All these things have pleasingly increased the status of marketing people while simultaneously adding to their burden Marketing is increasingly regarded as that which it is not a universal panacea With approximately half of most marketing budgets being spent on advertising theres some truth in saying that the buck then stops with the adpeople It is certainly true that if the 80s was the decade in which advertising never had it so good the start of the 90s saw the industry enduring its worst downturn for a generation This was of course partly a direct consequence of the economic climate at the time