How can marketing communications change the world for the better?

That's what The Idea Cooperative
blog is all about.

I’m your host, Tom Kavanaugh and, to be honest, I’ve been borderline obsessed with this issue since I took my first advertising job somewhere back in the Reagan era.

So, while I certainly won’t claim to have all the answers, I promise to present no shortage of ideas and insights.

On these pages I’ll be examining the cultural and societal effects of advertising from inside the business – a perspective of honest self-reflection that seems sorely lacking in the marketing industry these days.

I’ll be considering a wide range of trends, from the exploding pervasion of social media to the daunting decline of the daily newspaper. I’ll expose dangerous deceptions where I find them and celebrate shining examples of brands that truly are embracing the greater good. Essentially everything and anything that helps further the cause of making marketing communications more effective and, simultaneously, more responsible.

So, if you consider yourself a marketing moralist, amateur advertising cultural anthropologist, are just curious, or genuinely interested in how the marketing industry can contribute to society’s greater good, please, join the discussion. Maybe we really can start a movement.