I maintain that this is because TDM are totally lacking an understanding as to the true meaning of the word "communication".

Together with a complete disregard for the need for "Trust". TDM needs to be concerned - very concerned - because trust based relationships is the only way to go and failure to recognise this fact will results in the collapse of their empires.

Trust is one of the ways to solve many of the problems facing corporations to day. They must rediscover just how important it is to listen to customers. Listening to their customers is very good for building trust and it is true to say that failure to listen can be catastrophic.

A little story occurring right now is worth mentioning here because I think that it demonstrates just how negatively TDM thinks. They don't think of their customer as anything other than abstract numbers within a marketing plan, dehumanised and depersonalised.

The continuing stalemate between BSkyB and Virgin Media is starting to annoy major advertisers. Advertisers are angry and, as a result will be asking for their money back.

A spokesperson for the Advertising Industry said: "It would be in our interests for this to be resolved and for commercial audiences to be as big as possible...but I think advertisers will be compensated for any loss".

No mention of the poor old viewer except in that TDManagement terminology "...and for commercial audiences..." I wonder will the poor old customer obtain any compensation, perhaps even the word "sorry"...don't hold your breath!

The whole sordid episode is a dreadful example of TDM at its worse! Within the whole article there was not one interview with the long suffering viewers to hear their opinions. Certainly there was no expression of regret from TDM as to the inconvenience caused to viewers.

Is it any wonder that broadcast media is suffering from declining viewers?

Is it any wonder that they are flocking to the interactive offerings of the internet?

So why does Top-Down-Management persist in behaving in such a damaging manner?

Why doesn't TDM change its behaviour in the face of overwhelming evidence that what they are doing is causing immeasurable harm to their respective businesses - and therefore sales?

Is it because of the following?

1. They believed in advertising's enormous power and the almost inevitable effectiveness of image advertising as mass advertising followed mass manufacturing in the 50s' and ‘60s. Mass manufacturing led to one-size-fits-all products.

2. But they don't know that advertising's declining effectiveness is due, if it ever existed at all at the level they imagined, in part, to an earlier perception that over-estimated advertising's power.

3. How much can an ad lacking information really accomplish? Brand image is no longer the be-all and end-all of marketing.

4. One of the major sources of nearly all commercial information is - or should be - advertising. Here's the problem: Image advertising doesn't give us the information needed to buy knowledge-driven products. Since it doesn't help us, we have long since acquired the habit of tuning it out.

This massive belief in the power of advertising has let to the preparation of marketing plans that depersonalised and dehumanised the process of communication. Worse still, these plans were out of date before they were completed! However their handmaidens, the Media, created and maintained the myth that Advertising was all powerful, they did so because it suited their purpose.

And that is why we firmly believe that the sooner we accept the process of interactive communication, in existing media, the better off we will all be. It is literally a win-win-win situation of all concerned plus the added bonus of ridding ourselves of Top-Down-Management!