Why I’m not ashamed to work in advertising
In our purpose-driven world, being ashamed to work in advertising is a reality. Here, Colenso BBDO’s Kim Ragan makes the case for why adland’s detractors are wrong.
The other day, one of the young people from the agency said to me “my friends think I should be ashamed of working in advertising.”
As someone more senior, what do you say to that? Particularly when you may have wrestled with this at some point during your career, too.
Its a difficult struggle as every workplace has some level of dodgy behaviour going on, and advertisers are more likely than not going to be asked to do something that makes them uncomfortable on the way. This would be a spectrum from advertising something you don’t believe in to advertising something you genuinely think is harmful. Throw in a bunch of other factors (like advertising with sexist tropes) and its difficult terrain. My greatest sympathy for anyone wrestling with that. Its a general principle that violating ones own conscience is something we regret, so if you can avoid it…avoid it. If you do violate your conscience…forgiveness is important.
I think senior people could have some difficult decisions to make in the future about which client’s they take on and the effect this will have on their employees morale in the future.
Great article and very topical. Those brands that are taking a more purpose driven approach are seeing fantastic results that are making great changes to society and to their own businesses for the better. Tomorrow morning in Sydney we are holding a breakfast that is very poignant to this conversation https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/good-is-the-new-cool-market-like-you-give-a-damn-tickets-44088287254
There are a couple of extra tickets available if you’re quick!
whatever makes you sleep at night
Thank you for saying this so well, Kim. I have the same question asked of me often. It is a shame that as a society we have views in our mind and once that’s there we look for evidence to support it. Like any industry there is good and bad. We can choose the kind of work we do and the kinds of brands we want to associate. I know many of us have boundaries around certain categories, but I also gravitate to brands that are doing some good for the planet. As you say, there are plenty. Thanks for this. I’ll use these examples next dinner party and someone feels they need to be confrontational. 🙂
Why is everyone so ignorant of the good that market economies have delivered? eg the massive decline in poverty, the decrease in infant mortality. The central theme of this article is that advertising is essentially evil, but we can fix this a bit if our brands show some social conscience.
Hooray! Thanks Byron.
What the Prof said.
Did we read the same article? Kim is suggesting a few incremental improvements to market economies, not advocating full communism.
Wont somebody please think of the children??!!!
Remember though, we don’t make the product, brands do. Every example of someone doing good in this article was a brand making a decision. We in advertising tell people about it as well as possible, and consumers have a choice to act on that. The only choice we have in this is whether we are willing to work on an account, and, depending on your position, this has a financial consequence that you need to be okay with.
Hear, hear 🙂 Definitely believe there should be more emphasis on this in the industry. As you say, it’s a win win.