Can we turn around the ad industry?
ByThese past few months have been really eye opening for me. I’ve had the opportunity to be exposed to quality advertising, and advertising with a purpose. As much as I love to study advertising I’ve always been weary of most of the advertising campaigns that I’ve been exposed to, but through this website I’ve been able to see truth in advertising, not to mention quality, and goodness. These ads have shown me that there is a responsible side to the advertising world, but it’s just a matter of exposure to the rest of the world that you don’t have to use things such as sex to sell a product. You don’t have to have a misleading or dishonest ad to sell your product or service. Why can’t advertising be about bettering society or providing consumers with honest, helpful information? I hope efforts such as Advirtues.com can help provoke other people to respond positively to the advertising industry. Not to mention start a movement with other advertising agencies to jump on this bandwagon – because this is a good one to jump on! Do you think with efforts such as advirtues.com and adcouncil.com that the advertising industry can do a 36o* and truly change for the better? What other ways can the industry repair it’s ‘broken’ image?
8 Comments
May 6th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I do think this is a daunting task Kat. I think it will take people who are passionate about changing the industry’s perception and making efforts to show people that advertising doesn’t have to be dishonest and there are better ways to sell a product. But I think the biggest issue with changing the perception of advertising is that not only do people find certain ads to be inappropriate and dishonest but some people think that just simply advertising a product at all is inappropriate. There are many people out there who believe that advertising persuades people to purchase things that they don’t need and that advertising is evil. I bet you there are even people out there who would blame advertising for the recession. I think efforts like advirtues are a great place to start and a few people can make a difference and while I don’t know that we can completely change the perception I think we can make a dent wherever we go to try and change things and that’s a start. All we can do is try and convince other people that it can be done.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I definitely believe that changes can (and are) being made to our industry! With the factors of greater doubt and disbelief by customers and higher regulations by various control agencies, our industry is definitely having to revamp itself. That being said, although many are and are wanting to go in a more virtuous direction, if we all change and lead that way then won’t the bar have to be set even higher? What I mean is that if all advertising provokes a positive image of the industry in consumers won’t they want even more out of us? Maybe a little bad, cheesy local advertising makes the work that we are doing stand out even more…what do you think?
May 6th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
I disagree, isn’t the purpose of striving for a change supposed to be all-inclusive? Shouldn’t advertisers be motivated to excel at a higher-level all throughout the industry? Shouldn’t we focus on emphasizing social responsibility with deeper thought processes in all creative aspects of the campaign? We should use advertising to convey a positive message to the consumers and to provoke a deeper thought. If we decide it’s okay to have a little bad local advertising doesn’t that take away from the whole move toward change?
May 7th, 2009 at 8:06 am
I’m with ya, Kat… change needs to be industry-wide to have an effect.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a few friends about advertising. I was espousing the “virtues” and usefulness of the industry only to be hit with examples of when advertising goes wrong (greedy personal injury attorneys, screaming car salesmen, mud-slinging political ads). Sure, most of it was local advertising, but the consumer doesn’t typically make the distinction between national and local. To them, advertising is advertising. If we’re going to change the industry’s image, changing the tone of local ads is as important as national.
Our advertising ancestors created this mess but it’s up to this new generation to turn things around. It’s a mammoth task and it’s going to take all of us… but it’s not impossible!
“Never doubt that a small dedicated group of people can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
~Margaret Mead
May 7th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Wow, Lisa, that is a great quote. From my perspective that is exactly what we, as a part of AdVirtues, are all about. We are a small group of dedicated individuals striving to spark a change. We should continually be motivated to better the industry in all areas, and I agree with what you said, consumers don’t necessarily know the difference between local and national ads. These are all the same to them. If we are going to strike a movement then it should be all-inclusive.
Do you think that because of the mess our ‘advertising ancestors’ created that we truly can come full circle and turn it into good?
May 8th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I think there are definitely ways that we could improve, but it will take a long time for the industry as a whole to make a complete turn around. I think as advertising gets better and the best advertising gets realized and rewarded, the bar will be raised and hopefully advertising as a whole will become more competitive in a sense.
I also remember talking in one of my classes about having some sort of certification process for individuals and entire advertising agencies to go through in order to do business. Each agency would have to pass some sort of standardized test to be a “certified advertiser”. Kind of like the CPA exam for accountants, it would ensure that if you hire an advertiser, you’re guaranteed that they at least have certain abilities. That would be an easy, yet controversial way of improving advertising. But what do you think?
May 8th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
We talked about this certifaction idea in one of my classes last year as well. I think though it is a great idea I’m weary of the way it will effect the creativity of the campaigns. Isn’t it possible that this could formulize advertising too much and turn it into something with less uniqueness? I wonder if it was all about going through a certification process what kind of advertisers it would turn out. What do you think?
May 11th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Yea I don’t think certification is such a great idea. It is basically a governing body deciding who is worthy enough to be a professional which I think will take away much creativity. Many creative people aren’t book smart and that already poses a problem with colleges regarding SAT’s and, lets say, arts students. Any creative profession should not need a test in order to be employed.