Here's the thing. Advertising doesn't scream, leer and it certainly doesn't stroll. Advertising is content that is placed in media where planners think it will get your attention and be relevant to your life. Consumers are a complex bunch, hence the endless tracking studies, neuroscientific experiments and market research. We all know complex people, the ex-girlfriend you just couldn't read, the parent you cannot get through to and the friend who won't tell you what's wrong. Despite this, people seem to think advertisers have magic dust that they sprinkle on billboards, TV ad breaks, magazine pages and computer screens that makes people non-complex. That's why they're so brilliant at getting into people's heads and manipulating them into spending more than they earn, or changing their hair colour to look beautiful. If you read that last sentence and agreed with it, advertising is not the problem. Advertising does not have that kind of power. Consumers on the other hand, well they're in charge of themselves which gives them the power. If advertising was that powerful, the industry wouldn't be bending over backwards to understand how the mind works and how it reacts to marketing messages.
I recently watched a film from a conference held by the RSA discussing advertising in society and that's what inspired this blog post. It made me angry. Advertising itself doesn't make me angry, but misplaced perceptions, definitions and identification of advertising does. Much of the discussion in this film was based around the importance of advertising within public taste and that ads have got the power to do good. I agree with this and advertising does stay within public taste (unless the whole point is that it doesn't and this is often a tactic employed by charities) and there are many cases where advertising has made positive changes in society.
In the film, the speakers started discussing marketing to children and this is what annoyed me. This is obviously a widely debated, sensitive subject so I understand how it's easy to digress when talking about it but it all got a bit stupid at this point. When speakers are told to talk about advertising in society, they should talk about advertising in society. Two of the presenters rambled on about marketing to children and one even presented a Playboy pillowcase which was apparently aimed at teenage girls. A pillowcase isn't an ad. Playboy would absolutely never be allowed to advertise to children, they are scarcely allowed to advertise to adults. Therefore that example meant nothing in terms of advertising. That's a debate about the sexualisation of children which advertisers would never support.
The other speaker said we should celebrate culture (advertising is inspired by culture so we can tick that one off) and ban advertising to children. Ban advertising to children?! They enjoy ads and view them as a way of finding out what's new in the world of toys. The children's ads I have seen are about toys, magazines and TV shows all age specific. Of course children will watch ads and say "Mummy I want that! Can I have it? Please?!" To put it very simply, it's up to Mummy to say no. A ban on advertising to children is not only impossible but pointless. However, it would remove advertising as the scapegoat and perhaps people would then be able to get down to the root cause of the materialistic nature of children, which in the film was blamed on advertising.
Back to the point, what struck me about this discussion was the amount of power afforded to the advertising industry. As I mentioned earlier, the consumer is far more powerful so why do people think ads affect us so much? Advertising is nowhere near as powerful as people perceive it to be.
Hands up if you think when you spray this on yourself you become a supermodel in designer clothes. No one? Didn't think so.
I've come to the conclusion that people who hate advertising probably don't know what it is. So in my Heart of Advertising blog I will try to explain why advertising isn't a satanic force and that advertisers are in fact very sensitive to public issues and abide by the regulations imposed upon them. And maybe advertisiers do like to enjoy the occasional 'media lunch', but hey, we all have our vices.
Guardian (2012) Playboy TV's lorry advert banned by watchdog [online] Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/07/playboy-tv-lorry-advert-banned-watchdog [Accessed 12 November 2012].
Youtube (2011) Advertising in society: what's the deal [online] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chotX0c3aQA&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 9 November 2012].
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