The cobbler's children.

The advertising industry doesn't care about its own brands. The fact is, it's hard to find an agency anywhere that stands for something or a particular sort of work or an approach to advertising. This lacuna is even greater when it comes to multi-office agencies. The office in New York might bear little resemblance to the office in London. I believe that as an industry we have abandoned ethical standards and behaviors in pursuit of ephemeral glory and awards.

As an industry we trumpet and laud work, we heap praise upon things not according to how they influence consumers, but according to how "cool" they make the agency seem. Grand Prix Lions seem to be awarded to work with spurious efficacy based on flawed and dangerous assumptions.

Many of the best brains in the industry, or at least many of the highest-paid brains, fatten their awards chest working on spots that never run for products that barely exist. They disparage work for real clients. They disparage our real business objective which is, simply, to make clients more money.

Somehow that's crass and commercial and beneath us. So we have come to a point in our industry where the primary way to assess the worth of an agency is how many awards they've won as opposed to how many businesses they've built.

In short we are plagued by a pervasive perversion of purpose.

The ad industry has forgotten what business it's in.