Do real people care about social purpose?
When we set up The Ninety-Niners, we were heavily influenced by Andrew Tenzer’s Empathy Delusion and Orlando Wood’s Lemon. And then I read Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell by Steve Harrison; a book that gave us real confidence that we were onto something. I devoured it in a morning, and shared it with everyone I could.
Six months later, Steve got in touch out of the blue. I’d never met Steve. It didn’t occur to me he knew who we were. It was humbling and exciting to be asked to contribute to the new edition.
The core idea of the book, that liberal-leaning adland is embarrassed by capitalism and is assuaging its guilt by attempting to save the world, is a brilliant explanation of why our industry is so out of touch with real people.
“Our politics dictate the ads we create and distance us from our audience”
Steve takes a savage and highly entertaining swipe at brands that tout their social purpose . For him, brands are not there to save the world and advertising has become too sanctimonious and politicised. For me, it’s not that brands can’t take a politically motivated position. It can work for some brands in some cases. It’s the fact that the position every brand takes just happens to reflect the agency and marketing departments that created it, and not the real people that brands are supposed to serve.
Imagine if a laundry detergent started advocating for retaining national identity? Or a chocolate bar campaigned against woke-culture? It would quite rightly be met with outrage. And yet the reverse has become marketing orthodoxy
Of course companies should behave ethically, treat people well, be mindful of their impact on the world and pay their taxes. But that doesn’t mean brands should go around virtue signalling as a marketing strategy. Of course our industry has to address really important issues of diversity and inclusion. We need more diverse talent providing more diverse opinions and making advertising more representative. But that seems to have been confused with the idea that we need a mono-culture of liberal sensibilities, unable to empathise with mainstream opinions, creating ads for itself.
In the book, Ant and I talk about Pampers Unicef, One Pack = One Vaccine, one of the most celebrated purpose-driven campaigns of all time. It has run for 16 years and saved the lives of 200 million babies, virtually eliminating newborn tetnus. But it was conceived as a sales promotion to combat a competitor’s ‘Buy One Get One Free’ in Boots. We figured ‘Buy One, Save a Life’ would be a compelling alternative for mums in store. The campaign has endured, not because of its social impact, but the commercial impact that came from emotionally connecting with mums, engaging retailers and selling product.
Steve argues that adland’s real purpose is to sell the products that pay the wages of everyone in the value chain. And to pay the taxes that fund schools, hospitals, green innovation and all the rest. It is a moral case for capitalism that is rather unfashionable in Shoreditch at the moment. I don’t know if Steve admires Steven Pinker, but if you want to read the case for the civilising, life-saving power of free trade, go and read Enlightenment Now.
Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell is straight onto the list of must-read books about advertising. It should be a set text for every marketing and advertising course in the world. And a wake-up call for an industry too absorbed in its own smug self-righteousness to remember why it exists.
