Given the chance to demonstrate its commitment to good, what does adland do? Of course, it stumbles at the first hurdle.
Adland has decided that it wants to be ‘good’. Good for minorities, good for society, good for social justice, good for consumers, good for the environment, good for, well, every disadvantaged group you can think of.
This is a laudable aim, and you can read a well thought-through expression of this in Tom Knox’s début speech as new president of the IPA.
I like his quote from Bill Bernbach: “All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarise that society. We can brutalise it. Or we can help lift it to a higher level.”
Adam & Eve DDB’s James Murphy, new chairman of the Advertising Association has also aligned his agenda with that of Knox.
Even Cannes, no doubt spying an opportunity to help adland pat itself on the back, has jumped on the bandwagon with its new Glass Lion award. It’s a mere snip at €530 to enter, but at least the money goes to charity.
And hey, you can’t put too high a price on doing good – sorry, being seen to do good.
So…given the chance to demonstrate its commitment to good, what does adland do?
Of course, it stumbles at the first hurdle. One example might be Sir Martin Sorrell’s £43m pay packet, about 179 times, it is calculated, that of the average salary of a WPP employee.
But this is a morally grey area and Sorrell has in any case funded a charitable trust with £21m of his WPP shares.
A more egregious example has been the reaction of major sponsors of the World Cup – the toxic mess that is FIFA.
Given the chance to make a moral stand – to be a force for good – they flunked it, and voted for expediency.
They are no doubt mighty relieved that Blatter is gone, and feel that they have been let off the hook, but their prevarication at a critical moment tells you all you need to know about their real attitude to ‘doing good’.
My fellow columnist Bob Wootton pointed this out last week.
This is what they said:
Coca-Cola: ‘we are monitoring the situation’
Adidas: ‘we are monitoring the situation’
Hyundai: ‘we are concerned with the situation’
Budweiser: ‘we are monitoring the situation’
McDonald’s (upping the ante): ‘we are taking the situation very seriously’
Gazprom (no doubt after calling the Kremlin): ‘no comment’
Visa, the only one to express a desire for action: ‘we expect FIFA to take swift and immediate steps to address these issues’.
Nowhere was there even a hint that they might take their money away.
What is even worse is that most of them – certainly Coca-Cola, Adidas, McDonald’s – use their marketing to trumpet their credentials as good corporate citizens. I’m sure, in their boardrooms, they like to believe they have principles. But as they say, ‘a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money’.
I mention this not to sneer at adland’s desire to be a force for good, but to underline the steepness of the path it must climb.
To set a collective aim – and then to rely on thousands of individuals and organisations to make it happen – is a Sisyphean task. There’ll always be some bugger who lets you down.
Because when you talk about adland doing good, you can’t qualify it by saying it’s only about agencies. In the eyes of the public, advertisers and agencies are as one.
Indeed, you would expect agencies to be pushing advertisers to act better. The trouble, I suspect, is that apart from selling in a social justice campaign or one that empowers women, they don’t really have the clout to push too hard.
Can you imagine Coca-Cola’s media or sponsorship agency picking up the phone to the executive suite in Atlanta 10 days ago.
Agency boss: “Ok, FIFA is tainted and so are you by association. You’ve got to take your money away.”
Coke boss: “Are you kidding? How else are we going to reach billions of people around the world? As soon as we pull out, Pepsi or Red Bull will jump in.”
Agency boss: “Er…I’ll get back to you on that one.”
Coke boss: “Listen, we pay you to negotiate the deal, not to lecture us on morality.”
Agency boss (as $$$$$ signs flash before his or her eyes): “Ok, just tell them you’re really cross and are monitoring the situation. That’ll bring them to heel.”
So how do you bring about the sort of cultural change that will make the likes of Coca-Cola want to lead, and not to be seen to be dragging their feet?
I suppose one way is through the awards system. At the IPA, Knox is planning to add an effectiveness award to recognise campaigns that (his words) “demonstrably added societal as well as economic value and have shown the link between the two”.
Cannes has, cleverly, mandated that it is the client (not the agency) that wins the Glass Award (so called because it rewards ads that challenge gender bias).
But the criteria – loosely including creativity, strategy, brand positioning, results and impact (i.e. lots of social media likes) – seem designed to obfuscate rather than clarify.
My fear is that the cause, rather than the ad, will be the winner, but also that it may encourage hype and exaggeration.
It is also possible that advertisers will target this award to, let us put it this way; put lipstick on a pig while, simultaneously, condoning or turning a blind eye to, say, what is going on in FIFA or some corrupt regime that represents a major market.
Imagine if Coca-Cola won such an award after its shabby behaviour over FIFA.
It would, at the least, leave a dirty taste in the mouth.
