These are the reasons why one in every five advertisements produced in South Africa not only doesn't work but actually damages the very brand it's supposed to be promoting.
One of the biggest dangers to advertising the world over right now is over-zealous regulation against ads that are presumed to offend public sensitivity.
In places like Britain, the US and particularly South Africa, advertising regulatory bodies are reacting with sometimes undue haste to pander to the whims of a tiny minority who have nothing better to do that appoint themselves guardians of public morality.
It is this same minority that has bitched and moaned about fast foods being bad for public health.
But for a while now, the fast food people in the USA have realised that the majority of the population don't give too much of a hoot about the dangers of over-indulging in junk food and have not only dumped their health food items because no-one was buying them, but have now actually brought back fatty fast foods because that's what the American public is demanding.
There is no doubt that the creative and marketing quality of South African television advertising just isn't what it used to be. The ad industry is not pulling nearly the number of international accolades of past decades and there was a time that you could raise the subject of TV ads at a dinner party and be sure of at least an hour of animated discourse on everyone's favourite ads.
Nowadays, the immediate reaction of guests is to look vague as they desperately try and remember some ad they have seen on TV and then carrying on animated conversations about crime and boorish Australian cricketers.
A lot of people tend to blame this decline of great TV advertising on the brain drain of creatives from South Africa but I disagree. South African creatives are world class and as good as ever.
Our problem is ad agency management that doesn't have the balls to stand up to clients. If any brain drain is affecting advertising, it is the flight of top-class brand managers from this country. Advertising intelligence at brand management level is on average pretty dismal to say the least. And to top all of this, the ASA is making it very difficult for anyone to push any sort of envelopes or stand out from the crowd for fear of upsetting some old tannie in Bredasdorp.
Now, with international research showing fewer and fewer viewers watching commercial breaks (72% in Europe and 84% in the USA) there is a danger that TV advertising - the Cinderella of the ad world - will simply become as boring as the rapidly diminishing classified sections of newspapers.
Now, the ad industry has for a number of years been threatening to actually do something about improving ad quality and selling itself to both business and the public as important contributors to the economy. But, so far it has just been talk and more talk.
Perhaps it is time for the TV channels to get involved. After all, they cannot simply sit back and watch their lifeblood ebbing away.
And because none of them have the guts to stand up against the ASA, another way they can improve ad quality is to insist that all TV commercials carry the ad agency's name for at least a few seconds at the end.
A lot of countries allow, and indeed insist on this. And up until now the only reason I can see that it was not allowed here was because the TV channels probably quite rightly felt that production houses and ad agencies were being paid quite sufficiently if not excessively to produce ads and had no reason to need free publicity on air.
But, it is not about free publicity. It is now all about ensuring consistent quality.
If TV channels insist that all ads carry the ad agency and maybe even production house name, you can be sure that a lot of ad agencies and production houses would be a lot more forceful with their clients in terms of fighting against having the impact of ads diminished by clients not willing to listen to reason.
