It’ll all come out in the wash

In the Sixties, social scientists were shocked to discover that labour-saving devices were a con.

Washing machines and tumble dryers worked. But they didn’t save labour. Research showed that American housewives were spending as much time on domestic chores as housewives in Bulgaria. This led to much scratching of heads, given the lack of labour saving devices behind the Iron Curtain.

Eventually the scientists thought they had found a culprit. Advertising.

Their hypothesis was that the years that saw a significant increase in household penetration of white goods were the same years that TV advertising surged. The cosy soap operas with their gentle hints to purchase had been replaced by the hard sell cameos of housewives selling the soap manufactures latest usp to their friends and neighbours.

Suddenly, the ‘clean enough is good enough’ days of bars of soap and scrubbing weren’t good enough anymore. Shirts needed to be ‘blue white’, then they needed to pass ‘the critical daylight test’, etc. etc. Forget fat shaming . . . dirt shaming beat labour-saving hands down, and housewives felt compelled to wash on and on and on.

Aha, everybody cried, Vance Packard was right. It’s The Hidden Persuaders. Those Marketing Machiavellis are making us buy things we don’t want and can’t afford-and do things we didn’t ought to, an accusation that’s been regularly levelled at the ad business since the dark days of snake oil.

It’s a trope that’s still being re-burnished today. The late (and never great) Cambridge Analytica is accused of fixing elections and referenda. They were, allegedly, using covert messages and secret skills to hypnotise voters.

Well, here’s the news from the inside.

Despite ad people’s insistence to the contrary, advertising still remains a pretty hit and miss affair. Not much has changed since the days of ‘half my advertising budget is wasted.’

It is questionable what percentage of ads ever fully achieve their objectives. In this sense we are like the movie business. No one sets out to make a box office stinker, but it happens with depressing regularity.

Of course, there are the advertising equivalent blockbusters and luckily, I’ve been attached to more than my fair share. But it is crediting the industry with super powers it plainly lacks for the media to suggest we are employing supernatural arts to change peoples wills against their will.

The fact that digital has improved targeting and (possibly) reduced wastage, doesn’t make the messaging more effective. In this sense, at least, the medium is not the message.

The benign framing of the social of social media makes it appear like a social service: for the good of all, egalitarian, free, or at least not for profit. But we need to pay more attention to the other word, media. If the big ‘social’ media companies were called Facebook Broadcasting, or Twitter Digital Advertising Platform, then we’d feel differently about them, wouldn’t we?

Renaming won’t happen any time soon, so it’s essential to address the issue of signposting as part of any new regulation of digital advertising. By signposting we mean making clear what is an ad, what messages are being paid for, and by whom.

Then if, as in old school media, you have to make paid for advertising obvious (e.g. Advertisement Feature, above advertorials, distinct advertising breaks on TV) we can be persuaded, or not, without the subtle aroma of subterfuge.

This would help to get across the fact that Facebook et al are commercial media like commercial TV, not just a cosy social service. And, if there is good to come out of ‘Cambridge Analyticagate’ let it be that the persuaders, such as they are, are in plain sight.