Not Another Conference

24 July 2025

Once upon a time if you wanted to talk about broad industry matters (beyond the vertical specialisms) you went to lunch. Or to the golf course. Now you go to a conference / event. The change from eating and golfing to meeting and talking doesn’t seem to have helped much. We’re still not solving the industry’s biggest problems.

The answer, believe it or not lies in more talking, but talking honestly, openly and with a purpose other than selling something.

The second Advertising: Who Cares? (AWC) event, takes place at The Vue West End, Leicester Square all-day on October 16^th. Tickets from www.advertisingwhocares.org.

Yet another conference? There are many conferences sponsored by organisations who would rather not answer questions, or even better not be asked any in the first place. This isn’t one of those.

AWC is a voluntary movement, with 700 signed-up supporters. It costs nothing to join, and nobody is paid anything for the work they do. Any surplus goes either to charity or is ploughed into building a knowledge-sharing resource to benefit the industry. We have no sponsors, although we accept services from those kind enough to help. We’re beholden to nobody. We have nothing to sell; our aim is to discuss and debate how to improve the industry, and then to put ideas into action.

Nick Manning and I started the Who Cares movement in 2024 on the back of shared concerns:

• The advertising business is in a mess.
• The business model is no longer fit for purpose. Everything flows from this.
• Advertising as a career doesn’t hold the same attraction for today’s graduates as it once did.
• There is plenty of money – advertising is now a global US$1Trillion business – but huge amounts are wasted driving impressions to non-humans.
• The production line from an ad’s creation to its appearance is too long, too complicated, too divorced from any campaign’s core aims, and siphons off far too much money,.
• Measurement of audiences, once a model of collaboration has been weaponised, leading to confusion and poor decision making.
• Craft skills that build on technology risk being subsumed by the technology; the servant is becoming the master.
• We have a multi-faceted trust problem. Trust between agencies and clients; trust amongst consumers.
• Too many ads are low quality, disliked or ignored.
• If the industry worked better, the ads would improve.
• Better ads deliver better results.
• A happy industry is a productive industry.

We want to encourage as wide a debate as possible around the issues we face and together find solutions to them.

This is easier said than done. Many of those closest to the industry’s problems would really far rather not talk about them. Admitting that the status quo isn’t working is hard. Too many are too vested in continuity.

Everything is connected to everything else; tackling an issue is like grasping a jelly; just when you think you’re getting somewhere the problem shifts elsewhere.

If agencies aren’t paid properly for the value they bring to their client’s business, they’ll chase revenue elsewhere. The twin victims are transparency and trust.

If the true value of advertising is hard to measure and quantify then the temptation is to measure something easy – like impressions.

If you don’t like the rules of measurement, that, for example define an impression, then change the rules. Obfuscate; confuse. The victim is clarity.

If, despite all the evidence, you believe that ‘gross impressions’ is a useful metric then it follows that the more of them you can get the better, regardless of where you find them. Advertising becomes commodified – the principle is Jack Cohen’s: ‘stack it high and sell it cheap’. The victim is original, quality content.

If we rely more and more on smart technology; the temptation is to hire cheaper people and train them less. All leading to less craft and more commodification. The victim is creativity.

Less creativity leads to samey, dull advertising. Work by Karen Nelson-Field and Adam Morgan (and others) demonstrates that dull advertising is expensive in the long run; it doesn’t work as well as the best advertising can. The victim is long-term brand value.

If advertising isn’t working as it should, the natural reaction is to blame someone. Working collaboratively is a more productive use of time than looking for a scapegoat. The victim is well-rounded ideas.

The AWC Summit will be about solutions. We have nine workstreams, each led by an acknowledged expert and ‘staffed’ by around 80 of our supporters, which will form the spine of the day. All by definition are people who care, from agencies, advertisers, vendors and our industry’s trade bodies.

We will build in time to listen, so if you care you should come along. By attending you’re helping improve the industry.

We won’t solve all the industry’s problems on October 16^th but we will point the way.

Plus you get lunch, if not golf.