Is the advertising agency 'problematic'?

As is the way of the cloud, I discovered Helge Tenno's slideshare via Damien Mulley. The most hooky bit of it for me was a quote Helge used from Jeff Jarvis at the Nokia Ideas Project, which itself is a one-minute lesson in quo vadis for ad people. It should give pause and cause at least some slight gear change. 

Since the Internet is a connection machine, anything creating artificial middle men, preventing companies from connecting directly with their participants, will become problematic. (link)

The obvious screaming question then becomes What do I do? I'm an adman! It merits a longer discussion than this, but the essence of the answer is Upskill, reskill or get the fuck out of the way.

My old company, Grey, used to share an office with Mediacom, its WPP sister and media buying monster. They had a poster on the wall, a big red Mediacom logo with the legend Closer to Clients. I never believed it. Then they closed down. All of the links in this post are important and demand the attention of anyone with an interest in pursuing or even just maintaining a career in advertising.

Happy Monday everyone!

View more Microsoft Word documents from Helge Tennø.