Doctor, help me: I’m losing my cynicism about do-good ads

Has Dominic Mills gone soft? Advertisers branding their charity, environmental or Big Society credentials used to enrage him, but the latest Innocent campaign has made him change his tune. What’s going on?

I’ve got a problem. I’m getting older. I should be turning into a grumpy old git, cynicism leaking from every pore.

But I’m not. In fact I’m getting less cynical, more likely to be charmed by do-good ads than to hate them.

A couple of weeks ago, emerging from Waterloo (heading in the direction of the Royal Festival Hall, to be exact), I was blasted by a splurge of Innocent posters celebrating the ‘chain of good‘.

Although I think they are meant to be read sequentially – i.e. following the process of the ‘chain of good’ – it doesn’t really matter whether they are or not. Each – a few lines of copy and a pack shot – stands on its own.

“Tastes good”, “Does good”, “Gives 10 per cent of profits to charity”, and so on. You can’t miss the message. Good use of posters.

So, what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that I used to hate advertising like this. Any advertiser branding their CSR/charity/environmental/Big Society credentials used to enrage me.

I thought it was manipulative, and the idea that I would buy their product just because they spent a few quid telling me how green they were felt like blackmail.

For me, this particular trend reached its nadir when I received a mailshot (yes, this was the early noughties, when direct mail was still alive) from a leading children’s charity. It had linked up with a certain utility provider, renowned at the time for its appalling service, the idea being that if I signed up for this particular brand of electricity, some money would go to the charity.

Not from me, it wouldn’t: I vowed to have nothing to do with either of them. And I haven’t since.

Back then, I took a very purist view of advertising. Its job was to sell product, and it should entertain me or tell me great things about the product, preferably both. Why pretend otherwise, especially if that pretence is only skin-deep.

What I didn’t like was the sense of moral pressure to buy something because it was worthy.

And now I’ve changed. Some of the credit for this must go to a presentation I saw from Nick Jankel, a former agency planner turned futurologist, who runs a consultancy called WeCreate.

Two of his themes are particularly relevant. The first is that organisations that will thrive in our new, networked, non-hierarchical, world are ones that have a purpose. The second is that business is better at solving some of the world’s most intractable problems than governments (OK, not Syria, but maybe water shortages, food shortages, disease and so on).

“All markets live in society,” he says, “not the other way round”.

Of course, purpose is a loose word. But he meant it in the sense of aiming for something other than the single-minded pursuit of profit. It’s not necessarily about charity or going green.

But purpose gives an organisation meaning, and attracts and motivates staff.

Although it clearly seeks to make a profit, Unilever’s purpose is sustainability. Coca-Cola’s is to spread joy and happiness, and if you look at most of its recent advertising, it’s mostly true (yes, words I never thought I would write).

Here are two examples, one about bridging the divide between India and Pakistan and one about sharing with friends.

Sainsbury’s locked on to purpose with its sponsorship of the Paralympics, while Tesco – judging by the relative sales performance of both supermarkets as announced last week – is still paying the price for many years of ruthlessly chasing (and succeeding) profit without any larger sense of purpose.

John Lewis is perceived to have a purpose too, although its ads don’t make it explicitly clear.

Barclays’ chief executive Antony Jenkins, although it must feel like pushing water uphill, is trying to give the bank purpose with his notion of corporate ‘citizenship‘.

Innocent has always had a sense of purpose, but really only now seems to be making it clear. I like this TV ad, which broke in January but passed me by. When I stand in front of the chilled juices cabinet in the supermarket, will I choose it over Del Monte or Tropicana or own-label? Price being roughly equal, you bet.

Even if it is nothing else, purpose is a differentiator.

Of course what’s interesting here is that, while agencies may be helping their clients acquire and articulate a purpose, most don’t have one themselves.

Sure, they do charity ads and stuff like that, but do they actually have a purpose beyond feeding the coffers of their parent with profit and margin (I’m talking about mostly about the networks here)?

If they do, they keep it to themselves. One notable exception is Havas, which launched the One Young World charity. As one senior executive there said to me: “We increasingly have to advise our clients about CSR. How can we do that if we don’t practice it ourselves?”

Now there will be those thinking I’ve gone soft. I hope not. The problem with doing ‘purposeful’ advertising is that when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. Take this UK one, below, from Coke, designed to promote healthy lifestyles.

It’s completely ruined by the obligatory ‘swig-some liquid sugar-from-a-bottle’ shot at the end. Stupid. They’ve just lost my goodwill.