Native advertising needs correct labelling – not regulation
Unlike some industry voices, Dominic Mills doesn’t believe the public needs protecting from native advertising – but the ads do need to be clearly labelled and those brands that slip up can do irreparable damage…
You may never have heard of the late US adman Howard Gossage, sometimes known as the Socrates of San Francisco. A born contrarian, he liked to buck the conventional wisdoms of the time.
My favourite Gossage dictum is this: “People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”
It’s a useful perspective to bear in mind as the debate about the rights and wrongs of native advertising heats up.
To some, native advertising is just another buzz word dreamed up by the new digital generation to describe what others might call advertorials. To others, it’s an altogether more slippery slope, where advertiser-funded and/or generated content is indistinguishable from other material and, whether deliberately or not, cons them.
A couple of weeks ago the US Federal Trade Commission, which effectively regulates media owner and advertising issues, held a debate entitled “Blurred lines: advertising or content” in response to the explosion of advertiser-led digital content and perceived concern that the public was being duped by ads masquerading as news, features or good old-fashioned journalism.
Bureaucrats being bureaucrats, their natural tendency is to extend their regulatory powers as far as possible. Of course they’re driven by good intentions – in this case the desire to protect the public from deception – but as we all know the road to hell is often paved by good intentions.
I wouldn’t go as far as Ronald Reagan, but when he said the 11 most depressing words in the English language were “Hi, I’m from the US government and I’m here to help”, I sometimes know what he meant.
You don’t have to be an unreconstructed Reaganite to see that public interference in marketplaces often makes things worse. You just have to look at the situation in the UK housing market to see what I mean.
Does the public need protecting from native advertising? Is it, as US advertising columnist Bob Garfield, never one to mince his words, put it: “A conspiracy of deception. A hustle. A racket. A grift”?
I’ll nail my colours to the wall. I don’t believe native advertising is as Garfield says and I don’t think the public needs protecting – with one caveat: that it’s clearly labelled.
I’m not sure that it matters particularly whether it’s ‘presented by…’, ‘in association with…’ or ‘sponsored by…’ – as long as the labelling is there and contains the advertiser’s name.
Why such a light touch? Reason number one is that the public is not stupid. They are alive to most of the tricks and manipulations that companies or institutions try to pull off, and unless they wish to succumb – X Factor, for example – they know what’s going on.
If your faith in the general intelligence of the British public is waning, I suggest you watch Channel Four’s Gogglebox. It doesn’t matter whether its programmes or ads – and one of the most fascinating episodes was the one in which the viewers watched the Christmas ads – they understand every nuance and trope that TV throws at them.
The second reason is that native advertising is inherently self-regulating and self-correcting.
It’s self-regulating because of the need to strike the correct balance between engaging and entertaining the consumer with something relevant and useful and getting the commercial message over in an appropriate manner. Overdo the former and, well, the value exchange is skewed in my favour and I may not receive the message or remember the name of the advertiser. Overdo the latter, and the consumer will switch off or disregard the message.
And it’s self-correcting because, if the consumer is fooled once into thinking a native ad by, for example, an insurance company, was a piece of pure and unbiased piece of editorial, they’ll take the necessary action: they won’t read or watch anything from them again, and they might even stick the advertiser on their banned list.
I was suckered once by a male toiletries brand with a piece of content which, although labelled, was done in a manner hard to detect: the result is that I’ll never go near their products again.
And of course, digital formats hand the consumer even more power. Not only can they tell you what they think, they can tell others too. Good and bad.
All this means is that it’s fairly simple to tell the difference between good native advertising and bad. The good stuff is clearly labelled – thus engendering my trust – and offers me a good return in exchange for my time: that can be relevance, engagement, entertainment or a simple utilitarian value. Or, to paraphrase Gossage, it interests me.
And, as market forces get to work, the good stuff will drive out the bad.
At last, a decent perfume ad
We’re all familiar with the kind of rubbish advertising the perfume companies serve up at Christmas: self-referential, self-indulgent, weird and just plain pretentious.
Last year’s Chanel No. 5 featuring Brad Pitt was a classic case in point.
What is impossible to tell is how effective the ads are: in other words, how many bottles does this ad actually shift?
I suspect the perfume companies (which mostly make the ads themselves because, well, they’re all creative too) don’t really know or much care.
But this latest one from Chanel is brilliantly different, based around the famous Marilyn Monroe interview in which she claimed the only thing she wore in bed was No. 5. It’s simple, authentic and highlights a brand proposition – that Chanel No.5 is sexy – in a way no other perfume can match.
And if you want to have some fun, remind yourself of how awful the Brad Pitt ad was. He looks like his mind is elsewhere most of the time, perhaps as though he’s gone out and left his keys in the door.
But also watch the subsequent interview with Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld (about 56 seconds in) in which the maestro dismisses the idea of using Monroe as old hat.
Hmm. So how come they’re using her this year? Brad must have bombed.
Dominic Mills is a writer, editor and media consultant. His opinions are his own.