"Advertising Agencies used to be in the business of finding and articulating difference. We used to help our Clients establish strong, compelling, differentiated truths. Don’t just ‘hold a mirror up to the consumer’, we said. Consumers don’t want their worldview mirrored and reinforced; they want to be challenged, stimulated, inspired. But over the last ten years Marketing has fallen victim to formularisation and commoditisation. ’Best demonstrated practice’ has been distilled, codified, taught and tested. The researchers have taken over the asylum. The quest for difference has been replaced by the quest for inoffensiveness. Holding a mirror up to the consumer is no longer anathema; it is the recognised norm, standard practice. Have you ever wondered why the beer and car ads you used to love now look so similar, so sane, so sensible? Well the Agencies and Marketeers that produce them have been looking for the same answers, in the same way, in the same places."