Why the game of marketing needs rules

Rules in a free market economy are difficult to frame in order to be both fair and, perhaps more significantly, to be effective. But they are clearly needed and Hugh Burkitt deftly analyses the different factors that influence rule makers, making the important point that these rules change and evolve over time to reflect society’s concerns

I have always hated authority – I think it comes from having had a severe and rather frightening nanny – and I have always believed that freedom of individual choice is an excellent thing. Indeed, I believe in a society where there is the maximum freedom of choice for everyone.

I also believe that it is morally right for all organisations to be focused on serving their customers – rather than serving themselves. How hateful it is flying with Alitalia (well, it was 25 years ago, when I last flew with them and vowed never to experience their appalling customer service again). And how infuriating it is to stand in a queue outside the Balham Royal Mail sorting office at midday on a Saturday and be told the staff have decided to close for the day with your parcel from Amazon inside.

In principle, it seems to me that the pure philosophy of marketing – identifying and satisfying customer need – is a highly moral activity, but I can’t help noticing that we haven’t yet acquired the adjective ‘Royal’ in front of The Marketing Society’s name – and when I invited our present prime minister to speak to our annual conference when he was leader of the opposition, I was told by one of his close personal advisers that he wouldn’t because it would be bad for his image.

The problem, I suppose, is us marketers. It is a quest for profit, rather than a Hippocratic oath, which drives marketers to serve their customers. According to economists, the first thing that marketers will do – if they get the opportunity – is distort the free market by creating brands and cornering as much of the market as they can at a premium price. So we need rules to keep markets competitive, and we also need rules to stop marketers behaving in all sorts of despicable ways that humans sometimes will if they think they can get away with it.

I am not saying that marketers are any worse on average than any other class of human, but if you need reminding how an apparently moral group of citizens will behave badly if they think no-one is watching, may I remind you what MPs did when left in charge of helping themselves to their own expenses.

In principle, it seems to me that the pure philosophy of marketing – identifying and satisfying customer need – is a highly moral activity

RULES REQUIRE CONSTANT MONITORING OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES

Exactly how far the rules of marketing should go to protect competition and consumers will cause endless debate, and the rules will change over time as society’s attitude towards some things becomes more relaxed and towards others becomes more hostile. In Mad Men, the near universal habit of smoking immediately catches the eye, as does the subservient role of women, and it really was much like that when I first came into marketing.

At Collett Dickenson Pearce, home of the brilliant Hamlet and Benson & Hedges campaigns, we generously offered our clients king sized fags at the start of a meeting, not plastic beakers of water. We also had very few female staff doing anything in the office other than making life comfortable for their male bosses.

When the founders of the Football Association met in London in 1863 to draw up a definitive set of rules for the beautiful game, one of the hot topics of debate was whether or not to allow the manly practice of ‘hacking’ – that is the deliberate kicking of an opponent’s shins. A member of the Blackheath Club forecast with surprising accuracy that: “If you do away with hacking, you will do away with all the courage and pluck of the game, and I will be bound to bring over a lot of Frenchmen who will beat you with a week’s practice.”

Hacking was not allowed by the FA’s rule makers and would now receive – if spotted – an immediate red card. But going back into marketing history, it is not hard to find ads that today look just as out of place as hacking. A brief search of the internet under “Ads of the past you’ll never see today” turned up the following:

“The Kenwood Chef does everything but cook – that’s what wives are for.”

“Christmas morning – she’ll be happier with a Hoover.”

“More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”

And – can this ad really be genuine? – a picture of a mother and baby with the headline:

“For a better start in life, start cola earlier.”

It was placed by the The Soda Pop Board of America, apparently based in Chicago.

The marketers’ bible – the British Code of Advertising Practice – is not a thing generally read aloud on any day of the week, or much revered for its lofty prose, but as it has been written and rewritten, not by lawyers, but by generations of marketers, it is in fact a thing of great wisdom and simplicity.

It lists the things you absolutely cannot promote, which is a short but succinct: tobacco, guns, breath-testing devices, betting systems that promise you can win games of chance, pyramid promotional schemes, prostitution and sexual massage.

And there is a longer list of other things that marketers must approach with care. But do consumers really need any protection from themselves? Can’t they make their own mind up about what they choose to consume?

Over-enthusiastic consumption of things we like is causing considerable health problems in the UK. A recent Guardian article claimed that: “Diabetes threatens to bankrupt the NHS within a generation.” Ninety per cent of diabetes is Type 2, which is closely associated with obesity. And a finger of blame is increasingly pointed at foods containing high fructose corn syrup, which food manufacturers add to a great variety of products to make them taste nicer.

This form of sugar has been described as “the poison lurking in pies, bread, sausages and cereal”, and some American academics have gone so far as to call for sugar to be regulated as a toxin. Concerns over sugar in our diet now feel rather like the early days of concern over the effects of tobacco back in the 1950s.

Alcohol also comes under regular attack from the medical profession, which is hardly surprising given the rapid rise in deaths from liver disease – up by 25% in the past decade. The Royal College of Physicians has called for a minimum retail price for alcohol and a move towards a total ban on all broadcast advertising for alcohol brands.

MARKETERS AND SOCIAL REFORMERS: A HEALTHY TENSION

Here we run into a classic misunderstanding between brand marketers and social reformers. People whose job it is to make advertising budgets work, know how hard it is to persuade any consumer to do anything. I do think that brand advertising can help switch a consumer from asking for one brand of beer to asking for another when at the bar. But I really don’t think it was advertising that made him or her go to the bar in the first place.

The category of alcohol that has grown by far the most strongly in the past 30 years is wine, which has had very little advertising spend behind it. But wine consumption has been helped by its reduction in cost in real terms, and there is no doubt in my mind that the price of alcohol is a strong influence on total consumption over time. However, whether enforcing a minimum price in supermarkets would necessarily cure the social ill of weekend binge drinking is a whole other question.

Personally, as a marketing enthusiast, I would always rather see good social marketing techniques used to discourage this particular form of irresponsible drinking, rather than see the government intervening directly with new rules on pricing. Ultimately, binge drinking as currently defined is a social activity, and I am quite sure it is possible to influence this through changed social attitudes, just as it has been possible to change attitudes in my lifetime towards drinking and driving.

Many marketing companies now wisely have their own marketing codes, which go beyond the requirements of BCAP or their own industry rules. I have been a member of a small advisory group for Mars chocolate for the past three years, which was set up to help the company assess all its marketing activity against its own code, which includes the prohibition of any marketing activity directed at children aged 12 and under.

In the same way that attitudes towards the role of women in society have changed, attitudes towards marketing to children have also changed in the past generation. Perhaps because so many mothers now go out to work, leaving their children in the care of others, parents are more sensitive about the influences on their children. And David Cameron, whose only proper job before he came into politics was as a PR man for Carlton TV, is very alive to the mood of the nation on this. Hence his call for an end to the “commercialisation and sexualisation” of children. When the Advertising Association recently conducted an investigation into this, it didn’t find a great deal to object to in the real commercial world, but parents’ concern should be noted.

We can be proud of having an industry system of self-regulation in the British Code of Advertising Practice, and the Advertising Standards Authority to enforce it

STATUTORY REGULATION VS SELF-REGULATION: A DELICATE BALANCE

Elsewhere in this issue, Hugh Davidson has written a fine piece on the importance of regulation to protect the consumer – especially in the energy and financial services markets. He argues that marketers must understand and embrace regulation. If I may return to my sporting analogy, it is important not just to play the game strictly by the rules, but to play the marketing game in the right spirit.

One thing we marketers can be proud of is having an industry system of self-regulation in the British Code of Advertising Practice, and the Advertising Standards Authority to enforce it – which actually works. In the years I served on the ASA Council, I came to the conclusion that the complicated financial services laws produced by Parliament to protect the consumer were less effective when it came to advertising than our own code. Financial services ads are awash with small print and disclaimers which lawyers love, but which merely obscure matters for the reader.

Looking forward, I think that marketers will need to be acutely aware of changing attitudes in society, the scientific truth about discoveries on health, and increasingly the need for all of us to lead more sustainable lifestyles.

For the past five decades of the Marketing Society’s existence, most marketers have been able to pursue the maximum consumption of their brand with little thought to the effect of that consumption on either individuals or society as a whole. Marketers in the next generation are going to have to think much more about how they can encourage their consumers to consume more wisely.

Ultimately, I believe marketing is as important a principle to defend in our society as democracy, and just as valuable. Marketing is consumer-led democracy in action. But like democracy, it needs rules of engagement which are carefully and continually reviewed.

This article featured in Market Leader, July 2012.

Hugh Burkitt is chief executive of the Marketing Society