Active engagement v a right riveting read

Advertising Age's latest research on where media planners expect to be spending their clients' $$ makes surprising reading.

I suppose the reassuring thing is that more money is going into digital, but what I can't quite work out how print was ranked as "more engaging" than online, which was ranked lowest for engagement, but highest for results.




Something seems ever so slightly wrong somewhere - unless I'm missing a trick. It can't just be me who thinks that online could (should?) score highest in engagement, and, with the right measurement tools, should also score highest for results. Or can it? Watch this space and mark my words. Or something.

I'm convinced that this is all pointing in one direction, as my colleagues in 77, and Amelia Torode have also hinted at recently. Agencies in the next period of digital communications growth will succeed when they can generate effective engagement and interaction on a much smaller budget than has traditionally been spent on buying space. And they'll have to prove that what they are doing is benefiting their client's business objectives - on the bottom line.

Adbusters of the world unite

There are many reasons why I've liked adbusters ever since I came across them, but I think their latest email extolling the virtues of Slow Down week says it all.

Using a hybrid car for your two-hour commute to work, or eating organic food during your 20-minute lunch break isn't enough. In order to negotiate the ecological problems facing our planet, we need to slow down our way of life. The frenetic pace of the modern world is a hindrance to the kind of deep cultural change we need to ensure a healthy future. Slow Down Week is a great opportunity to take it easy and adopt a new perspective.

On the one hand they're so right. But on the other, they've got their heads so far up their arses that it's sometimes hard to take them seriously. Or maybe I'm just getting bitter as I get older...