Like many of my generation, I read two advertising trade journals, Adweek and Ad Age as well as the ad column in The New York Times. None of these purportedly legitimate sources have done a whit of serious reporting on what's going on in the advertising industry.
Daily it seems we are updated about the efficacy of Twitter, or Alex Bogusky's latest escapades, or some minor campaign by some minor advertising potentate. We hear about nearly everything that doesn't matter and almost nothing about what does.
Unemployment in the advertising industry is running at probably between 25% and 50%. My guess is that Y&R is down 600 people from its pre-WPP peak. Ogilvy is likely down 500 people from its early 2000s heights. BBDO. D'Arcy/Publicis. And more.
In fact, I just ran across these sentences (belatedly) in Ad Age: "After a nearly yearlong hiring freeze and having shed 14,000 employees, WPP chief Martin Sorrell had a bit of good news last week: The holding company is staffing up.
It's a welcomed announcement for an industry that lost almost 200,000 jobs between December 2008 and January 2010."
An industry that's lost nearly 200,000 jobs in one year and it gets no press coverage.
No wonder print media is dying.
It's stopped doing its job.
