How Soon We Forget
10 August 2026
I’ve only ever worked in the advertising industry, my experience in other professions is not just limited, it’s zero. Our industry seems to have the memory of a hamster. Our institutional capacity to learn is limited, I suspect it’s worse than most other industries.
This may explain why many self-declared experts, influencers and commentators on my feeds seem to believe that they invented advertising.
To many, all knowledge begins and ends with their latest ‘discoveries’ and ‘insights’.
And yet advertising did exist, in fact it rubbed along pretty well, before the days of the internet.
It’s not that this group thinks history is ‘bunk’; it’s more that it doesn’t exist. For them, advertising (like sex) just happened; as Philip Larkin wrote: “Sexual intercourse began in 1963 (which was rather late for me)”.
What matters to today’s professionals is the present and the future. What should matter is using yesterday’s mistakes and successes to do better today and tomorrow.
It was often said by ad people that everyone is an expert in two things: their own job and advertising. This was inevitably accompanied by a wry smile, and the rather pleasant (misplaced) sensation that what we did was of such interest and consequence to the population as a whole that everyone felt it necessary to have an opinion.
The ‘everyone’s an expert…’ quote came from the days when ‘advertising’ meant the creative work. In just the same way that everyone has an opinion on art, or literature, so it was with ads.
Today, ‘advertising’ means more than the ads (it always did to be fair but the perception was otherwise), and thus the number of ‘experts’ has multiplied from those who know a lot about the actual ads to those whose self-confessed expertise is at best tangential to the end result.
Having an opinion is of course absolutely fine. Having an opinion at odds with mine is to be welcomed. My problem lies with those implying that their opinion is supported by evidence when it isn’t.
Or that their opinion is based on an insight of such startling originality that the industry as a whole should sit up, take notice and start issuing the speaking invitations and requests for personal appearances. Whereas in fact the same idea has been knocking around for decades, unheralded.
It would be unkind to single out individuals but it would be smart if those seeking to influence us all do at least the bare minimum of research before letting rip.
As for those of us exposed to multiple opinions, next time you read a blog, a post, a trade piece, or a podcast, at least ask your inner cynic whether the credentials of those doing the expressing make their opinions worth your time. Are their comments truly well-informed or are they just filling space?
There are plenty of people around with masses of valuable experience they’re prepared to share, however poor we are as an industry at cataloguing and formalizing.
Seek them out, read their generous posts and outputs, reach out to them. Listen to the right people, not the loudest.
Principles endure, however much how they’re executed may change.