As businesses we have never in history been better, more closely connected between seller and buyer, as now. There are so many ways to reach your customer - the traditional ways, of course like tv and print and posters et al. Then there are the flood of new ways - Google, Facebook, emails, web pages, mobiles, tablets, tweets, personalised messages - scores of ways.
Yet what's happening? Everywhere you look you see "decline". Check the headlines. "Google's efforts to reverse ad-price declines aren't working"; "Print circulations and ad revenues down", "TV stations no longer licenses to print money".
In fact TV stations have suffered in recent times. Channel 9 skirted bankruptcy before being rescued, 20 months ago. Ten network has lost 90 per cent of its value in the past decade and stands on the showroom floor while overseas visitors kick its tyres. Seven has gloried in winning ratings, but none of the networks are able to recapture the heady days of the past.
Of course good television is expensive to make, whereas the reality tv shows, cooking lessons and quiz programs are relatively cheap. So we see lots of them, and lots of glamorous American TV shows that cost millions in production, but our channels get them for the over the counter price.
It's the same with the advertising. The clever, fancy ads all too often came in the same crate that delivered the product. Whereas our local ads tend to be arm-waving presenters and lots of product shots.
How can we avoid this decline in quality when now there are so many media to work with? Well I say we can. But it involves more work from the client - and from the ad agency.
We see so much puffery about the new media. As if it's the media that counts and delivers the results. Not so. In the end that's only a way of delivering a message, your advertisement. And if it isn't on strategy, cleverly written, and brilliantly delivered - it will fail. Then the advertising will be blamed. No wonder then that the board turns around and cuts the marketing budget - "well it never works anyway," they tell each other.
Advertising does work, but only when it is well-conceived. When a target has been carefully selected, a campaign developed, yes make use of all the media we now have available - but aiming at that one carefully determined target, with the highest quality production values.
Sean Cummins, creative director of Cummins and Partners, summed it up at a conference last week: "I want to bring media and creative back together again," he said. "Every time we name something it becomes the new trotted out buzzword."
He warmed to the subject: "It's not content. It's advertising. It's not social media, it's advertising. It's not activation, fulfilment, behaviour change, hash tagging - it's advertising." I've left out some of his more colourful expletives. "Dude, research isn't a tool, a shovel is a tool." Point being, stop talking up the psychobabble and forgetting that you have a job to do. It's advertising.
And this is where companies make their mistake, of not having their ad manager at the boardroom table. Reminding them that without that understanding, their truck does not have an engine.
Look at the most successful companies and check out their management. The best put big emphasis, and big budgets, into their advertising. Because they know how to make it work.
