Our Manifesto

The advertising industry is by common consent a less attractive place to be these days. It has become a place where machines have replaced people, jobs have become soul-less, and data is treated as royalty. And this before AI really gets into its stride.

The advertising itself has deteriorated. Much present-day advertising is simply ineffective; the majority is inefficient and wasteful. Much of it is unaccountable, untrackable, unmeasurable or simply not measured at all.

It’s easy to list the negatives, but doing so really doesn’t get us very far.

Our aim with Who Cares? is to focus on solutions, on how to improve the industry for everyone involved.

With that in mind, here’s what we care about, and what we aim for:

We want the industry to deliver great advertising that:

• Is a driver of success for business and causes

• Informs and engages its audiences

• Treats people with respect (privacy, data, time, attention)

• Is well-targeted and well measured

• Helps fund great media content and high standards in journalism

• Is well-curated and signposted

• Is sustainable economically and environmentally

• Is efficient, minimizes wastage and doesn’t fund crime

Great advertising comes from a healthy, confident industry. We want to (re)build an industry that:

• Provides employment with enjoyment for many thousands of people

• Creates a positive symbiosis between advertising and the media in which it appears

• Acts responsibly towards the public

• Values craft skills in all disciplines

• Attracts, retains and rewards people of all types

• Has business models that are well-balanced

• Has reward structures that incentivize effectiveness

Progress to Date

On September 12th we launched Advertising: Who Cares? at a half-day event in London.

Central to this were presentations on five key topics. These presentations summarised several months’ worth of work by teams of supporters joining workstream topics of particular interest and relevance to them. Each workstream had an assigned leader.

The workstreams and leaders were:

• Business Models (led by Michael Farmer, Author and Consultant)

• Trading Transparency and Trust (Jenny Biggam, Owner, the7stars)

• Measurement and Accountability (Denise Turner, CEO, Route Research)

• Recruitment and Well-Being (Crispin Reed, Founder, Skyscraper Consulting)

• Brands and Journalism (Ruben Schreurs, CSO, Ebiquity)

We also had presentations on:

• The Craft of Creativity (Lucy Jameson, Founder, Uncommon Creative Studio)

• Who Cares Wins, a Case Study (Rachel Kerrone, CMO, Starling Bank, Pippa Glucklich, CEO Electric Glue and Jessica Lovell, CSO, Wonderhood Studios)

• The Next Creative Revolution (David Wheldon, President Emeritus, World Federation of Advertising and Sir John Hegarty, Creative Founder, BBH London)

All of these presentations slide presentations and videos are available here.

What’s Next?

We want to gather the best thinking from all corners of the advertising world. We know there are many smart people doing excellent work, but much of it stays stubbornly within the silo where it was conceived.

We want to search out the best, organise it and make it available to everyone to use as they see fit. We think exposing the arguments and talking about the issues is essential if we're to improve.

Pulling together the best thinking is only the start, but it is very necessary. Once we know what 'good' looks like we can move on to putting the best thinking to use across the industry.

It's easy to imagine best practice guides, the involvement of academia in establishing courses that attract the best and the brightest to our industry, the setting up of contracts designed to reward our contribution to business success, the simplification of the supply chain to reduce waste and drive out unnecessary costs, and so on.

We have groups of supporters from around the world working together to focus on the following critical areas of concern:

Workstreams

In 2024 we learned that setting up workstreams led by senior experts in their fields and 'staffed' by experts prepared to volunteer their time and expertise works well.

In 2025 we are expanding the workstreams, subdividing a couple of them, and are adding a horizontal workstream designed to address the broad topic of relationships, which by definition involves all topic-areas.

We have approached top people to lead and are very grateful to all of those who have agreed. We will update this list as necessary.

• Business models | Michael Farmer, Consultant and Author

• Commercial Creativity | Caroline Marshall, Owner, Caroline Marshall and Partners

• Communications Planning | Sally Weavers, Founder, Craft Media

• Trading, Transparency and Trust | Jenny Biggam, Owner, the7stars

• Measurement and Accountability | Denise Turner, CEO, Route Research

  • Audience Measurement | Karen Nelson-Field, Founder, Amplified Intelligence

  • Maximising Ad Impact | TBD

  • Analytics and Modelling | Sameer Modha, Measurement Innovation Controller, ITV

• Adtech and Data | Alessandro de Zanche, Consultant

  • Advertising and Privacy | Jamie Barnard, CEO, Compliant

• Recruitment and Well-Being | Crispin Reed, Founder, Skyscraper Consulting 

• Funding High Quality Media | Pam Vick, Founder, Caspia Consultancy

• Relationships and Collaboration | Derek Morris, Chairman and Change Consultant - supported by Simon Rhind-Tutt, Founder, Relationship Audits

Each assigned leader has been tasked with reporting back to the collective on strategies to individually and collectively address adland’s issues head on.