Close-Up: Live Issue - Is the IPA focusing on the right issues?

'Promoting the value of advertising in the boardroom' is central to its new agenda.

At this moment in time, it seems as if the advertising industry has never been more besieged.

Adland's power, and its ability to communicate its clients' messages, is being eroded from all sides, as the Government, industry bodies and pressure groups call for restrictions on a wide range of advertising.

However, despite a sense of frustration from some quarters that the industry often does 'a good impression of a sitting duck', there are ways of fighting back.

So said M&C Saatchi's European president, Moray MacLennan, last week MacLennan, who is the IPA president for the next two years, made the comment as part of his inaugural lecture.

But it was with some surprise that rather than focus much of his agenda at the heart of these problems, he left it as a mere side note in a rallying call that centred primarily on 'promoting the value of advertising in the boardroom' and its effectiveness to financial directors.

Richard Tolley, Dairy Crest's marketing director, says: 'It was surprising, but it was the right thing to do. It's what a lot of us have been waiting for.' Tolley adds that MacLennan's pledge to back the Advertising Association as the single voice addressing the practice's loss of freedom is 'an intelligent move'.