Marketing's Myopia, Advertising's Delusions, and the Handover to Big Tech

Big Tech is mostly funded by Advertising. The world reviles us as never before. What can be done? Where to start?

The myopia and delusions of the mainstream marketing and advertising industry (with honorable exceptions) are revealed in Mapping Big Tech's Quarterly Earnings by Kendra Barnett .

Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta report 10.5% and 22% advertising revenue growth, respectively. The dominance of the Big Tech duopoly began 20 years ago. Compare these results with the two companies that also emerged over the last two decades as high-flying brand marketers. Nike and Starbucks reported 2% and 3% revenue declines, respectively.

Last year I recommended marketers read The Handover by British philosopher, author, and podcaster, David Runciman . The subtitle is “How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States, and AI’s.” It’s eerie now to read the commentary of E-Marketer’s Jeremy Goldman who writes of Meta’s results: “They’ve perfected the art of making every scroll and click count. Advertisers might as well hand over their wallets.”

I argued the best definition of Marketing’s responsibility is for everyone (customers, collaborators, creators, and communities) outside an enterprise’s physical walls and digital domains. I recalled Marketing’s late 20th century myopia, revealed in 1980 by Ted Levitt in Marketing Myopia . ??I urged us to understand our 21st century myopia and learn from what is happening beyond our narrow world, in the spheres of activism, philosophy, psychology, law, anthropology, and economics.

Everything Everywhere. The Story of Marketing Today

Marketing’s myopia is accompanied by Advertising’s three delusions about the world today.

1. The delusion of business competition: that markets are competitive, and consumers have meaningful choices.
2. The delusion of media trust: that audiences can trust content from publishers, and brands can trust the audience profiles the media report.
3. The delusion of creativity: that corporations create communications to improve the world as well as grow brand differentiation and sales.

Today markets are mostly near-monopolies or monopsonies. There is little meaningful choice for consumers on supermarket shelves; or among airlines; telecoms; restaurants; physical or online retailers etc. There is nowhere beyond Big Tech to go if you are a new brand and innovator. The role of advertising has mostly narrowed to one two tasks: for an insurgent it means fighting for clicks and shares on the platforms, or for an incumbent it means maintaining dominant presence and distribution.

Today media are mostly digital, momentary and fragmented across publishers and formats. No audience measurement standards exist, nor can they, given the complexity and provenance of ever-changing sources. Audiences are polarized politically, trust exists only in bubbles, outrage is monetized, and the role of advertising is to remain safe.

Today communications are mostly created not by brands but by individuals and influencers. The exploding volume of online communication is dominated by the platforms, has usurped the role of news, and is designed to gain attention, attract fame, and at best persuade, at worst manipulate. Consistent with how their stock is valued, corporations obsess over short-term metrics at the cost of brand.

This is all well documented and analyzed, but not by marketers and advertisers. The analysis comes from other disciplines, from Law, Power, Economics, Sociology, Psychology and Technology. After going overboard on the Metaverse (which became the sad swan song of Wunderman ) the industry now obsesses over A.I. (which is really only advanced statistical modeling powered by environmentally-damaging, scaled processing power).

Marketing and advertising enable the dominance of the digital platforms. Sam Altman of OpenAI asserts that artificial general intelligence (AGI, which most know is a fantasy) will handle 95% of tasks currently performed by marketing agencies, strategists, and creative professionals. Mark Zuckerburg of Meta predicts: “Over the long term, advertisers will basically just be able to tell us a business objective and a budget, and we're going to go do the rest for them.”?The intent is clear.

One year ago, I highlighted the dominance of the digital platforms, and urged marketers to question and interrogate the role of technology in Martech and Adtech destroy brands. Put Technology on Trial. I asked four questions, the leading being: How do marketers and advertisers grow brands when digital platforms extract rent (tax) from every activity, suppress innovation and competition, and promote manipulation through monetizing outrage rather than persuasion through telling the truth?

Why is this important? Anyone advertising on Meta’s platforms should read at least Chapter 7 of How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa .

Why do we not learn? Elon Musk acquires Twitter with other people’s money for influence, not advertising revenue. He has hateful content promoter Tommy Robinson's account re-instated on Twitter/X . At the Cannes Festival of Creativity, WPP’s Mark Read hosts Elon Musk . To avoid his trial in court, Robinson illegally flees the U.K. Now this weekend Tommy Robinson stokes far right riots on social media from outside the UK .

Where is redemption and a future to be found?

The Digital Republic by British lawyer Jamie Susskind, chapters 22-30, has recommendations about how to start. Susskind’s guidance is across society, business, and politics, but applies well to marketing and advertising. He argues the necessity of:

• Standards for Training
• Certifications and Accreditations
• Transparency in all Reporting
• Binding Codes of Conduct including Legal and Ethical

He stresses these should be backed by a mechanism for Collective Enforcement, which will require the industry to reform its institutions, perhaps aligning or merging those representing brand advertisers, all media, publishers, agencies both media and creative to form one ‘super-institution’ with authority conferred to represent all, one voice to lobby government for appropriate legislation and regulation, and the funds to explore and experiment with innovative brand-building advertising designs and systems.

As we stand today, technology under the rubric of AI will threaten everything that is wonderful about the combination of art and science that made marketing and advertising both a source of economic growth (and a wonderful career). And based on the events of the recent weeks, much worse.

Marketing and advertising can envision and participate in a different future. The metaphor I believe most relevant is in the concept of The Great Simplification.

Stewart Pearson

Stewart believes in Consilience, the unity of knowledge across disciplines. He has lived, worked, and traveled globally in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He settled in the Evergreen State and Seattle. After studying Statistics and Marxist Economics in the U.K. he had four decades of experience in marketing and advertising focused on building client brands directly and globally.?He was Global Chief Client Officer and Vice-Chairman of Wunderman when it was the fastest-growing major agency in WPP. David Ogilvy once sent him a telex from India and Lester Wunderman told him stories of Picasso from the village in France where both of Stewart’s heroes had lived. Stewart is on LinkedIn and Twitter , and at [email protected] .