LETTERS.

ETHICS

Good advertising can exist alongside ethics

One phrase stood out from your excellent feature "Does advertising have a conscience?" (Campaign, 21 September). The IPA president, Bruce Haines, cautioning agencies not to lose sight of their primary function, was quoted as follows: "Advertising agencies and the people who run them are not social workers. We are there to work with clients for the best possible outcome for their brands." Of course this is true in the literal sense. But you don't have to be a social worker in order to have a social impact.

Your feature accurately highlighted the growing need for ad agencies to be mindful of the potentially negative social impact of some of their work, but there's another dimension to the debate--the opportunity for advertising to have a positive social impact, to be an active force for good. Dominic Mills touched on this in his review of the latest COI Communications adult literacy campaign in the same issue of your magazine. Explaining why he chose to review it, Mills wrote: "I thought it better to write about an ad that might change people's lives, as opposed to their consumption habits."

But why do these objectives always have to be in opposition to each other?

The real opportunity for the ad industry to demonstrate its ethical credentials lies in creating marketing strategies and campaigns that change people's lives and their consumption habits at the same time, using the social and cultural power of brands as a force for progress.

This is particularly relevant when anti-capitalist critics of globalisation and brand marketing such as Naomi Klein are gaining such support for their views. The response from the advertising industry to such criticism tends to veer from enraged defensiveness to apologetic hand-wringing. But this misses a trick. We all know that brands have huge social influence, and we also know how skilled the marketing community is at changing consumer behaviour in a way that benefits brands.