George Parker: Media Isn’t Advertising, Even Though the Media Thinks It Is. .

I can understand how the average man on the street considers advertising and media to be one and the same thing. When Joe Six-Pack watches the super bowl, even though for years he’s had it drummed into him that he’s watching the “Super Bowl of Advertising,” he doesn’t give a shit that the non-stop commercials which blow out a sixty minute game to what seems like a long painful week, are produced by ad agencies on behalf of their clients, and apart from station and program promos, have nothing to do with the network they are running on.

However, when the mainstream media reports on the advertising business, they should know better… But they don’t. This week’s edition of Barron’s is a perfect example. With a feature article, titled “Advertising: Waiting for a rebound,” it talks about how the advertising business may have to wait until 2011 for a partial recovery. Ninety percent of the article deals with media, placing a heavy emphasis on traditional media. When it does pay lip service to what it calls other media and “alternative advertising” there’s nothing about digital or social media, it merely mentions product placement and event sponsorship. Not exactly cutting edge choices!

When it does talk about the companies and people who actually create advertising, it refers only to the four holding companies, describing them as advertising agencies, in fact it says Publicis is the number two advertising agency in the world. But it isn’t an agency; it’s a holding company. And it ranks number four behind WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic.

But the most egregious thing about this travesty of an article is that it never mentions the many new kinds of agencies and communication options that are springing up daily to offer clients other choices besides the BDA (Big Dumb Agency) model I love to kick the shit out of. Small wonder that one of the reporter’s main sources for the article is the Wizened of Oz, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, which just happens to be the parent company of Barron’s!

As has become de rigueur these days, the piece finishes by flogging the shit out of the AMC series, Mad Men, citing this as an example of the new kind of programming that is currently on offer from Cablevision and satellite vendors. It goes on and on about the sponsorship and promotional activities this program has encouraged. What the writer obviously fails to realize is the irony of using a series based on the agency business of the early sixties to exemplify where the advertising business might be heading in the future.

In the entire article the only passing reference to new media is when we are told that Mad Men has a Web site, a Facebook page and an iPhone application. Nothing about Twitter… Thank goodness.

George Parker is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. His new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, has just been published by Amazon and is currently setting the ether ablaze. He will continue to relentlessly promote the crap out of it until you are forced to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles.