Has advertising lost the plot?

This is going to sound a bit grumpy but fuck it, here goes. We lost a big pitch recently. We were told our creative work was “miles ahead” of the other agency’s. But the other agency promised the client they’d get the leads they wanted “through search engine optimisation and programmatic science”. The client chose to believe them.
It’s further evidence that a lot of marketers today don’t know the difference between marketing strategies, marketing c