Detroit, Detroit.

Today's ad column in The Wall Street Journal is as damning an indictment of the ad industries' dominant complacency as I have ever seen. I can't supply a link because the WSJ isn't free, so I'll summarize for those of you who don't have access to the WSJ, America's cheery neo-fascist newspaper.

Here's the headline: "Password to Marketers' Meeting: Digital." And now the pithy-core of the item, "'digital marketing still lags the shift in consumer behavior' prompted by the Internet. The findings indicate that while 'eight in 10 Americans are now online' and spend as much time online as on TV, most marketers allocate only 5%-10% of their ad budgets to digital media." Further, "40% of consumer goods participants spend less than 5% of their budgets on digital."

This reminds me of Detroit's complacency after the first gas shock in the early 70s when the prevailing Big 4 thinking was, "the Japanese will never have more than 10% of the domestic auto market."

This is pertinent both to traditional agencies that act as if they believe TV's hegemony hasn't been broken and interactive agencies who refuse to grow up and force the issue--that they should be leading brands, not merely channel-executing a traditional campaign.

As Dylan sang, "the times they are a-changing." But unless we start changing with them, there are going to be a lot of used Herman Miller Aeron chairs on sale.