Don't shoot the messengers

Advertising people are shocking worriers. Forget
the brash exterior, the gift of the gab, the silly specs, the loud
suits - these things merely disguise the bottomless pit of insecurity
and anxiety to which they are prone. Are my ideas any good? Is the
client about to give us the chop? Will I get fired? These are constant
companions of the inventive people who dream up advertisements for a
living.

Almost everyone else feels about as
sorry for advertising people as they do for estate agents and benefits
scroungers, though in truth the advertising industry is nowhere near as
smug, disreputable or manipulative as is frequently made out. It goes
about its business of promoting brands and services responsibly,
observing its self-imposed codes, rules and regulations with dutiful
compliance. Advertisements are subject to forensic scrutiny by
clearance committees and even quite small numbers of public complaints
can lead to them being pulled. It doesn't make for much of a story of
course, but advertising, on the whole, plays the game with a doggedly
straight bat.

This
boring fact has not stopped many well-resourced, strongly-principled
groups and organisations from believing that advertising is either
wholly or partly to blame for many of society's ills. Last week
Compass, a left-of-centre thinktank, published Commercialisation of
Childhood, a report outlining the extent to which children in this
country have, apparently, become the most materialistic in the world