At the gathering of ad execs from the American Association of Advertising Agencies the whining that has been prevalent for almost a decade continued. And this was their ‘leadership conference.’
Some of these folks used to be the renegades of marketing, and media, the ones who had clients quaking in their boots at the audacity of their brash minds.
And in the blink of an eye they have become the old fogies, seemingly unwilling and unable to change. They are aware that the landscape has radically changed, all the landmarks are unreliable, and more importantly, the cash is not flowing from the usual spigots.
But wait, there’s hope. It appears that ad spending is not doing so badly. At least for the holding companies. Those clever creatures could read the spigots and started to acquire new media agencies to balance the decline of the old media agencies. They call it organic growth — their single digits. While the online media lobs along in plump doubles.
