A recession is not looming, it is here.(Brief Article)

It's official. It's a recession. With so many commentators --including the IPA with its glossy Bellwether Report--still dancing round their handbags about what constitutes a recession and whether what we're experiencing really is one, it's quite refreshing to hear Sir Martin Sorrell being unequivocal in this week's feature on page 22.

Sorrell's view is that the classic definition of a recession as two quarters of negative GDP growth is irrelevant and archaic. Today, he says, recession is better defined as a sharp deceleration in the rates of growth.

On this basis, then, few would argue that recession is a more fitting and appropriate term than, say, slowdown or downturn -- the words favoured by the rather more nervous observers. Ask any media owner about a sharp deceleration in the rates of growth and, for once, the answer will be a straight one. No matter that comparisons with last year's once-in-a-lifetime, dotcom-inflated boom give a distinctly distorted picture, the industry is not simply settling back into the 1999 growth curve.

And, while there may have been a danger of talking ourselves into a recession a few months back, now there's an inevitability about it and it's time to publicly acknowledge the reality. All too often recently the advertising industry has been ...