In this Sydney Morning Herald article, Clemenger's Mr Morgan complained about how an ABC TV series The Gruen Transfer had demeaned and trivialised the advertising industry.
Maybe the ad industry felt threatened by the thousands of reader-created mashup ads on the series' website. Or perhaps by the sheer amount of ordinary people who jumped at this opportunity to serve some back at the ad companies bothered them.
None of the mash-up ads were anywhere near the slickness (slipperiness?) of professionally produced advertising. The TV series is a send-up of the ad industry just like others such as the BBC's Absolute Power.
So why the feeling of being demeaned and trivialised? Is it because a lot of the highly visible output of ad agencies is in itself demeaning and trivialising? Is it the sudden uncomfortable realisation that more people see through more of the spin than what they have come to believe?
I sense a lot of projection and insecurities here on the part of the ad agencies. Poor diddums. It can be hard when the world holds up a reflection of ourselves that we have been denying. Time for a revolution perhaps?
