Three viewpoints on advertising in 2007

The BusinessWeek Web site has been running a cool series summarizing the year in advertising from several geographic perspectives. For the fun of it, I'll run the most depressing sound bites from each of the series' three authors (so far, maybe there will be more). Waterfall, the digital guy, is the most hopeful. Wonder why?

From Johnny Vulkan, Anomaly, New York: "This year hasn't been a wonderful one for advertising professionals—unless your business is advertising conferences entitled 'The Future of Marketing'—but 2007 will prove to have been a remarkable year for the marketing profession in general."

From Simon Waterfall, Poke, London: "Another thing I hope we've learned from this year is that advertisers need to learn a lot more about their audience. And they need to start thinking a little more smartly about the new forms of media that have been dominating the headlines. Everyone wants a piece, but do they really need it?"

From Jonathan Kneebone, Glue Society, Sydney: "At the judging of various advertising events this year—from Clio to D&AD, from AWARD to Young Guns and AdFest—it became clear that 2007 was the year no one really knew what to do next—particularly the multinational agencies."

Each author also has a slide show of what they found interesting this year. I don't believe any of them mentioned Adverganza. And BTW, are these peoples names for real, or what?