Mills on ... Wall Street Journal US.(critique of Wall Street Journal advertising copy)(Brief Article)

Those of you with an economics background will know that the definition of a recession is when there are two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

Actually, I know a much better definition of a recession. It's when the ad industry and media owners -- individually or together -- start producing heavy surveys, usually with an academic bias, to prove that, gosh, advertising really does work and that advertising in a downturn works even better. So it was no surprise to me at the beginning of the year that the IPA produced just such a work.

Forgive me if I sound cynical. I don't mean to. Like all of us in this business, I passionately believe in the efficacy of advertising. Like all of us, I passionately believe that an advertising recession offers the committed, long-term advertiser an excellent opportunity to steal market share from those less committed or those whose budgets may be "disappeared" at the first sign of hard times.

It's just that, having started at Campaign in 1991 -- the day after the Gulf War broke out, to be exact -- I've seen this before. What does make me cynical, however, is when you see ad agencies and media owners banging on about the importance of advertising, yet they signally fail to do it themselves.

So I take my hat off to the Wall Street Journal, which is currently running a series of ads in Advertising Age addressing exactly this issue. "Advertising During Challenging Times -- number 1 in a series" the little tagline at the top of the page says, a reminder that it at least understands the importance of putting its money where its mouth is.

Normally, the ads in the US trade press leave me cold. They seem to exemplify all the things that are bad about American advertising, and none of the good.

This one caught my eye. Partly it was the image -- a sepia-tinted pig with wings -- and the rather droll line underneath: "Raising brand awareness without advertising and other improbabilities." Then followed some long (well, longish) copy.