ADVERTISING is swarming over the media and spilling over. Hype, media-blitz, brouhaha, ballyhoo-advertisements sing, swing, howl, dance and mimick. There is so much of advertising that you can hardly take any of it in because this extravaganza of the so-called ‘persuasive art’ strangely precludes the very thing which interests you particularly.
“. . . . almost every advertisement you see is obviously designed, in some way or another, to fool the consumer: the print that they don’t want you to read is small; the statements are written in an obscure way. It is obvious to anybody that the product is not being presented in a scientific way. Therefore in the selling business, there is lack of integrity,” writes Richard P. Feyman in his book What Do You Care What Other People Think.
What do YOU think? Or don’t you too care what others think?
Looking back at my days as a creative director and chief copywriter (1976-88) I do not feel very happy with the modern trends in advertising. (Incidentally, let me explain that true copywriters are people who not only know the beauty and intricacies of language and who can write original stuff, but who also possess trained sensibilities to appreciate good things in life and who can express them beautifully. Among them I do not count myself though I have published four slim books on advertising. In UK many copywriters are published authors,poets and playwrights.)
I am not very happy with ‘modern advertising’ perhaps because I do not very much care for the word ‘modern’. Was not the gas stove very modern when kitchen stoves are quite happy with wood-burning, charcoal or paraffin stoves before the arrival of kitchen-ranges and the microwave-stove?
Or didn’t the drawing rooms look comfortably modern with fire-places burning log-wood, embellished with shining pokers and fire guards neatly arranged under the cornice before the arrival of electric heaters?
Or wasn’t travelling by train, hauled by the chug-chug steam locomotive, modern enough in its days when jet airliners had not yet made their debut in the skies?
Perhaps I am too old (I am 76) to digest the modern clipped and curled advertising jargons so fashionable and proudly borrowed from the sub-cultures of the West, which a great majority of our own admasses do not understand!
During my days in ‘creative advertising’ it was believed that advertising failed if the advertiser, his products or services were not fully understood convincingly. That was, and still is, the reason why advertising is criticized because it works up and unnecessarily urges people to buy things they may not be actually in need of.
Professional advertising people argued that a good advertisement must essentially impart awareness, knowledge, desire, conviction, brand preference and decision. It should attract attention, be original, have a focal point, be immediately comprehensible, have a logical sequence of factors, have movement and be a unified whole.
An advertisement was snot considered good if it ignored rhythm (intelligent and well-sounding repetition), proportion (not necessarily geometrical), scale (density of masses and colours, emphasis (recognizing that all-emphasis is no emphasis at all, and headlines which were not just jussive but which combined the declarative, identificative, testimonial and generative of curiosity.
These values are still valid. Professional advertising still emphasizes that creativity is the natural outcome of intellectual curiosity, that society does not tolerate too much of idiosyncrasy or too much of originality, that the society’s cultural values (things people hold most dear) must never be under-rated. That no two people speak the same way or grasp a long sentence or thought at the same speed.
Advertising is still looked up as a profession with great responsibility to national economy and national culture. If trade and industry turn the wheels of economy, advertising oils these wheels. It is a noble profession because it supports our right to choose. Sir Winston Churchill described this profession in these words: “Advertising nourishes the consuming power of man. It creates wants for a better standard of living. It sets up before man the goal of a better home,better clothing, better food for himself and his family. It spurs the individual exertion and greater production. It brings together infertile uion those things which otherwise would never have met.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “If I were starting my life over again, I am inclined to think I would go into the advertising business in preference to almost any other.”
I greatly enjoyed my days in advertising. Now I look back at my working days as a happy dream and it seems that my colleagues in the profession (some of them are no more here) are watching me as I write these lines with a reminder that if consummate professional advertising skills are ignored, Public Relations is standing around the corner to take over.
Already, advertising is often treated as a part of public relations. The very thin line that divides the two is highly visible. As we know, advertising presents (or should present) the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects for the product or service at the lowest possible cost. Public Relations practice is the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its public. What a fertile union these two are capable of making!
