New Citizenship founder pens open letter challenging Sir Martin Sorrell to debate ethics of advertising
New Citizenship founder Jon Alexander has written an open letter to WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell in which he challenges him to a public debate regarding their conflicting views on the state of the ad industry.
The reposte has come in response to a recent article Sir Sorrell wrote for The Telegraph in which he defends the ad industry as a “genuine British success story” and calls for politicians and public figures to halt the swathe of “ad bashing” and recognise the fact it is “an engine of economic growth, and a key component of our national prosperity”.
In his open letter Alexander claims to be one of the authors of a report Sir Sorrell cited in his piece, called Think Of Me As Evil? Opening the Ethical Debates in Advertising, and adds: “I make this offer because I am not the crazed, yoghurt-knitting activist hurling stones from outside the system that you suggest, but an industry professional of some standing myself.
“I would argue that the advertising industry today is in a sorry state; and that the opportunity to find its feet lies precisely in engaging seriously with the criticisms that you instead seek to reduce to absurdity.
“As I and my co-authors said in our report, there is both a quantitative and a qualitative problem with the role of advertising in society today. We have too much advertising, and it is promoting deeply unhelpful values. In an age when a social psychologist can win the Nobel Prize for Economics for dismissing the idea that humans are rational decision makers, we can no longer pretend that we all know what we’re thinking all the time.
"There is significant experimental evidence that advertising as it exists today is normalising and validating sets of cultural values that directly undermine our efforts to tackle some of the biggest challenges we face, from climate change to severe poverty and inequality.”
He concluded by saying: “I do not necessarily expect you to agree wholeheartedly, but I have seen your contributions to the wider environmental and social debate, and I know you recognise the severity of these challenges. You are a good man who wants to do what is right. So am I. Let’s come together and debate this constructively; not throw stones at one another across the World Wide Web."
Alexander is founder of Citizenship Project and has previously worked for agencies including Fallon and AMV BBDO.
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