• Ad Age, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:39 AM

I initially missed this Ad Age piece by Nat Ives and Rich Thomaselli ("yeah, yeah, covered this; covered that"), as well as an accompanying editorial calling for the ad industry to protect its interests, but was alerted to it by a ringing endorsement by Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Internet Advertising Bureau, on his Facebook page.

It just so happens that Rothenberg is the first industry official quoted in the story, and perhaps he says it all: "Advertising is the makeup on the public face of capitalism, for better or for worse, so any tension that people feel about capitalism comes right down to their feelings about advertising. If what happens in business offends them, then advertising gets blamed."

And getting blamed, it certainly is, as this roundup of diverse, organized assaults on marketing as usual lays out in detail. The problem, says 4A's president-CEO Nancy Hill, is that nobody in Washington is connecting all the stories into one big threat. Age includes a sidebar of actions to take and a commenter adds links to relevant organizations.

Read the whole story at Ad Age »