Sorry about this FT article, it opened on my mobile, but I get the request for a subscription on my desktop.

Anyway, the article is about the fact that WPP and Publicis both advertising agencies have fallen upon hard times.  There is also an article in The Times today on Martin Sorrell, where is has swapped the advertising world of WPP ... for the advertising world of S4. 

This week, I was in Barcelona.  To start my presentation I always ask the audience to stand up.  Then I say, sit down if you can remember an advert you have seen in the last 24 hours.  Nobody sits down.

I do this, conference after conference.  Nobody ever sits down.

The average person is hit with 1,000 interrupt messages every day, "buy my crap" people scream, on adverts, on emails and on cold calls.  And what do we do?

We filter it all out.

One of the skills we have taught ourselves in the digital age is to filter this out.  Or we turn to technology such as ad-blockers, the cold calling filter in iOS 13 or rules in our email.  Spam emails can then bypass junk and land straight in the dustbin without you having to see them.

Or we have legislation GDPR or CPAA.

Whenever I post articles like this, I always get a comment from the same person where they say "all evidence shows that advertising spend is increasing".  It is.

It's increasing as everybody is ignoring it and you are going to have to spend more and more and more and more and more on advertising as we all ignore more and ignore more of it.  Period.

Does make you wonder why WPP and Publicis business is in free fall when advertising spend is increasing?

So what about Martin Sorrell? Can an advertising leopard changes its spots?  Of course not, he's creating 2 second ads as our attention span (so we are told) have dropped.  Really?

You've read this article and it took you longer than 2 seconds to get to this point.  People are looking for insight, education, tell me something I don't know.  They are looking for content (on social), they don't want somebody's "buy my shit" "we are number one" "we are market leading" "we are award winning" crappy marketing message interrupting their day.  However it's delivered.

Interrupt and broadcast marketing is dead .... it's time to start building your world without it.