Hey Mo… water is wet too! (and other obvious statements)

Maurice Levy… God love the daft “cheese-eating surrender monkey” as he decided to share his “special insights & observations” with us all yesterday at the International Advertising Association (IAA) conference in DC.

Now I have already mentioned some of the “heavy insights” some of the pinheads at the conference have shared in the past 24 hours — like they are re-inventing the wheel or something — but our man Mo kicks it up a notch.

His master stroke to share with all:

The current advertising model is broken — mainly due to the emergence of digital.

Jesus…that is deep thought stuff there Mo — who thought companies like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft would have a vested interest in a lot of the same stuff that Publicis works on. You mean that MSFT buying aQuantive could signal a challenge to the current advertising model? I’m blown away by the revelation.

My favorite part of the Brand Republic article in which I read this is the last bit:

“Levy alluded to this yesterday, saying that advertising agencies needed to develop a deeper understanding of technology, as audiences spend more time with video games, cell phones and other new media.”

In other words, our man Mo is saying that people aren’t watching TV (and :30 spots), listening to the radio or buying newspapers & magazines like they used to — so you’ll need to figure out how to reach the audience in new ways.

With statements like the quote above, no longer are we mystified by the hold that David Kenny has over Mo — I’m assuming Dave comes over to program Mo’s VCR clock for him too. (I’m assuming Mo hasn’t been alerted to DVD technology yet — gotta save some stuff in the tank to pull out for the next conference.)