How to shoot yourself in the credibilities

WARNING: If controversial recommendations are to be taken seriously, they need to come from a credible source, says Jeremy Bullmore

I think it was Gore Vidal but it may not have been. And I certainly can’t remember when it was.

But some years ago, an authoritative American was talking on the radio about the relative efficiency of American and British intelligence services. He was either impressively wellinformed or suspiciously over-confident: it was hard to tell which.
Until, that is, he referred with great familiarity to MI5. But he didn’t say MI5. He said M Fifteen. And in that immediate instant, both his case and his authority were blown for good.
Shot, destroyed, obliterated: justly or unjustly, never to be recovered.

M Fifteen? That’s it! Game over!

I don’t know what such self-propelled wrecking-balls are called. They’re a lot more lethal than putting your foot in it or putting your foot in your mouth or shooting yourself in the foot. You don’t just look foolish: you forfeit any further right to attention or respect. Perhaps it should be called shooting yourself in the credibilities.

Mumsnet did it recently. In a report about the nourishment levels of our young, they talked about a million starving children. To starve is to cause to die. In the course of last year, fewer than 10 children in the UK died from malnutrition.
With an important story to tell, Mumsnet, needlessly, shot themselves in the credibilities.

Every time we put a case, make a presentation, write an ad or protest to the Home Office, we risk doing the same. Hyperbole is usually
OK. Vacuous opinion may be mocked but its very vacuity usually protects it from clinical annihilation. For the sceptical listener, already predisposed to doubt and to challenge, only the self-administered bullet to the credibilities delivers knock-out satisfaction.

In October 2011, The Public Interest ResearchCentre (PIRC) and the World Wildlife Fund-UK (WWF) published a paper called Think of me as evil? Opening the ethical debates in advertising. (The title was prompted by a 2010 piece by Rory
Sutherland in this very publication.) The two charities share ‘a passion for safeguarding the natural world’, and ‘tackling the global threat of climate change and helping people to change the way they live to ease the pressure on natural resources.’ In this report, they turn their attention to the impacts of advertising: a sensible and potentially valuable undertaking.

As you read, and from quite early on, niggling doubts begin to surface about the writers’ qualifications and diligence. They say that “the standard defences of the advertising industry can be summarised” as follows: “1. Advertising merely redistributes consumption. 2. Advertising is simply a mirror of cultural values. 3. Advertising is about the promotion of choice.”

Well, sort of; but by no means everyone says that; and they’re certainly not ‘standard defences’. No mention, for example, of the value of strong brands or the benign effect of advertising on competition and prices.
When you find a reference to yourself, interest, naturally, peaks a bit. It’s partly vanity – and partly because it provides a welcome opportunity to check on accuracy and veracity. Readers are told that “In his Campaign column, Jeremy
Bullmore… regularly links advertising to the promotion of choice, in turn positioning choice as one of the key tenets of democracy.

His central thesis is that the key role of advertising is to provide information that enables people to make better choice.”
In over 500 columns for Campaign, I have never had a ‘central thesis’. Indeed, I’ve occasionally cast doubt, for much advertising, on the value of ‘information’.

To support their confident claims, the authors direct their readers, first to my book, More Bull More, which contains not a single Campaign column; and then to a non-existent publication referred to as Collected Essays which, were it to exist, wouldn’t either. Of the 71 references included in this report, this may, of course, be the only wholly trashy one; but confidence in the authors’ rigour does take another small hit.
Curiously, at no point do the authors examine the economic system of which advertising is a part. It’s as if, having identified the connecting rod as a questionable component, its function is challenged without reference to the rest of the internal combustion engine.

Towards the end, the authors write: “There is evidence that advertising may have significant negative cultural impacts: increasing our ecological footprint by boosting consumption; influencing our values and identities in ways that undermine our concern about social and environmental challenges; and eroding wellbeing and freedom of choice.”

And while it’s acknowledged that “the evidence base does not permit a categorical assessment of the impacts of advertising… nonetheless,precautionary action should be taken now”.

Good, you think: too many commentators just do the easy bit. They point out the problematic aspects of a system or enterprise but delicately refrain from proposing remedies or alternatives.

These authors are braver. “Finally, measures should be taken to make the public more aware of advertising’s implicit impacts. Whilst media literacy training programmes must warn adults and children of the implicit impacts of advertising, this… will clearly not be sufficient alone. One proposal is for the inclusion of a disclaimer on every billboard. This could read: ‘This advertisement may influence you in ways of which you are not consciously aware. Buying consumer goods is unlikely to improve your wellbeing and borrowing to buy consumer goods may be unwise; debt can enslave.’”

I had two immediate responses on reading this proposal: one of opinion and one of fact. It finally confirmed me in my growing suspicion about the authors’ estimation of their fellow citizens: it’s one of condescension bordering on contempt.
And it is a categorical fact that their proposed disclaimer is totally and hilariously impractical.

The average length of attention allocated by the average person to the average poster is less than 10 seconds. So anybody who knows anything about advertising knows that seven words on a poster is already two words too many. The recommended disclaimer runs to 35 words. Irrespective of content, from any distance, such words would be indecipherable.

M Fifteen!

With this considered proposal, Think of Me As Evil? finally and fatally shoots itself in its credibilities. Whatever its latent merits (which to me, at any rate, remain deeply latent), it’s forfeited the right to be taken seriously.
So next time you put a case, make a presentation, write an ad or protest to the Home Office, be very careful indeed. There will always be people longing to see you shoot yourself in the credibilities. Be sure to deny them that pleasure.
 

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