Richard Warren has just remarked that ad agencies should be doing far more than making advertising for their clients if they are to prosper. I entirely agree.
But Chinese history suggests that other people may get there first.
Everyone knows how the Chinese invented gunpowder. But thought it was a spendid way of producing fireworks.
We currently hold a special formula for business ideas: but we use it to make nice content.
Like the Chinese, are we just too preoccupied with sound and vision - loud noises and pretty colours - to realise that ideas can do more than gain attention: they can change the shape of things?
Look at your clients' budgets. How much of this money is spent on communicating things - on media costs? How much is spent on doing things - or creating something - a service, a new level of World of Warcraft, putting wifi on trains, whatever? How has this changed since 1994? Not at all? My point exactly.
