"Think Of Me As Evil: Opening the ethical debates in advertising"

This report was recommended to me by Frank Krikhaar, Corporate Responsibility Manager at Aegis PLC. It can be downloaded for free here. Now you've got it, here's what I made of it...

It starts on an unpromising note, with a list of recommendations from just about anyone except representatives from the advertising industry. However the actual report starts on a very reasonable note, suggesting "it is incumbent on the advertising industry to demonstrate that the cultural impacts of advertising are benign (p11)", which seems fair.

It goes on to make the point that most criticism of advertising has concentrated on specific products rather than the impact of advertising as a whole. They conclude that "modern advertising's impact from on British culture is likely to be detrimental to our wellbeing... the balance of evidence points clearly in this direction (p14)". And this is where we hit the underlying contradiction.

You can't simultaenously claim that not enough study has been made into the impact of advertising, then draw confident conclusions from these apparently insufficient reports. Note the weasel words in the last quotation - "is likely to", "balance of evidence points" - these caveats pervade the entire document. "It seems", "this may", "whilst the evidence is not conclusive", "can be theorised to". It's not solid stuff.

That said, the strongest part is probably section 2, which quotes convincing academic studies that advertising does not simply redistribute consumption between brands, but increases the market. But this raises the second objection, which is that of realism. Are we really going to tell people they can't have goods they can afford? Are any of us really in a position to preach anti-materialism? The report refers to J.K.Galbraith's argument that "human wants must be contrived in order to achieve on-going demand for things, once basic needs have been adequately met (p18)" - but you can bet he had lots of lovely furniture in his house.

Section 3, "Is advertising simply a mirror of cultural values", is where the report really leaps off the firm cliffs of reality into the seas of conjecture. On one double page spread (p30-31), the weasel words "likely", "may", "seems", and "probably" and "possible" appear at least 16 times. If you're not sure, don't bloody write it.

Even when they do refer to actual reports, the argument is riddled with holes. They quote a study that showed that students in America who watched a news program with adverts as part of their school curriculum were found to be significantly more likely to hold "extrinsic values" - the need to conform, be successful, be attractive to others, etc. But there's a major discrepancy here. Earlier in the report, the authors made much of the fact that we are exposed to between 500-1000 adverts a day. And yet they seem to claim that just 2 minutes of extra advertising is making that huge difference.

There are two explanations. One is that something in the methodology and questions is suspect - did they ask the children shortly after viewing adverts? Are there other lifestyle factors that haven't been taken into account? The second is more interesting, which is that the context in which advertising is presented is more important than the advertising itself. In this case, there was an implicit endorsement by the school and by the teachers that these adverts were acceptable, and indeed the news program was provided along with significant audio-visual equipment for the school. I'll return to this issue of context at the end.

Section 4, "Is advertising purely about the promotion of choice", they draw attention to the fact that much communication does not happen on a conscious level. This is true and reasonable. But of course they bring up that evil word "subliminal". It's an easy stick to point at the industry, to turn it into a scapegoat, with misrepresentations and one-off examples used to back up conjecture.

Yes, advertising appeals to intuition and emotion. But if advertising were removed from society, would we really be any less intuitive about brands? We would still judge them on their logos, their shop layouts and staff, their website, etc. Communication is not confined to the billboard or commercial break. And secondly, when the concept of "subliminal advertising" was at its height, mistrust of advertising was also at an all-time low, whipped up by Vance Packard's book The Hidden Persuaders (Andrew Cracknell, The Real Mad Men, p24).

I won't deal with the section on advertising to children, except to mention its main sources are David Cameron, the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, and the Bailey Report (produced by the leader of a Christian Charity). So much for balance.

In conclusion, this is an important topic that deserves a better, more thoroughly researched report. What could have been a sober assessment of the known effects of marketing on society descends with alarming regularity into conjecture, hypothesis, illogical conclusions, imbalanced sources of evidence, and scaremongering language.

But that's not to say we should be complacent. The industry should be pro-active in reframing its relationship with the public. As I said before, context is all important. An advert break in Coronation Street may be acceptable where an advert break with an implicit endorsement from a teacher is not. Product placement is equally troubling, as it places advertising in a context where we are not consciously aware of being advertised to. And in fact, although there's the usual kneejerk bleating about targeted ads in Facebook, they fail to recognise that increased personalisation could be the key to reducing the pervasiveness of advertising.

And that's our task at the School of Communication Arts. Work out how a new unspoken contract can be drawn up with the public about when, where, and how our paths meet. Make our communications relevant rather than intrusive. Make adverts that don't waste people's time. Make adverts that only the people who need to see them will see. Make them entertaining rather than unwelcome. No-one would complain about advertising if it was all good.