Guest post: Parents – stop blaming ads, grow a backbone and say ‘no’
In this guest posting, The Hub Agency’s Ed Commander argues that parents need to stop blaming the ad industry and start saying “No”
So once again the debate rages around whether or not the industry can self regulate or whether it needs a truly independent (governmental) body to watch over it.
F
irstly I will state that I am completely in favour of self-regulation. Having worked in a contentious product category before, I can tell you one thing is absolutely true. The damage caused to share price by marketing activities which would be deemed unacceptable by the masses or by a court of law is FAR more concerning than any minute incremental increase in awareness / sales / preference, etc.
Believe me – this is true. No marketing director or board – especially those with share options – is going to want to do anything which might impact on their business in terms of ability to market in the future which in turn would damage sales which in turn would decrease share value.
I digress.
What I wanted to talk about was learning to say “no”. And this is directed at every parent out there. Just learn to say fucking “no”. Try it now. I bet you do it more than once a day to adults who would actually have the ability to biff you , argue back, withhold something you need. So if you can say it to a colleague, friend or partner, grow a bloody back bone and start saying it to your kids.
So if they see an ad for a chocolate bar on TV (Heavens! Protect the children. Won’t you think of the children?) and they want it next time you in are in the supermarket, just say “no”.
It’s that simple.
I want parents to stop abdicating the responsibility of curbing consumption of any product, foodstuff, toy, beverage, etc, to media owners and product owners. I want every Gen X’er and Baby Boomer to cast their minds back and remember how well your own parents responded to demands for something. Amazingly, my parents, like most, had mastered the one syllable, two letter answer that seems to completely elude parents of anyone under the age of 22 these days.
No!!
No you can’t have a burger.
No, we’re not getting that toy.
No you can’t have a chocolate bar, you had one earlier.
No you can’t go to the circus, its bedtime.
No you can’t have a beer.
No – the gin belongs to mummy.
Etc….
You get the idea.
So parents of Australia.
Stop whinging and complaining about your complete lack of ability to discipline your own children and teach them some parameters about what they can and can’t have. Stop asking someone else to take responsibility for setting boundaries for your offspring.
Take matters into your own hands. Say “no”. Just as I say “no” to any more bloody regulation around products and companies which have every legal right to advertise.
PS: Please send all your research about the damaging effects of advertising on children to me. It will all of course be absolutely statistically correct. It will also exclude any reference to parental responsibility.
PPS: And if I hear anyone say; “oh but some parents just need help” well FINE. Get them help. Just stop bloody expecting our industry and our clients to do it.
PPPS: And another thing. Two lesbian friends of mine who are having a baby with a known male sperm donor have just had to go through several rounds of legal steps and counselling before they were even allowed to test if the process would work. These are educated, informed, sensible people. EVERY single person should go through such a process before being legally allowed to give birth to their child. I would say before they attempt to conceive, but that would involve my Master Plan of vasectomizing every male on the planet and only after counselling would they be allowed to reverse the operation.
PPPPS: To all the people who have dogs instead of kids, I salute you. Remember to not let your dog within 500km of a playground because as the parents have so rightly pointed out, every dog is a vicious killer waiting to maul their beloved offspring to death. These are the same parents who don’t have the ability to say; “no, come away from the dog”.
- Ed Commander is a director of The Hub Agency
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Ed is right.
But there’s no ratings in his view.
It’s easier to blame evil ad-men.
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No … you can’t watch commercial television.
ABC3 seems rather promising.
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Yeah! what he said! and while we’re talking about dogs I have a tiny little puff ball who might look like a puppy but funnily enough doesn’t like being picked up and screamed at by every little kid at the park. Kids, stay away or you risk losing a tiny tiny chunk of skin!!
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AMEN! Ed. Well put. I esp like your PS section. Nice!
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Damn, drug dealers be blaming his junkies these days.
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OMG YES YES YES!
*post coital cigarette*
It’s about time someone started advocating the use of the “parental lockout system”. As a morbidly obese person I take full responsibility for the state I’m in. Despite the advertising companies making MacDonalds burgers look hotter than Jensen Ackles on a summer day. If I want to eat, I’m going to bloody well eat it, regardless of what the advertising companies say.
TAKE A CEMENT PILL & HARDIN’ THE FUCK UP!
It’s not that hard. Be responsible for your decision making. You were the one that decided to drink 26 Bacardi and Cokes and then have unprotected sex with the first redneck to call you “Darlin'” – man up and take the consequences (and baby bonus) that comes with it. Don’t be looking at me to have to live in a censored world because you couldn’t say no to Davo, and now his offspring have you bent over the trolley screaming for Coco Pops because “they’re just like a chocolate milkshake only crunchy!”
Learn to say no – you might find out that it’s not as hard as you think and it’ll lead to a better quality of life… for all of us!
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So the lesson I take away from this is that advertising has no impact on consumer’s (including children’s) ability to make a purchasing choice.
Or am I reading it wrong?
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Well put Ed. People should take personal responsibility for their actions and avoid blaming everyone and everything else for what goes on in their lives.
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The point that “making inappropriate ads is too threatening already for shareholders” would pack a lot more punch if it could be proven that corporate governance actually meaningfully prevented poor decision making. The experience of shareholders of AIG, Lehman Brothers, etc. in the US might be instructive here.
Inappropriate ads are made, just like any other number of poor business decisions, all the time – whether due to failure of imagination, inability to appreciate the real impact and the long term, or just plain stupidity and insensitivity. And the sheer fact is that, like most poor business decisions, the damage one isolated instance of them can wreak is in most cases not enough to put an agency out of business or to permanently chasten it.
Look at how Kyle Sandilands has been a professional provocateur for so many years, but Austereo, who are only vaguely interested in the actual contents of his show, keep writing the cheques because the normal “background level” of outrage is too low for them to worry. Ad agencies aren’t the ones that need to worry about paying the medical bills for decades of obesity; the harms simply don’t sheet home directly or in a timely fashion.
Secondly, the idea that parents need to “grow a backbone” is a bit rich when we are talking about professional persuaders using every tool and all the experience they have at their disposal (as you would expect them to), and aiming it squarely over the heads of parents directly to kids, and then saying to parents “why don’t you stop your kids doing what we want them to?!” The only analogy I can think of is my aiming an enormous cannon at someone with a bow and arrow and castigating my target for failing to kill me before I am able to fire at them.
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Well said!
I too want all parents to say no to their kids’ demands for pointless crap, so I can then have the freedom to market pointless crap to kids.
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Ed – Do you believe in movie/video game ratings? Cigarettes and Alcohol advertising to children? Porn on free to air? 🙂
With your logic parents are 100% responsible for the behaviours of their children, but we all know our ad work affects people decision making (even the parents) – and having stock price as a moral thermometer is a scary thought. I agree parents should stop being such softies, but government regulation plays a part. Vehemently disagree that PR screw-ups are enough to govern corporations interested in one thing – bottom line.
Curious – do you have kids?
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Course he doesn’t have kids
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Ed. You legend. Perhaps the ad industry should use its talents and make a TVC that rams the NO message home to parents which a penchant for picky pot-shots at the big bad ad industry.
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I agree 100% with every single word in this post – and I’m a mother of three boys who are eventually going to be a helluva lot bigger than me! That list of no’s is almost word for word (I said almost!) what comes out of my mouth on a daily basis. My kids are active, healthy boys who DON’T have the latest and greatest of everything because they have to damn well learn some appreciation for the things they have in life. Stop giving your kids sugar and plastic just to shut them the hell up and spend some time interacting with them. I ignore advertising so I don’t see why I wouldn’t teach my kids to.
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Love your work Ed!
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I say NO to pushers all the time. But dem cats are so persuasive…
Seriously, why go to the trouble of making your product look so irresistible if you want us to say no?
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man, i’m an expert in saying no, i say it to my kids all the time. no problems there. but… it would be nice not to have to say it *all* the damn time. and if advertising isn’t designed to make me buy, or my kids say “pleeeaasseee” all day, why would anybody pay for it? and my attempts to minimise my kids’ material expectations are somewhat undermined by ads deliberately giving them the impression EVERYBODY ELSE gets this crap all the time. I mean c’mon, that’s what ads are for, to sell shit.
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With many things it isn’t a case of saying ‘no’ all the time, it is more a case of not saying ‘yes’ every time. This is where that thing called parenting comes in. Even the most hardened of dieticians say the occasional Coke or Mcdonalds is ok. It is a question of balance. Getting that balance right is the role of parents.
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You got to love kicking the Hornet’s nest. Nice one Ed.
Ads do have an effect. Of course they do. And so does my brain, if I decide to use it.
I’m pretty confident I can resist the best ad in the world, even for the best Product X in the world, if I really don’t want it. And even if I “want” it, I can still say no.
Josh – Stockprice as a moral compass? Hell no. As individuals we all have our own moral compass – isn’t that a key part of self-regulation?
monkeytypist – I get where you are coming from, but perhaps the problem there is around corporate governance. Maybe that needs examining? That is a major part of the bigger context of advertising and marketing.
By the way, in the interests of ethical, open behaviour, I work with Ed 😉
I don’t support everything he says, but I absolutely support his right to say it.
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Nigel, if you’re 7 years old I truly commend your cognitive resistence. As it stands, I’m taking a guess you’re not, so it’s not exactly relevant.
For mine, a rant from a marketer asking parents to harden up and learn to say no to their kids is exactly the same as a rant from a parent asking advertisers to harden up and learn to say no to their clients.
But wait, we all have dogs to feed so we can’t be expected to do that now can we?
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So to aspiring agencies seeking some spotlight…
A little scary you assume all parents with kids under 22 are the same.
Nigel the issue is not whether you can resist an ad it is a targeted audience with ages in single digits.
I’ll make the same bet as Chris #12. I’ll double-up on Josh #11 that if it were legal to do so he’d be in there pitching cigarettes etc with the best of them – moral code is we’ll see anything to anyone if I can bill the client.
Hornets nest, Voltaire or not far from convinced your employer will be well served by it.
The PPPS and PPPPS could also suggest that it is not the prospective parents but the author who needs some counseling
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Josh, Chris Lout & Ben – you’re absolutely right. I don’t have kids. I don’t think it invalidates the argument necessarily though.
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No it doesn’t – some sweeping statements and generalisations that parents of anyone aged under 22 are all the same don’t serve your argument well though.
Got to run and drop the kids off to the ad agency for the weekend
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I’ve got kids and am also married to a child pyschologist and can tell you that you have it spot on.
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I come from a childhood where McDonalds was a treat, not a regularity. I get what you’re saying.
But seriously Ed, like others have mentioned, if the ONLY regulator is the parent, why should marketing or advertising be regulated at all? Why not sell cigarettes and guns and alcohol at any time or place?
Today we are bombarded with more advertising per minute than at any other time in history. (A recent Google study found an average person sees 3000 ads per day just online!) How can parents compete with the cool and relentless power of teams of professionals?
I don’t agree with your thinking at all. Kids are individual, free-thinking human beings, not slaves to their parents. Inappropriate advertising takes advantage of their immaturity and juvenile priorities, and creates conflict between them and their parents, as if parents don’t have enough pressures already.
Loved monkeytypist’s post, stated my case better than I have. If and when you have a couple of teenage kids, Ed, I wonder if you’ll still feel that advertisers have no ethical obligations to consumers?
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Am a mother, totally agree and my favourite word is ‘no’. BUT… you forget one thing. Parents aren’t surgically attached to kids to always say ‘no’. Even when little, they go to parties, school, trips…
Just like Mrs Marsh said..”it does get in!”
Ed – great thought-provoking post. But I must pull you up on one error of fact in PS1. You said that the research about the damaging effects of advertising on children would be absolutely statistically correct.
Well, I am one of those odd-ball researchers that has pored over a number of such reports that you mention. Each and every one that I have ever seen that purport to show that TV advertising causes childhood obesity is SERIOUSLY flawed. The most common error is that they record a number of hours of kids TV programming and assume that every child sees every ad.
The facts are that the number of ads for HFHS foods have decreased over the past decade. Concurrently, the ratings to the programmes those ads are in are decreasing. This is then compared to an increasing childhood BMI (leaving apart that the BMI is a badly flawed metric) and the conclusion they produce is that TV advertising is driving childhood obesity. If there IS causality (which has not been demonstrated) then the DIRECTION of the causality is that less ads viewed produces increased BMI – which is clearly absurd.
Further, of course advertising’s job is to create both awareness and demand. However, choice is a different matter. Awareness does not equal choice. Choice is a personal decision, or in the case of children should be a parent’s decision. Everyone has the right to say, I am aware of the product, I like the product (demand) but no I’m not going to buy or consume the product. I fear the day that some governmental body is empowered to make such decisions on my behalf.
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Ed would like to have his cake and eat it too. He would like to continue to make ads that encourage children to endlessly pester their parents for whatever crap he’s selling and, at the same time, decline any responsiblity for the consequences.
Pretty typical of the juvenile attitude of many in the ad industry, unfortunately.
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Spoken as only a person without kids could speak.
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Ed et al
The vast majority of advertising encourages consumption. Over consumption is the main cause of obesity. It is the culture that we have created as advertisers, wanting people to upscale and not miss out, that is the problem.
Advertising has to take responsibility for the culture we have created.
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Good gracious, as if there aren’t enough pressures on working parents already! I agree with all your points Ed, absolutely. But when parents kick up a fuss about advertising, I suspect they’re talking about the fact that there is literally no-where to go to escape the sales barrage aimed at their kids. I’d like to bet that every time we do give in and say yes, there are 99 times backing it up when we said no. As compared with my parents, who only had to say no every now and again, because let’s face it, there was less on offer back then. Whether I say no or not, my kids will continue to hassle me to buy Roll Ups – which I believe to be nothing more than edible tooth decay – but that they think that they are simply squashed fruit. And I’ve got advertising to thank for that.
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Some good points on both sides, usually always the case isn’t it?
Parents have the responsibility / influence over their child but what if this parent wasn’t given the greatest role model themselves and the image they portray and influence their child with is that drinking and drugs is okay (not that the gov would allow us to advertise that anyhow, particularly before 8.30pm!). Overall however society says drinking and drugs – to a certain limit – is not okay so drugs aren’t legal and alcohol advertising is having its day.
The issue is two sided, a person needs to have the right to make their own decision and a product / service provider should also have the right to promote their own brands their own way. How they both came to their decisions and justify it uniquely describes the values they place on themselves and their products/image.
Just like a marketer can choose to use pshyo analysis to ‘influence and persuade’ a parent / child will use their own smarts to influence and persuade.
All of us have rights and responsibilities in work and in life. I don’t think we need government control however I do think the industry needs self regulation and allow commonsense and ethics to prevail. But this goes within the household too, parents are a marketer too – they market good values and responsibilities, and lifestyles too.
It took one day for Austero to take Kyle off air again, but they know most want him back, but they lost their advertiser so what is his true worth? We can all say no to listening to him right, but most don’t and won’t. The advertiser can pull their advertising, and will because the public say so, but will they come back is the question and will you still buy their products.
Marketing is not the be all end all decision to a parents decision. A marketer gets paid to influence BUT a parent, they have a privledge to influence.
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Just a couple of things back…
Andrew Y – I never said that our industry has no ethical obligation. I believe it absolutely does. However, I also believe that advertising in itself cannot be the scapegoat for child obesity / pestering and that parents must accept responsibility to control or at least manage the consumption (food and products) of their children.
With regards to ‘inappropriate advertising’, I must take issue with that. Advertising of fast foods, lollies, toys etc is not inappropriate. An ad for vodka during a children’s show – yes. An ad for a burger – not a gun, not a cigarette – a burger? It doesn’t feel like a crime.
That said, I do acknowledge Lizzy’s point – and yours – that children are exposed to so many more messages in so many different media’s, which must make it harder to better handle ongoing requests for products x, y & z.
That said…where on EARTH do they get the money to buy all this stuff? In my day etc. etc.
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They – the children – don’t get the money from anywhere.
They pester their parents into buying whatever product it is for them.
And they wonder why self-regulation is a failure.
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Can we presume this is the Friday satire piece?
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Most parents accept that it’s their job to say no to their kids’ requests for every crappy food and piece of plastic they see advertised. The point is that it just gets really bloody tedious sometimes and so naturally they’d like a break occasionally. Inevitably, that wish for a better world means that they might ask the advertisers to ease up from time-to-time. Can you really not cope with that, Ed? Do you really believe that parents, uniquely among all the groups of society, aren’t allowed to make a request for something that would make their lives a little easier? I wonder if you just accept the world for the way it is in every respect and never try to change it in even the slightest way so that it makes your life a little better: I seriously doubt it.
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We get paid to make as difficult as possible for people to say no, it’s not an honest way to make a living, but hell it’s better than being client side.
Parents have every right to be pissed when their sugar crazed kids are driving them crazy…it’s a war out there and someone’s got to win.
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“I want every Gen X’er and Baby Boomer to cast their minds back and remember how well your own parents responded to demands for something.” …even more importantly–Generation Jonesers (the generation between the Boomers and GenXers) should cast their minds back, since there are more Jonesers than either surrounding generation, and given their unique upbringing…
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Ed your a fuckwit
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Ed – you’re a genius!
Michael – learn to spell… its YOU’RE!!
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Ok then, Ed you’re a fuckwit
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Michael, punctuation dear boy! You’ve fixed oner error – two to go.
It should read “Ed, you’re a fuckwit.”
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Me edjakayshun arn’t good nuf as you ce yous no wat i sayin but ,.?” he stil a fuckwit
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So Tash got it wrong as well funny fing dat
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your all fukwits [sic]
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Ads that make children beg their parents for cheeseburgers, toys etc?
There are far worse messages that are being conveyed in the ad industry to children and teens. @Andrea noted that parents aren’t ‘glued’ to their children and cannot supervise what media they interact with, especially with Internet on most mobile phones these days. Where does the buck stop, then? Corporates, ad agencies, broadcasters, and publishers have an ethical obligation to ensure the messages they send in their marketing efforts don’t fall on the wrong eyes/ears.
Of course it is impossible to stop all kids hearing/looking at stuff they shouldn’t, but the point is the CULTURE of the ad industry should encompass the aforesaid ethical goals/practices, and an independent regulator would assist in ensuring that.
But yes, parents should learn to be strict with their kids 😉 Thumbs up for that.
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Hey Ed, you r kinda cute – I’d like to work under you !
but given what I am about to say I doubt i will ever – I agree with some of what you said, but having worked in the industry for a few years we all know self-regulation is a bit of a rort to stop the government controlling our industry and giving us even less choices.
Also, I followed the web site link to your agency and it says you used to work on tobacco..
I guess if you can flog a product that kills, you would kinda have a less restrictive approach to regulation than some others. You know tobacco is deadlier than heroin..
I respect the right of smokers to smoke.
I respect the right of tobacco companies to flog a legal product
I respect the right of ad people to work on tobacco brands – I just don’t respect the people who do. How did you sleep at night?
If I were you I would remove that from your website as quite frankly, unless you are looking for clients such as James Hardie, boasting of your time on tobacco will turn most clients off and away from your agency.
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I also followed the trail to Ed’s career bio, and chose not to mention it in my earlier post.
But since its out there, I gotta say that I’m a bit dubious to take advice on matters of advertising ethics and family values from someone who boasts about a career built on selling toxic carcinogens.
Ed, in your reply you state that an ad for a burger “doesn’t feel like a crime”. Presumably you felt the same way about ads for cigarettes, but public opinion and/or Government regulation clearly doesn’t see it the same way, as tobacco marketing and advertising is quashed more and more each year. Meanwhile, in Asian nations where tobacco companies are less restricted, lung and associated cancers are increasing at epidemic rates.
Yes, people make their own decisions, but the evidence is very clear that the power of advertising has a profound effects on consumer decision making, particularly in the young. Whats more,your posting here highlights the lack of responsibility many in this industry take for the profound effect their work can have on the population.
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“Ed, you’re a fuckwit.”
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Now repeat after me … it takes one to know one, it takes one to know one …
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John that would apply to you as well wouldn’t it? so… it takes one to know one
it takes one to know one
ya dickhead
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Of course it does Michael.
That is, if I had called you any of those names – which I clearly haven’t. Be a good boy now and take your pills and have a good night’s sleep – you’ll feel better in the morning.
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I feel good now
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Had my valium ooh did i…… oh i better have another just in case i didn’t
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Zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz zzzzzz
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Yawn…… oh… shit…… was brufen oh well no inflammation
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@ Andrew Y Good call re tobacco – I have been trying to find the article on what big food can learn from big tobacco: http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/.....obacco.pdf
or abridged and contextualised: http://www.foodbevmarketing.co.....ction.html
Good reading for anyone in big food marketing
One of Big Tobacco’s main tactics was to emphasise the role of personal responsibility, another to promote industry self regulation as a defence against govt intervention – two things Mr Ed is big on…
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And add this to the “No!” list.
“No. Sorry but its wrong; you failed and you have to repeat year xyz”.
When was the last time anyone failed a year at high school or any of those d-list so-called uni’s?
Maybe if someone had bothered to tell all those incredibly over-confident, under-educated, gen y’s out there “NO!” a few times on their way to being handed that useless marketing degree they think qualifies them to have an opinion on everything we’d all be better off.
But that’ll never happen, because that would hurt little diddums feelings and we can’t have that.
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I do agree with your comments Ed, but it think it’s a bit unfair that you sterotype modern day parents.
Children are influenced by advertising, adults are inflused by advertising – that’s really one of our reason for being in this industry!
Across the board, all parents (not just modern parents) have got to have the balls to say ‘NO’ to their kids. Get some self control people! Don’t make ‘BigBrother’ do it for you!
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People in the ad industry are so used to concocting lies and commercial propaganda in exchange for money, that they seem to lose all moral and ehtical perspective.
As usual we have here an ad industry drone taking absolutely no responsibility for polluting society. They spread the lies and distortions, then throw up their hands and say “the consequences are nothing to do with me” !
What a grubby, shameful industry.
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