What on Earth are they teaching these days at our Business Schools?

Dec 1
08:05

2008

Paul Ashby

Paul Ashby

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For thirty years at least there has been a well researched, well documented communications technique that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that interactive communication, properly executed, is far more cost effective than traditional advertising. However given the method of remuneration enjoyed by the Advertising Agencies/Media Agencies they have chosen to ignore this far superior method of communication.

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Because it certainly does not include honesty!
It can be said with certainty that the current global financial crisis was created by the utter dishonesty of the banks.  
The reputations of the largest corporations in the world are being questioned more and more as a tsunami of evidence emerges as to the utter indifference of Top-down-Management to their customers needs and expectations.
And the weasel words used by Marketing and Advertising agencies to justify spending (and thus wasting) more and more ineffectual advertising on new and old media are examples of creatively brilliant lying!
Traditional TV advertising is under further threat as the take-up of personal video recorders (PVRS) soars,What on Earth are they teaching these days at our Business Schools? Articles and still they recommend advertising on TV, where no research evidence has ever emerged as to its efficiency and accountability.
Just how dishonest is the Advertising Industry?
For thirty years at least there has been a well researched, well documented communications technique that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that interactive communication, properly executed, is far more cost effective than traditional advertising. However given the method of remuneration enjoyed by the Advertising Agencies/Media Agencies they have chosen to ignore this far superior method of communication.
Here in England, the Home Office has admitted spending tens of millions of pounds on TV advertising. £20 million was spent on TV adverts rather than the hiring of more police!  A spokesperson said "People will be appalled that so many millions are being wasted on spin at a time of economic hardship.  People want more police on the streets, not more PR on the TV.  It is, to say the least disgraceful , that at a time of economic hardship, the Home Office chooses to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers money on propaganda.
Good Lord how the mighty Marketing and Advertising experts have failed.  For instance, let us start with high finance, the Marketing experts failed spectacularly to predict what in retrospect looks like a catastrophe waiting to happen.   And a catastrophe, moreover, that owed nothing to bad luck or "an act of God", but was wrought by Marketeers themselves.   In the world of Advertising it is the first era to value mass mediocrity above individual genius.  That is evidenced  by the decline and fall of the Marketing and Advertising expert in public esteem, no longer do the public pay attention to, nor believe in, the utter honesty of the marketing messages pouring out in an ever increasing number - they treat ALL advertising as a pack of lies (which is not too far from the truth).
It would be true to say that the crisis affecting advertising/marketing is a reflection of the crisis affecting civilization.   Perhaps it is now necessary to look at this crisis as a symptom of things gone wrong in the business world.
It is time for Marketing/Advertising to wake up to the fact that they have dehumanized and depersonalized  our relationship with the media, thinking that their actions only affected only their own sphere of interest, however the appalling decisions made in America have set off a domino effect making it necessary to bring new ideas to the forefront of Marketing and Advertising.
The only hope of saving advertising and marketing lies in a fundamental re-examination of the values that we have lived by in the past 30 years