John Grant points us to an article by Ruth Mortimer in Marketing Week about the apparent change of heart the boss of ad-group WPP has had about the impact of his industry. At a recent ‘Branding For Good’ she asked him about the future:
“All our instincts as clients, agencies [and] media owners are to encourage people to consume more – super consumption.” He added that people had become used to: “The aspiration that you should consume more; the aspiration that you should have a bigger car; the aspiration that you should have a number of holidays, bigger houses [and] multiple houses”.
His point was that marketers and their agencies need to adopt a new way of thinking to stop this trend of ‘super consumption’ becoming a real problem. In an age of worries about global warming and limited environmental resources, brands need to behave with responsibility. He suggested that the days of companies creating items that would quickly become obsolete could – and should – be numbered.
Hmmm. Seems pretty obvious that when it comes to eliminating obsolete products, we could start with broadcast ads.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm