How did advertising come to this?

I wasn’t alive in the fifties, but it strikes me that there are some pretty odd things about advertising today that can’t possibly have been the case when the industry was getting into its stride.

Making non-existent ads to win awards

Taking on accounts for nothing to make your agency look fat and healthy.

Recommending media channels because they’re new rather than effective.

Moving accounts around in London because of a decision that was made in Nairobi.

Creating another awards scheme that caters for much the same ads as several existing ones.

Agencies making a huge amount of their income from behind the scenes client services that have little or nothing to do with advertising.

Strategy trumping work.

Clients binning hundreds of thousands of pounds of work in the middle of a recession.

Lots of big agencies scrapping over a crumby little account just for the chance to say they’ve won something.

It just seems, occasionally, that advertising has gone from an industry that promoted the goods and services of others to something slightly different. It now appears that the image of the agency has become  excessively important, leading to odd behaviour that has in turn led to a lack of respect from clients who know they have the pimp hand all day long.

Have we become our own worst enemies, appearing like a series of desperate suitors, each fighting to impress a bunch of boss-eyed munters, whilst forgetting that said boss-eyed munters (and her fit friends who left town a long time ago) don’t find desperation attractive or respectable?