Woolley Marketing: Is advertising a waste of time and money… or dangerously powerful?
Right now, it seems advertising is somehow both not worth spending money on and so incredibly effective that it should be regulated and curtailed for the sake of humanity. How can both be true, asks TrinityP3 chief executive Darren Woolley?
When the global economic headwinds were a mere zephyr, advertising industry voices were quick to plead with marketers to maintain or increase their spend.
These days, procurement teams, who had begun to embrace the challenge of optimising advertising value, are now finding themselves back to cost-cutting to drive the savings demanded by CFOs to improve the bottom line.
That one-hundred-year-old quote “half of my advertising budget is wasted – I just don’t know which half” hangs over us today, even though an ocean of data, some clever algorithms and artificial intelligence is making a good fist of answering this question in real time for anyone who wants to listen.
Yet, it is almost inevitable that when things are good, advertising budgets thrive, but in hard times they take a hammering. At the same time, there are groups in society that point to advertising as being a powerful tool for those who greedily wish to profit from the suffering of others.
Everyone from climate crisis activists to health professional groups, to social workers and more, are calling for bans on advertising as the solution to the many societal issues they are addressing.
Recent research into gambling found that young adults were particularly susceptible to advertising, in that it encouraged them into increasingly risky behaviour, punting more often and risking larger amounts of money each time.
But surely this is a desire of advertisers everywhere, no matter what the category or industry – to have their advertising deliver not just increased customer spend, but also frequency in the purchase of their product or service?
Isn’t that the purpose of advertising? To persuade people to choose one brand over another?
So, on one hand, we have an industry that feels compelled to champion and celebrate creativity at every opportunity in the face of clients who are compelled to cut their advertising spend at the slightest hint of a downturn. On the other, we have those who see advertising as such a powerful force that it needs to be banned at every opportunity as the best solution to the health, environment, and social issues we face.
How can both be true?
The problem is that firstly, as an industry, we are our own worst critics and secondly, we are not particularly good at defending our position and championing our benefits in the face of these criticisms.
Now, please don’t misinterpret what I am saying. I believe the advertising industry should be held accountable to a society’s legal, ethical and social rules. If advertising is misleading or deceptive then clearly it will be in breach of consumer protection legislation that already exists.
There are already an infinite number of category guidelines and rules regarding everything from greenwashing to how alcoholic beverages, automobiles and other categories are advertised. Financial services must notify potential customers to consider the product disclosure statement. And it goes on. Because clearly advertising is a powerful persuasive tool.
If advertisers and their agencies are breaching these guidelines, then they must be held accountable.
What is the solution?
Rather than championing creativity largely to ourselves, we should be demonstrating the power of advertising to the business community and the benefits of advertising to society.
The recent announcement by our industry of the commissioning a report on the economic benefits of advertising is a great start.
But we also need to acknowledge that if the power of advertising is contributing to harm and damage in society, we need to toughen the rules and improve the enforcement.
While banning advertising makes an attention-getting headline, it is not the solution to all the problems society faces.
The Peter Parker principle says: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Perhaps we need to remind our clients of the great power that comes from great advertising, while acknowledging that we are also responsible, collectively, for the outcomes it delivers. Perhaps then society will see the value the advertising industry provides. 
Darren Woolley is the chief executive officer of global marketing management consultancy TrinityP3.
There’s plenty of evidence (see the work of Andrew Ehrenberg) to suggest advertising is actually neither of these. It’s a weak force. But it’s not a waste of money – it builds and maintains memory structures over time, and can nudge someone in buying mode to a particular brand.
To say advertising gives us ‘great power’ is a bit of stretch.
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