Kotler exposed industry fears

We read with interest Hamish Pringle’s response to Philip Kotler’s comments about the effectiveness of TV advertising.

Kotler enjoys legendary status within the US marketing community. Many US advertisers who pay the media costs share his opinion about “TV ads being wasted”. His opinion is not shared by the US agen

cies that make their living creating the ads and crafting the media buys.

Pringle’s organisation, the IPA, is the trade body and professional institute for, among others, leading UK advertising agencies, so we were not surprised to hear him defend TV advertising. But we were disappointed at his complete dismissal of Kotler as “wrong”, especially when so many of the clients that pay the bills of his membership agree with Kotler’s views.

Our company, vSente, is a US/UK campaigning group, and we believe one of the primary reasons why so many TV ads fail is their reliance on 17th century attrition strategy. We have published a paper titled “Critical vulnerabilities found in traditional advertising, marketing and branding initiatives”. It describes the primary weaknesses or critical vulnerabilities found in most marketing organisations today. Your readers may find this paper of interest.

Mike Smock

vSente San Francisco

and David Burdon

vSente Europe