Relax, It’s Only An Existential Threat
23 March 2026
It’s the oldest trick in the book. Threaten everyone with extinction; convince them that only you have the answer / ultimate weapon; deploy your weapon; save the world; lead your ecstatic followers into the land of plenty. Everyone lives happily ever after.
Except – it’s no threat, I don’t have the answer, there’s no land of plenty and it doesn’t all end happily.
In fact, the best I can offer is that I may very well be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time, although it may be the first time when I really hope I’m right about being wrong.
This isn’t a political blog. But these days politics affects everything; certainly everything in media land. As someone posted a few weeks ago on LinkedIn: Does President Trump now have to approve my media plan?
The huge online advertising platforms go from strength to strength. These are as we all know advertising businesses. Really big, successful US-based ad businesses with unprecedented Presidential backing.
When a decision is taken for marketing reasons not to support a particular channel and that decision then leads to warnings of lawsuits and politicians’ threats to disrupt a business’ business, it’s not surprising that many find it less of a risk to follow the path of least resistance. Just use them, regardless of the effectiveness of the choice. It will be cheaper in the long run.
If you believe everything you’re told, advertising is really very straightforward. Give your budget to META (insert the name of your favourite platform here). Send over your objectives and brief. META (or whoever) will deploy a magic AI tool, which will design a selection of ads. The alternatives will be pretested. They will then place the winning execution across their individual channels.
They’ll adjust the messaging as they go along. The channel reports back on what you got for your money; and how it achieved your goals.
What could be simpler?
Today, most advertisers aren’t Procter and Gamble / Unilever / McDonald’s / Mars. Most are SMEs, who, to quote the Anthony Jones / Fiona Blades presentation to last October’s Advertising: Who Cares? Summit know little and care less when it comes to the theory of marketing.
- 67% operate without a marketing plan
- 49% lack defined KPIs
- Most rely on media owners or generalists for analysis
- Most rely on platform dashboards and ‘vanity metrics’ (reach, impressions etc)
- Ease of use outweighs technical rigour
To which we can add that few use agencies, and most focus on performance driven campaigns.
For many, ads on META et al work perfectly well.
But that is a very different thing from saying that all advertisers should only use META.
It’s also easy to get carried away with performance metrics whilst forgetting the power and value of branding.
The world’s most valuable soft-drink is Coca-Cola. As of 2025 a reasonable estimate of Coca-Cola’s brand value was c.US$46billion. Total sales revenue (TCCC does not breakout sales revenues by brand) can be estimated at between US$20billion and US$25billion.
The brand is worth roughly double its annual sales.
The Coca-Cola brand has been built assiduously over many years, with advertising playing a major role. The same applies to many other brands.
Brand advertising, done consistently and done well builds value. We all know this is true.
Smart advertisers use every tool to build their brand. Once that’s done, performance activities work better too.
Net – you shouldn’t put all your eggs into one platform-shaped basket and ignore everything else
But we live in a short-term world, within which arguing for long-term brand building is tough.
Advertisers have for many years silo-ed media thinking. Many have concluded that price is everything; the detail of where to spend has been left to their agencies; auditors and advisors are too often ignored; ‘audience’, ‘context’, ‘measurement’ have often been placed in the ‘too difficult’ box.
Putting all of this together, on the one hand we have massive media vendors, with a full range of off-the-shelf services, and self-policing measurement systems, all displayed on lovely dashboards. Backed by politicians.
On the other we have the advertiser, often not properly trained, unaware of the questions to ask, let alone the answers to seek, desperate for short-term results that indicate action to their bosses, and keen to stay out of any political firestorm.
‘Branding’? A long-term nice-to-have, which no doubt the vendors will eventually find a convincing way of delivering and measuring.
Now – where in all of this does the agency sit?