What do you think about Fast Company's "The future of advertising?"

The most recent issue of Fast Company magazine is on the street. We were excited to see Danielle Sack's piece titled, "The Future of Advertising." Good fodder here for those of you beginning to think about the 2011 edition of CATFOA.

A couple of comments stick out for us. How about you?

"'The irony is that while there have never been more ways to reach consumers, it's never been harder to connect with consumers,' explains (Brad) Jakeman, chief creative officer at Activision. The death of mass marketing means the end of lazy marketing. At agencies, the new norm is doing exponentially complex work. Think of the 200 Old Spice YouTube videos whipped up by Wieden+Kennedy in 48 hours. 'Creating more work for less money is the big paradox,' says Matt Howell, president of the Boston agency Modernista."

Howell's quote is likely the most telling. It's noble to draft the new treatise and brave the edge, but ultimately people expect a fair paycheck for the effort. As Seth Godin stated recently, the challenge of the Internet is "either you do something I can't do myself (or get from someone else), or I pay you less than you'd like."

"At a time of shrinking budgets, chief marketing officers don't know where to turn. They have little confidence that old-world agencies know how to navigate the chaos, and they don't know which newcomers to trust.

With clients in a tailspin, the very role of agencies is in question.

Squeezed by clients, agencies are also beset by a host of new competitors attacking from every direction."

Sounds like fun! The quotes in Fast Company from Hyper Island convey these sentiments with greater emotion. We are in an era graced with great change and even greater creativity—but at a cost to old ways, comfortable assumptions and lazy habits. As the esteemed writer Robert Grudin put it back in 1991, “Creativity is dangerous. We can not open ourselves to new insights without endangering the security of our prior assumptions. We can not propose new ideas without risking disapproval and rejection.”

Great to see our friend and previous CATFOA presenter Edward Boches quoted heavily as well!