'Not now, Greta' – it's time the ad industry rediscovers its real purpose

When I say “good”, I mean it was often hilarious, frequently embarrassing and occasionally (almost) genuine.

I’m talking about the advertising industry, in recent years, seeing its mission as “saving the world”.

Despite being hired to help their clients sell products, some agencies have spent an awful lot of time hectoring consumers about the environment, single-use plastics and other stereotypically worthy causes. I’ve heard industry leaders solemnly censuring the very consumerism that pays their salaries and referring to “Greta” as though she we were a personal friend. One even advised her industry colleagues to get Extinction Rebellion to speak to their agencies. Even though these agencies would be the just the sort of targets that Extinction Rebellion would love to see extinct.

None of this seemed to matter as adland’s mantra declared that all brands must have a “purpose”. Ironically, the industry failed to see that the very thing it had lost was its purpose. Namely, to persuade people to buy things. Instead, agencies now seemed more interested in persuading people not to buy things.

In a brilliant new book 'Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell', Steve Harrison documents advertising’s shift from selling things and its vainglorious adoption of what it saw as loftier ideals. He mentions last year’s Climate Strike, which was fully endorsed by a number of ad agencies whose clients included Audi, Honda and (I swear I’m not making this up) BP and British Airways.

Clients themselves were far from blameless. The height of their hubris came only a few weeks ago with their attempts to co-opt the Black Lives Matter protests. Ben & Jerry’s – owned by Unilever - told us that we eradicate white supremacy. Hear, hear. So how about Unilever starting with its own boardroom?

Advertising and its brands became addicted to the vanity of virtue, but let’s hope their Poundland piety has finally come to end. Because the aftermath of Covid-19 will change everything.

Clients’ businesses have been decimated and, in many cases, forced to shut down. As they begin reopen, they’ll need to save their jobs by selling whatever’s been languishing in their literal or virtual warehouses, and they’ll need their agencies to help them as never before. From now on, the only virtue clients will need to see signalled by their agencies is an ability to sell. And the only climate they’ll want to change is the economic one.

The perfect metaphor for this involves Zion Lights, former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. She has abandoned ship – the bright pink one once moored at Oxford Circus – and gone off to work for the nuclear power industry.

It’s all going to be very different. When I mentor advertising students, I implore them to stop wasting their time on ads about saving the world. I’m not saying these issues aren’t important – of course they are – but in the 'new normal', agencies will need people who can sell products and this could be very good news.

The industry now has to rediscover its purpose. It has to sell to survive and will require ever smarter and more engaging ways of doing so. Past crises augur well for this one because some of the greatest ads ever made were created during the recessions of the 70s, 80s and 90s. They were great because they had to be.

People in advertising are very fond of quoting Bill Bernbach. However, the one Bernbach aphorism they tend to forget is the one that Steve Harrison quotes in his book: “The purpose of advertising is to sell. That is what the client is paying for and if that does not permeate every idea you have, every word you write, every picture you take, you are a phoney and you need to get out of this business.”

If people in advertising start selling again, they can do some wonderful things. They can get people spending; they can rescue businesses and livelihoods, not to mention charities whose donations have completely dried up. They can boost the economy and increase UK tax revenues, which in turn will create more funding for education, social services and the NHS.

And there’s the irony. If they stop trying to “save the world”, they actually could save the world.