Rumours of advertising's death 'vastly exaggerated'

"Oxford Univer"Oxford University's new professor of marketing has rubbished claims that product placement and advertiser-created entertainment programmes are the future of advertising"

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Dr Douglas Holt said the "marketing revolution" promised by so-called branded content, such as mobile phone company Orange producing the music show Orange Playlist on ITV1, would falter because it failed to create successful brands that gripped the public's imagination.

"The idea that advertising is dead - that's all pretty much crap," said Dr Holt, whose appointment was announced today.

Dr Holt, poached from Harvard Business School to be the L'Oreal chair of marketing at Oxford University's Said Business School, criticised business leaders who championed branded content such as Steven Heyer, who resigned from Coca-Cola in June, Larry Light, the global chief marketing office at McDonald's, and Niall FitzGerald, the former chairman of Unilever.

"They are all making these speeches about how the world is moving to this dramatic new area without any proof that this area works," he said.

The academic said brands became icons by telling stories that solved cultural contradictions and fitted the national mood and that despite vast changes to the media, the fundamental principles of creating iconic brands that struck a chord in the public imagination had not changed.

"There's not a lot of difference to how Marlboro was built in the US in the 1960s to how a great brand is built today, the fundamental principles are the same," he said.

"The 30-second advertisement on TV may well die but in five to 10 years from now sponsored film will be the dominant way to build iconic brands."