Demolishing the "God complex" in ad industry is strategy of new Marketing editor

The new editor of Marketing magazine, Tom Gierasimczuk, has put out a heckuva bow wake with his interview with the Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt this morning. He was brought into the traditional publication covering the advertising and media industries to shake things up. And this apparently includes getting himself, and the magazine, talked about in fairly graphic terms.

When he interviewed for the job, he says Rogers executives were clear in their expectations: “Piss people off, get them talking, be indispensable. No matter what they think of you, they’re gonna grab you [the magazine].” He pauses, chuckles, and references another Rogers publication: “It’s essentially what Maclean’s is doing.”

The Globe story points out that, in a world in which media and advertising is in turmoil, Marketing had become somewhat staid, what Houpt described as a "blandly supportive house-organ approach". 

Mr. Gierasimczuk says he’d like Marketing to be a Rolling Stone for this time and place. “It’s a potential journal to document the paranoia of an industry, and an industry’s uncertainty.”
“You gotta take your head out of the sand,” he adds. “What’s happening in the industry, it is humbling, and hopefully their sort of God complex is crumbling a little bit. It needs to.”

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