The Advertising Agencies and the ad community got together earlier this evening to induct its first four ‘Hall of Famers’; Clive Belgrave, John Corbin, Katherine Inglefield and David Martin. These people cut the track so that those of us in the field today could run.
In hearing their stories told through short videos, a common thread was their pioneering spirit, their passion for the ad world and their love for country. They were not only interested in making theirs and their clients’ cash register ring. But they also wanted to make a difference in the ad world and the wider community.
That for me is their legacy. I think we have gotten smarter as agencies but at the same time less caring about issues of ethics, standards and accountability. We have also, too many of us, happily joined the race where Agency billings is king as we too “must eat a food”.
If we can find our way back to the track that this one woman and three men cut for us, we would be doing ourselves a lot of good. Steps in that direction are being made by the current executive of the AAATT; Ronald Murray, Lorraine Rostant, Fernan DeGannes and Giselle Donawa who sacrifice their valuable time, when they could be making money, to instead make a difference.
As an industry we’ve lost our way quite a bit. Our Hall of Fame is now a tangible reminder of the responsibility we bear to get us back on track and keep us there. Our industry needs to be more accountable and build and earn credibility for our value added strategic role. And we need to stick together. We cannot control what others do, like some of the media undermining the costly structure we put in place to serve them by going directly to clients to be their creative and media departments. But we can control what we do, including choosing to be brand builders instead of Shutterstock shufflers and discounters.
If we don’t change, the Hall might have very few occupants.
