Against The Grain - another look at THAT Guardian ad

Yesterday I wrote about BBH and my somewhat tepid reaction to their new Guardian ad. It was written in a hurry, and though I stand by my general opinion, I perhaps should have concentrated more on the faults of the advert and less on the part only relevant to the industry. Also, the criticism of them for using Ringan Ledwidge was on reflection unfair - and I hard to find fault with someone who names their production company Rattling Stick.

Anyway. What want to talk about today is conformity and peer pressure, because it seems that some of the theories explained in "Nudge" by Thaler and Sunstein might easily apply to the discussion of the advert yesterday at the School of Communication Arts. A couple of quotations...

"People become more likely to conform when they know that other people will see what they have to say".


"Because people do think that everyone has their eyes fixed on them, they conform to what they think people expect".


"If the confederate [someone infiltrating a group discussion in an experiment] spoke confidently and firmly, his judgement had a strong influence on the group's assessment".

All of this was relevant yesterday, when we were presented the advert in School at the morning Town Hall. By the time we saw it, there was a weight of opinion that it was good. And the initial overall reaction of the assembled students was "it's great".

Did every single student really like it? Or was it because we've been conditioned to automatically think of BBH's work as good, because of their previous excellent work, not to mention Sir John Hegarty's generous support for the School? I think it's certainly telling that when I rather short-sightedly praised their "Aviators" advert, it was just after being shown it while visiting the agency, one day before it was released publicly, by a very proud employee.

And did it make a difference that Marc, the Dean of the School, who showed us the work, is undeniably a confident, firm, and convincing speaker - and had already tweeted his approval of the ad the night before? And once some students had expressed approval, this combined pressure on anyone with a contrary opinion to keep it to themselves was enormous.

And what's equally interesting is that it was only after one person (who happened to be me, another confident speaker) spoke out against the ad, and a mentor from a well-known agency who I won't name expressed some agreement with my views, that the balance started to shift, and at least two other people were emboldened enough to voice mixed feelings about it.

This isn't about who was right or wrong. For me, it was simply a neat demonstration of how a group consensus can be created or changed not just by persuasion and evaluation, but by what was - even if not intentionally - a psychological power struggle between two individuals.

And if this makes morning Town Hall at the School of Communication Arts sound like a particularly tense scene from 12 Angry Men, then all the better, I say.