Trust me, I’m an Adman!
22/07/2010

There was a time when to admit that you worked in advertising was to be regarded as some kind of moral leper, like Orson Wells in the Third Man, prepared to sell lethal ‘penicillin’ to the critically ill if it turned a fast buck. The joke we used to tell against ourselves at the time was ‘Don’t tell my mother I work in advertising, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse’.

And it’s true that, when cigarette advertising slogans ranged from ‘Just what the doctor ordered’ (L&M cigarettes) to ‘For digestion’s sake’ (Pall Mall), tobacco advertising might fairly have been described as irresponsible, but the industry has since regulated itself to the point that such abuses are rare.

Nowadays, it seems to me that things have come so far that we in the advertising industry are the last bastions of moral restraint in the media. We are policed by ASA with its watchwords of ‘Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful’, and woe betide the advertiser or his agency that falls foul of them.

For example, the ASA recently rebuked the advertisers of Fairy Power Spray for a commercial endorsed by celebrity chef Ainsley Harriot, which showed him resting his face on a cooker hob and kissing it. Their concern was that children might copy him and burn their lips – like the terrorist trying to blow up a car through the exhaust pipe. Unlikely, but it shows the rigorous restraints under which the industry operates.

By contrast, on-line media can do what it likes, with complete impunity.  Witness the tribute sites that were erected to the memory of murderer Raoul Moat on Facebook, and the refusal of the operators to remove them despite Government pressure. This week the BBC has been urged to review the use of Facebook after users of its Match of the Day site posted offensive comments about World Cup players and presenters.  But is boycott the only option?

In a world where you can be prosecuted for downloading pornographic images from the web, or making an offensive comment on Twitter – like Councillor John Dixon who was reprimanded for calling the Church of Scientology ‘stupid’ – shouldn’t what is sauce for the goose be sauce for the gander? As John Dixon said, “I don’t see why Scientologists should have any greater protection from ridicule than I have as a member of the Liberal Democrats”.

I don’t have anything against Scientologists – or Liberal Democrats for that matter – but I’m with you on that one, John. Come and join us in the advertising profession.  You’ll find us more tolerant, understanding and morally responsible than the lot of them!