Today the London Business School reports marketers 'must focus on consumers looking for bargains in a new era of austerity'. For agencies, austerity is truly biting hard. Waves of redundancies have generated a miserable atmosphere, and inevitably damaged morale. And lots of very good people gone. It's not just been a case of 'dead wood'.

In these straitened times, any overt displays of opulent spending or lavish entertaining are rightly frowned upon as being out of tune with the times. This is Gordon Brown's Britain.

Except for one very visible case. In June, agency heads will be jetting off for a week of thinly disguised hedonism in the Cannes sun. I'm sorry, but it all feels very nineties, if not eighties, to me and entirely inappropriate for 2009.

Forget about the awards themselves, let's assume all the Direct winners will be very worthy and fine examples of creative innovation, even if hardly any (as was the case last year) are from the UK. And I'm sure the presentations will be insightful and well attended.

No, think of the image being projected by all those jolly important people sipping cocktails outside the Carlton and cracking open the Dom Perignon aboard a private yacht, while back home their staff await the dreaded call from HR. Think what hay the Sun or Mail would make of it. Then think of the employees who have lost their jobs to pay for those c.£2,000 tickets (plus flights and accommodation). I can tell you what those employees will be thinking about it.

I wonder how much 'insight into austerity' people will find on the beach at Cannes?