Nancy Hill celebrated her first anniversary as CEO of the 4As (the new name of the recently rebranded American Association of Advertising Agencies) by giving a speech that demonstrates she has trouble making sense of opinion polls and statistics. Not a very good showing for someone who wants to lead the advertising industry into an era when measurement of everything is fundamental.

Promising accessibility to industry critics, Hill nevertheless chided “the incessantly negative adverbloggers out there.” In an oblique reference to the bright and always scatological George Parker, author of the blog Adscam, she added, “I challenge the central premise of at least one bogging provocateur’s claim that…the 4A’s Leadership Conference is…simply an expensive wank-fest.”

Defending her industry, Hill took the odd approach of citing an April 15 Harris poll that found, in Hill’s words, “66% of consumers said advertising agencies have at least some responsibility for the current economic crisis that we’re in because we (advertising professionals) caused people to buy things they couldn’t afford.”

Hill asked rhetorically, “Imagine that? Advertising agencies causing the crippling of the economy because we stimulate consumer desire and consumer demand. Who says advertising doesn’t work?”

For a moment, I was transported back to the heady days of Mad Men. To the 1957 publication of Vance Packard’s ominous book The Hidden Persuaders, which maintained that ad men were omnipotent characters who manipulated people into buying what they didn’t want. Then I looked up the Harris survey that Hill had cited and it snapped me back to reality. It appears that no one really believes advertising has any power anymore. And if they do, Ms. Hill certainly hasn't demonstrated it. (In polls investigating the relative confidence placed in various American institutions, advertising doesn't even figure.)

First, ad agencies were far from alone in taking blame for the economic debacle. In fact, 59% of the people asked said the print media deserved some blame, 56% liked online news as a culprit, 55% blamed talk shows and fully 46% felt their “friends and family” were implicated. Is it possible that Bernie Madoff has that many friends?

The Harris poll didn’t even offer people the choice of blaming the most culpable people and institutions, such as lax regulators, avaricious mortgage lenders, investment bankers or AIG. (An ABC-Washington Post poll found that banks got at least some blame from 95% of the people and big business was tagged by 91%—figures that tend to put the ad business in the friends-and-family category of culpability.)

Harris actually acknowledged the limited value of its own survey, saying, “Americans are angry and upset about the state of the economy and need someone or some group to blame.” Ad agencies, Harris said, “are normally under the radar screen. Now, thanks to television shows like Mad Men and Trust Me, they are slightly more visible and they are an easy scapegoat.”

The next time Ms. Hill wants to prove that advertising works, she’d better come up with a better set of statistics.

 Photo of Nancy Hill by Lee White courtesy of 4A's