• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, June 7, 2018

It’s ironic that in “Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else),” Ken Auletta tries to document how advertising has changed — and before his book even hit the shelves, the landscape had shifted again, enough to render the remarks made by Martin Sorrell (whom Auletta leans on heavily) out of date.

Some in the industry have complained that the book is more of an attack on the ad business than it should be, failing to point out the positive things agencies accomplish.  But deep down inside, these same folks know it's the flaming pileup that makes the news -- and not the safe passage of 25,000 cars up I-95 in the past hour.

Still, I get it — it’s hard to be in a business that most consumers think is evil at heart, along with being under astronomical pressure to adapt to the new world of data-based advertising and digital channels.

It’s interesting that Auletta's bio on The New Yorker website buries the fact that earlier in his career he was a journalist. Which is only an issue if you think that he might have done a less-than-thorough job of reporting. If you think he is rather, "an author," I suppose his reportorial chops matter less — and you have a nice read at the beach.

Like many of you, I am familiar with some of the people and the stories Auletta recounts in The Book, and I think he was "snookered" from time to time, to put it kindly. Some of his sources are friends of mine, so I had some perspective on The Book long before it appeared in print. For example, it's a little disconcerting to read, as Stuart Elliott said in his New York Times review, exactly "how much Sorrell figures in ‘Frenemies.’”

Others provide Auletta  a version of history that simply doesn't square with the facts.  There’s a considerable amount of grandstanding by some of his sources, presenting themselves as conquerors of the world, when in fact others deserve far more credit. Whether this was simply pathological or carefully planned PR is up to readers to decide.

But such selective inclusion of that revisionist history makes one question the credibility of other information in the book — especially if you are not part of the ad industry and are taking Auletta at face value.

The book purports to be nonfiction. It would be nice if it really were.