The trade news is full of it. The “it” being the continuing defection of marketeers from print to digital. For instance?

According to Advertising Age, last week’s Association of National Advertisers meetup had as one highlight – or lowlight, depending – ConocoPhillips’ brand manager complaining about the lack of solutions for advertisers need to reach their market.

Formerly with LA’s Dailey & Associates (who also handle media for Honda) the company brought their account in-house in 2005. Since then they’ve gone from spending about $20 million in measured media to $18.7 million in 2006 to $3.6 million for the first half of this year. Looks like a trend.

But they’re not happy with a continuing lack of awareness by their market. And they don’t have a solution, either, other than to call out agencies in general for not solving their, and others, problem with communications.

All of which indicates a time that’s either quickly approaching or already on us requiring open minds and clever thinking when it comes to message creation and dissemination. Please stay tuned.