The logic of advertising is crooked as a dog’s hind leg! Ad logic is call “pecuniary logic” meaning the advertisement’s words or copy, headlines and claims are stated as though they are true and/or factual but the logic in advertising is they are not really meant to be believed. It’s just advertising to sell something, nothing more nothing less.

The goal of advertising is to grab your attention just long enough to try and convince you to spend, consume, try something, accept something, and the bottom line is to extract money from you at some point in time, preferably sooner than later. Advertising copywriters are especially good at leaving out crucial information which it had been known by you, the consumer, would too often make the advertiser’s claims virtually meaningless.

You would like to think advertising people are “hip”, young-minded, rebellious geniuses working at the cutting edge of American culture. However, many of those who make this career choice are not always proud of their chosen career and some of the more “thinking” individuals in advertising are troubled by the ethical neutrality of the business of advertising.

Consumers should be demanding to know why the advertising industry

shamelessly, knowingly or unknowingly, promotes endless, meaningless, unnecessary consumptive behavior as well as “killer” products all of which too often also happen to be targeted toward children. Even advertising associations and consumer advocacy magazines have not even held the industry accountable. For a clear conscience, should advertising people only work for advertisers whose products you would gladly have your own children consume?

Advertising people should maybe ask themselves, “Do I really want to spend the best years of my life urging people to consume questionable products or do I prefer to “sellout” for the almighty dollar?” Too many advertising people may justify their job of advertising questionable products and services by claiming that it is the government’s role to determine which products and services should or should not be advertised. As long as the products or services are legal, it is the advertising agencies’ responsibility to do the best job possible to advertise its clients’ products and services.

There is something ethically wrong with the aforementioned statement but so is the fact that there is some medical researcher somewhere earning maybe $35,000 a year searching for medical cures and new medicines while the so-called creative advertising person

conjuring up slogans like, “Where’s the beef?” or “It’s bubblicious!” is sitting pretty somewhere making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year promoting endless, needless, questionable and suspect consumptive behavior.

Can those working in the advertising business even be ethically responsible and morally benevolent considering all the pressures inherent in a capitalist society and the advertising industry itself? Advertising agencies are pressured to try and keep advertisers advertising no matter what or advertising people may lose their jobs. With all the inherent pressures in the advertising industry, the demands, deadlines, politics and so forth, can there ever really be much room for ethical decision-making?

So is it any wonder that in public opinion surveys for credibility and ethical behavior that advertising people rank at the bottom of the rankings along with personal injury attorneys, defense attorneys, used car salespeople, slumlords and child labor sweatshop owner/operators?

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: ADBUSTERS MAGAZINE WINTER 1997