Orthodox thinking will be the death of agencies’ agency
Corporate Reputation Practice’s Peter Roberts argues that over time, our increasing unwillingness to debate sensitive topics will result in bland creative that doesn’t speak to its audience.
The prophetic George Orwell once wrote that “at any given moment, there is an orthodoxy – a body of ideas – which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question and a genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing”. Orwell’s sentiments, have, sadly, never been as resonant as they are today.
We live in an age when it is becoming increasingly difficult to have a nuanced conversation about a seemingly growing number of non-sensitive issues, whether it’s immigration, Islam, Israel or same-sex marriage. Clearly, there are others – the list is not exhaustive – but the substantive point is the corrosive effect that this new norm has on our relationships and our future welfare.
The idea of not being able to fully debate an issue is particularly problematic for creative work spaces, especially agency-side, whose point of differentiation is the imaginative value of their work to the client.
We’re in advertising, not Hollywood.
Sorry, hadn’t realised that creativity was dictated by geography.
The US Constitution guarantees people the right to offend whomever the hell they want whenever the hell they want to. That’s what free speech means.
Sadly, our Constitution doesn’t. In fact many Australians hate (and fear) freedom to say what you want to – even if you offend someone somewhere. And free speech is meaningless unless it includes the freedom to offend.
Many people don’t believe in free speech – except opinions that accord with their own.
You either support free speech or you don’t. You support unfettered freedom of speech. Including freedom to express thoughts of hate.
Ad agencies reflect society. No freedom of speech means no freedom of ideas.
Yes the US First Amendment to the Bill Of Rights in the American Constitution does enshrine the right of free speech.
However, the US Constitution also says (in basic terms) that you have to abide by US law. That is, the law (of the land and of the time) in effect defines what is societally reasonable and acceptable.
So yes, you do have the right to, for example, racially abuse someone, but as you have broken the law, you will also have a stay in prison.
Jeff, in America the law does not define hate speech.