"First, it was retailers. Then, it was publishers. Now, it’s the turn of marketers."

Another great critique of advertising comes from Umair Haque.

Haque astutely observes:

Ads are nothing but nuisance costs to most consumers … Marketers have to figure out how to make “ads” that benefit consumers – not impose nuisance costs on them.

I like his sentiments. They make sense. However, the advertising – and by extension the PR and marketing industries are pretty resilient to any notion of major change taking place in society and, as a result, the economy.

Hopefully they’ll understand this soon rather than continuing to role out traditional ad, PR and marketing campaigns in online social media and thinking they’ll be ok.

Haque reckons they won’t be:

“This is strategy decay moving inexorably through the value chain – sweeping along the rusting, moribund, industrial media value chain like a tsunami. First, it was retailers. Then, it was publishers. Now, it’s the turn of marketers.”