I don’t much like this time of year. In London it’s wet, dreary, cold, dark, that’s true, but far worse this seems to be the time of year for memorials and saying goodbye.

Just in the last two or three months (and only in my world) we have lost Denise Turner, the IPA’s Research Director at an unfairly young age, my old agency colleague Bryan Smith, and the peerless Dominic Proctor, CEO of JWT, Founder CEO at Mindshare. As I wrote in another place, Dom was loved not only by those who worked for him and with him but by those of us who competed against him.

The fact that the ad industry is in a mess isn’t in doubt. We operate a business model no longer fit for purpose. We face substantial job losses. Creativity in advertising is in retreat. Original content creation is under threat. Direct political interference in how budgets are spent is real. Audience definitions and numbers are no longer verified.

With hindsight this has been brewing for decades; ever since media excellence was defined as delivering the biggest numbers for the lowest cost.