by Paul Ashby

Created on: November 18, 2008   Last Updated: January 13, 2009

his marketing crisis is an opportunity to call advertising to account.

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.

There are 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

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