The advertising industry, which has spent the better part of a century telling Americans that better days are always just a purchase away, appears to be having trouble believing its own pitch.
Nearly six in 10 respondents to a recent survey expect industry conditions to worsen over the next six months, a finding that suggests the professional optimists who populate agency conference rooms are, at least among themselves, allowing for the possibility that things may not be fine.
The statistic arrives without much context — no indication of who, precisely, was asked, or what specific conditions they expect to deteriorate — but the general drift is clear enough. (One imagines the respondents filling out the survey between meetings about "doing more with less," a phrase that has become the industry's equivalent of "thoughts and prayers.")
Whether this pessimism reflects genuine structural concern about the advertising business or merely the ambient anxiety that has settled over most white-collar industries in recent months is difficult to say. The advertising trade has always been given to mood swings, celebrating its own genius in flush times and preparing for apocalypse whenever a client review goes poorly.
Still, there is something notable about a business built on confidence conceding, even in an anonymous survey, that confidence may be in short supply.
The next six months will, presumably, reveal whether the gloomy 60 percent were seers or merely having a bad week. In the meantime, the campaigns will continue to insist that everything is possible, even as the people making them are not entirely sure.
Original story published in adage.com: "Calvin Klein global CMO Jonathan Bottomley on social, pride, more - Ad Age"