Advertising is under attack: here’s how not to defend it
Tim Lefroy, CEO of the Advertising Association, speaking at last month’s LEAD conference.
The Advertising Association’s latest report is a flawed approach if you want to defend the ad industry from attack, argues Dominic Mills.
You may not realise it, but the great and good of our industry (aka the powers that be at the Advertising Association) are convinced the advertising industry is under attack.
Watch this video of chief executive Tim Lefroy from the AA’s LEAD conference late last month and you can see that the apparent sang-froid is only skin-deep. Deep down, the big cheeses are having a mass collective wobbly.
On balance, I think the AA is right to be paranoid: there’s a war looming on several fronts. Today, it’s gambling, high-salt and high-fat foods aimed at children, and payday loans. Tomorrow it could be alcohol and other food products.
According to the AA’s research, while 81% of MPs recognise the contribution advertising makes to the economy, only 34% think it is in touch with its responsibilities (whatever those are).
There’s a general election looming in the UK in May, and every possibility that a government with an anti-capitalist agenda will get elected. Meanwhile, in Europe, an unholy alliance of MEPs and Eurocrats want to regulate anything that moves. Advertising is an easy target.
Or look at IAB chairman Richard Eyre’s stirring speech to the AA, in which he notes that the proportion of people who look favourably on advertising has fallen over 20 years from 51% to 27%, while those who look unfavourably on it has risen from 17% to 28%.
So what does the Advertising Association do? To defend itself and its members against the masses, it produces a well-meaning report explaining how advertising subsidises the media, culture, arts and sponsorship to the tune of around £190 per household per year.
In a nutshell, it argues that, without advertising, we wouldn’t have ITV, C4, commercial radio, magazines, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, bus shelters, and loads of arts and sports events.
Unintentionally, it echoes the ‘what have the Romans ever done for us‘ scene from The Life of Brian.
Now I happen to think this is an interesting argument, and I don’t doubt the numbers, which are produced by Deloittes, are broadly right. You can read the full report here or a short version here published last month by MediaTel.
But the report made me cringe. I confess, too, that I have used the same trick to defend advertising and I am ashamed. Years ago, I wrote a weekly column for the Daily Telegraph. Readers would write and complain about specific ads or ads generally. I would reply, pointing out that if there was no advertising the paper would cost £2 a day, and did they know that their local bus shelter was paid for by advertising? How would they like to stand in the rain next time they were waiting for the 65 to town?
The kind way of looking at it is to say that I was being too clever by half, and of course I missed the point.
So the AA’s stance is not, repeat not, the way to defend advertising. It is flawed, dishonest and arrogant.
Here’s an analogy. It’s a bit like defending the tobacco industry on the grounds that it funds hospitals. “Yeah, we know our product kills people, but don’t think about that. Think about the taxes we pay and the amount of doctors funded by us.”
It’s dishonest because it doesn’t address the actual problem itself. If people don’t trust advertising and advertisers – and I’m sure they don’t differentiate between the two – then you can’t reassure them by changing the subject and ignoring the whole issue of trust.
And it’s arrogant because the subtext is this: ‘Look, ordinary people, you should be grateful that you’re getting all this stuff for free in return for putting up with some ads. We’re doing you a favour.”
But the thing about human nature is this: do someone a favour, and you don’t get gratitude, you get resentment.
You’d have thought the ad industry, for all its claimed insight into human nature, would have worked that out.
Don’t get me wrong: I have a great deal of respect for the AA and Tim Lefroy. They do much good work. I think advertising is a force for good and, yes, by subsidising the media it does promote democracy and freedom of expression.
The Deloitte report is interesting and useful, but it isn’t actually about winning or debating the issue – it just tries to shift the ground.
Pointing out that advertising pays for ITV to parents who are concerned about ads flogging high-sugar snacks won’t mollify them, or put off an MP who sees attacking advertising as an easy vote-winner.
In China, they do things differently
I bet the Ad Association wishes it could just move to China. Last week saw reports of what can only be a peculiarly Chinese phenomenon: consumers complaining because they were not targeted in an advertising campaign.
The story concerns the hugely successful WeChat messaging app, owned by Chinese tech giant TenCent. It ran a targeted campaign in China for BMW, which provoked the ire of WeChat users who were excluded by the media buying criteria (i.e. the algorithm) from seeing the ad.
“I’ve been refreshing over and over again,” one user messaged, “but still no BMW ad. My spirits are in the dumps.”
The reason? Obsessed by status and wealth, those Chinese who didn’t get the ads felt personally slighted.
Quite right too. BMW’s strategy is a bit odd, the very opposite of, say, the Superbowl where the fact that 10% of the audience can afford the product is irrelevant. It’s all about fame and stoking the flames of desire.
In China, where materialism, aspiration and ostentation (i.e. greed) are rife, every upmarket brand should advertise to those outside its target market. They might not be able to afford a BMW today, but they’ll dream of it until they can – probably next week.
Funny that. In China, they not only trust advertising, they positively welcome it.