Love and Hate.

It seems half of the advertising industry is at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. My Facebook feed is more full than usual of people cavorting, of pictures of steak and unshaven men sitting on elevated chairs behind microphones.

There are people wearing augmented reality goggles. There are people playing with models of electronic toys which may or may not ever have an impact in the market. There's also the usual spate of articles from the so-called trade press.

What no one seems to want to answer is this: what does any of this have to do with advertising? If I worked on an automotive account, I probably wouldn't fly out to the International Tire Exhibition in Akron, Ohio.

I happen to think that one of the troubles of our industry is that so many people in our industry hate our industry.

They hate TV. They hate commercials. They hate messaging and "interruption."

I think if you go back to the founders of modern advertising, Bill Bernbach or David Ogilvy or even Rosser Reeves, you'd find that they believed advertising contributed to the greater good. It helped people make informed decisions.

As Carl Ally said, at its best advertising helps impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way. At its best.

I still believe that.

I wish more people in the industry acted as if they did too.