Left to right: Tom Bradby (chairing), Tess Alps and Peter Oborne
Peter Oborne, the former political editor at The Daily Telegraph, has told an audience at Ad Week they are largely made up of “snake-oil salesmen” that represent “everything that is…shallow about our society.”
The grumpy rant, which roused nervous laughter during a session that asked if people still trust advertising, concluded with Oborne claiming advertisers have “no morals – but they are very clever.”
Oborne, who resigned from The Telegraph after claiming that advertisers were now able to influence editorial content, also said that advertising was “objectionably consumerist” as well as “selfish” and “driven by commercial considerations which conflict with wider society considerations like family and decency”.
In a panel session that looked at how advertising has moved from being preachy to aspirational, before embracing cultural memes and learning how to entertain consumers in increasingly diverse and clever ways, other panellists – including journalist Mariella Frostrup and chair of Thinkbox, Tess Alps – said trust in advertising was in jeopardy.
“I think people are a lot less trustful,” Frostrop said. “The sheer barrage [of advertising] perhaps makes people suspicious and feel slightly intimidated.”
Of course not everyone was convinced, with Lord Timothy Bell, chairman of Bell Pottinger, arguing that advertising is “not nearly invasive enough”.
“I don’t think trust has got anything to do with advertising,” he said. “There may be an issue of trust about what people say about brands…but there’s no criticism of advertising per se as being untrustworthy, except by a bunch of pseudo intellectuals who are not representative of the public.”
However, Alps, who chairs the marketing body for television, said the fact that there have been 300 million installs of Ad Blocker Plus, that there has been an “infiltration” of editorial by native ads and that there is “no place advertisers are afraid to go” means the industry must ask if it is overstepping the mark.
“Advertising works a lot less if you don’t trust it, and people do resist,” she said. “It risks destroying our very, very successful industry.”
Watch the full video on the Ad Week website here.
