bubble and hoax.
There is enough evidence around to confirm that the days of the advertising agencies are numbered. Recently the specter of media companies taking on a new role as strategic partners alongside -- or perhaps even ahead of -- agencies came into clear focus last month during a CMO Roundtable at the Association of National Advertisers annual conference in Orlando, Fla. There chief marketing officers vented some of their displeasure with advertising agencies and acknowledged the growing role by media companies.
"If I were an agency, I would be really worried about being disintermediated," said Becky Saeger, CMO of Charles Schwab and new chairman of the ANA. "More and more, agencies are almost in the way sometimes."
