Point of View: Waking the dead

Many of today's practitioners believe the narrower focus and top-down nature of pre-1990s advertising makes it irrelevant in a digital, interactive, bottom-up world.

Waking the dead

Jon Steel

Last year, I visited Nottingham University to make a presentation on WPP's Marketing Fellowship programme. As a graduate of Nottingham myself, I planned to open with a comment about providing living proof that graduates of that university are, contrary to popular belief, employable. But as I watched the students file into the room, I was struck by the realisation that I received my degree at least two years before any of the people before me were born.

Yes, I'm getting old. In meetings, my younger colleagues often refer to 'older people', by which they apparently...

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