The advertising has no clothes

Thomas V. Pedersen (1820–1859), English Wikipedia (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Emperor_Clothes_01.jpg)

A lot of the advertising today is like the vain monarch in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Not surprisingly, many a marketer’s opinion about advertising is likely to echo that of John Wanamaker’s:

​“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half.”

​​At the heart of the problem is . . .

1. the poverty of intellectual honesty, and
2. the temporary or terminal lack of advertising literacy . . .

​. . . on the marketer’s and/or agency’s side(s) of the table.

Yet, every advertising opportunity contains within it the seeds of a renaissance.

One that starts with the consumer.