Advertising

All election campaigns see politicians exaggerate, stretch the truth and make promises they can't keep. But if a report issued in early December is anything to go by, the 2019 general election campaign was a particularly dishonest affair - and one party was particularly guilty. On 10 December, Metro reported: Similarly, the Independent reported: Websites which make no attempt to be impartial were more vociferous. Under the headline, The Tory war on truth – and how to fight back, Open Democracy reported: Independent fact checkers have found that 88% of Tory Facebook adverts contain lies, while 0% of Labour’s do.

It seems like it should be quite the scandal: one co-founder of Facebook chastising another publicly for a business decision that has, allegedly, had major social reverberations. In response to Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren calling out Facebook for loosening its restrictions on political advertising, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes took to Twitter. ‘I have a feeling that many people in tech will see Warren’s thread implying FB empowers Trump over Warren as unfair,’ Hughes wrote. ‘But Mark [Zuckerberg], by deciding to allow outright lies in political ads to travel on Facebook, is embracing the philosophy behind Trumpism and thereby tipping the scales.

Am I allowed to mention Nigel Farage? Of course I am, this is The Spectator, and its readers enjoy analysing all kinds of people and ideas, even those they find unpalatable. Readers of Campaign, however, aren’t quite as broad-minded. Campaign is the trade magazine of the advertising industry, and when it published an interview with Farage some of its readers went into meltdown. Why? Surely Farage is the ideal subject for Campaign. He’s connected with millions of loyal consumers in ways other brands can only dream of. You’d think that people in the advertising world would want to hear how he did it, given that building brands and connecting with people are exactly what they’re supposed to do.

My first award for intelligent design this week goes to Dublin airport for displaying a sign which reads ‘Lounges. Turn back. No lounges beyond this point.’ It may seem like a trivial thing, but it takes a rare intelligence to think in this way. It’s one thing to put up a sign that says ‘Lounges, this way’. But it takes nous to think ‘yes, well and good, but what happens if people see the first sign but miss the second one?’ In all likelihood, they would end up walking 500 yards in the wrong direction, as I nearly did. Signage and wayfinding are mostly designed for people who never make mistakes. Should you misread your gate number at an airport, and end up at gate 92 instead of gate 29, you are doomed.

People sometimes ask what slogan could have swayed the Brexit vote: the opposite of the touchstone phrase ‘Take back control’. There are many suggestions, my own being: ‘Don’t leave — it’s what the French want us to do.’ No Europhile committee would ever have approved a jingoistic slogan, of course; yet the feelings of committed Europeans are irrelevant. Those people will vote Remain in any case. Instead you need to reach the ambivalent, sceptical or mildly hostile. This raises the central question about communication: do you want to feel good about yourself, or do you want to change the minds of others? The art of sloganeering can serve two powerful ends — persuasion or cementing tribal allegiance. Usually you can’t do both.

It was really only a matter of time before a men’s shaving company began virtue signaling about #MeToo and toxic masculinity. Welcome to the brave new world of ‘woke capital’ – Gillette and their cringeworthy ad is just the latest example. Their short film, which basically plays on familiar denunciations of guys as insufficiently sensitive, is all about showing how much Gillette cares about making the world a better place that is an absolute utopia full of neutered men. Of course, Gillette does not seem to care so much about...treating their workers with basic decency, but...details. Gillette is far from alone in their attempt to showcase their exquisite dignity and compassion.

Walking down the street on my lunch break, I sometimes pass a delivery man wheeling a large handcart of Japanese food. The cart bears a striking message: ‘Creating a world where everyone believes in their own authenticity.’ It raises some immediate questions: for instance, what does it mean to believe in your own authenticity? How would you go about creating a world where everyone does? And what’s it got to do with Japanese food? It’s unfair to single out the delivery service. Today, brands big and small have a Profound Statement to make. On my way home I pass a 30ft electronic billboard which displays a young couple embracing beneath a glowing night sky. The left side is filled with a portentous message: ‘Your time in the universe is finite.

I said last week that WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell was in ‘a very exposed position’. Sure enough on Saturday he resigned from the global advertising giant he created and had run for more than 32 years. ‘But he didn’t “create” it,’ one ex-employee told me, illustrating the internal resentments that seem to have contributed to Sorrell’s downfall. ‘He just made a lot of acquisitions and counted the pennies.’ Whatever he did or didn’t do, his departure was undignified and ill-explained.

Almost two and a half years ago, feminists called on Transport for London to remove adverts of a scantily-clad Australian from the tube. Protests against the infamous 'beach body ready' adverts claimed that showcasing a woman in a bikini to peddle weight-loss pills was offensive to women. Apparently the sight of a skinny woman was upsetting to all of us non-skinny women. And, after pressure from London Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2016, TfL promised to ban all adverts which didn't adhere to the notion of 'body positivity'. Not all women were happy about the ban. Back then, I, and other commentators, warned that giving TfL the power to decide which images of a woman were ‘damaging’ and which were acceptable was pretty dangerous.