Should we be ripping up our business models, slaughtering our sacred cows, and shredding our assumptions?  For there has been an inexorable shift of power from , from ad agencies to consumers.

 In the good old days, advertising was based upon invasion, a strategy ideal for a passive medium like television c 1985. Advertisers had a captive audience to whom it was easy to 'push' the message, like pushing a bowl of soup across a table. This model said: open wide, here comes the train, as it were. But does it work anymore? Today  many consumers reach out and 'pull' media towards them as if they were reaching fro a glass.

  So the audience as conceived by the 'push' model does seems to be something of an anachronism. People can be avoid traditional advertising if they are so minded, thanks to the likes of Tivo and the Internet. If they are hungry, they eat. If not, they don't. But they are always hungry for entertainment,

 It's well-nigh impossible to talk to people en masse in 2009, even though T.v. does remain a mass medium. Now the audience is a will-o-the-wisp, sometimes here, sometimes there; and even if one knows where it is, it cannot be easily got at.

 But whatever the future holds, one thing is for sure: we will still need to connect with people  such that they change their behaviour. And increasingly the way to do this is to hide ads in entertainment Trojan-horse fashion. The age of engagement is upon us. As it becomes ever easier to ignore traditional advertising, it is vital that we find ever more creative ways to grab people's attention.