Advertising and morality
There's a revealing article in the latest issue of Campaign (a marketing industry weekly) about morality and advertising. It's a thoughtful and honest piece, written by a senior industry professional - tackling the question, "If your personally held views conflict with what you do at work, do you forget your principles or dissent?"
There's a nice summary of different perspectives in there that I can't capture in a paragraph. (excerpt | full article)
In the same issue, there's an editorial titled, "Are morals affordable in an economic downturn?", which concludes with:
What's beyond question is that the harsh economic climate will test agencies' morality to the limit. Word is that many are already battling to win the experiential and field marketing brief for the tobacco manufacturer Gallaher.A principle isn't a principle until it costs you money, Bill Bernbach famously observed. It remains to be seen how many agencies will emerge from the turbulence with both their balance sheets and their morals in good shape.
Excerpt from the end of "Adland's moral maze", by Andrew Cracknell, in Campaign (14-Nov-08):
As Hegarty observes: "Take a company like Cadbury, a fine patrician ethos, concerned philanthropic employer even building a small town for its employees, making excellent products with a reputation for value, responsible quality control - look at that same company now and what do you see? Obesity!"And it's not always what a client may be doing that can cause problems - it's what they want to say. I was once, only once, many years ago, asked to tell outright lies. The brief was a corker, the sort you want to frame and hang in the lavatory. It was for a US multinational about which a scathing and widely read exposure had been written at the dawn of the concerns about globalisation. The brief listed some of the highly critical facts that had been used and asked us to make a counter case. But gaining full points at least for candour, against several of the exposure's criticisms, the brief said "this is true, but what we want you to say is ..." and provided us with something completely manufactured.
Of course, advertising lies by omission, but so what? Society understands its job is to put the best case and, anyway, we do it all the time in our personal lives. When we meet someone for the first time or go for an interview, we present only our good side, we don't volunteer appalling failings such as dreadful table-manners or following Gillingham FC. But bare-faced lying is something else.
There are even objections that are completely beyond the responsibility of the client. A tragic example is William Eccleshare, the chairman and chief executive of BBDO EMEA, who, as a young account handler at JWT, asked to come off a pitch for Raleigh bicycles. His sister had been killed in a bike accident and he felt he couldn't bear the close involvement with the machinery that had contributed to her early death.
The agency was completely understanding. Even if it had been a tiny, four-person company, it was still the only course and surely you, as chief executive, would do the same for anyone who comes to you under similar circumstances.
But suppose you then offered them an alternative, say the British Nuclear Fuels account, and they demurred on environmental concerns; you then suggested a newspaper but got "sorry - disagree with their editorial" as the response; you volunteered a bank and the reply was "oh dear, involvement in South Africa during apartheid ..."
At that point, you'd probably be entitled to say, as kindly as possible: "Look, this is a tool of capitalism, of choice and competition and all that brings; don't you think you're in the wrong business?"
Follow Greenpeace »
Comments
That's both a great article and a great comment. I have personally experienced this conflict in the last year seeing my company pitch for the worst kind of clients.
However, in the end, I found a compromise where I found out the client (Ford) was the best of a bad breed and deserved a chance. I gave up driving 6 years ago (switching to a bike) and had to go and work for a car account that was offering the most economical choice. Was I wrong?
Posted by: anon | December 7, 2008 11:13 AM