Marketing executives are so afraid to appear out-of-touch that it has become “career-threatening” to suggest they would rather use television “or God forbid, print” rather than social media for advertising campaigns, according to outspoken British Professor Mark Ritson.

Mr Ritson, who is Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School, will argue in a series of lectures to the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA), that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are massively over-rated by marketers, who are rejecting traditional media at their peril.

In an interview with The Australian Financial Review he pointed to Nielsen data that shows 63 per cent of people trust advertising formats on TV, and 60 per cent trust print ad formats, but only 46 per cent trust ads served on social networks.

“If any marketer comes to me with a social media marketing budget I know they are an idiot, and poorly trained,” Professor Ritson said.