Consumer Agencies
I would suggest that there is now room for a consumer-orientated advertising agency. Some of the most pertinent quarrels between advertisers and their critics are really based on a conflict of interest. In practice the manufacturer very often best serves his own interest (profit) by serving that of his customers (satisfaction and value for money), and where this is de- monstrably the case, as with Marks and Spen- cer's, there is no problem. But in, for instance, the para-medical field the conflict is clear. The manufacturer wants to sell his products as much as and as often as possible; the consumer merely wants good health. Sometimes the manufacturer's object seems to be to persuade the public that his product is essential to good health—that people will be below their best unless they take his pills. His financial interest would best be served by a nation of self-medicating hypochondriacs; both in theory and in practice his interest may be very different from the consumer's.
Now the advertising agencies are also con- cerned, first, with their clients' interests. They sell their services as advocates and are therefore, by definition, on the clients' side. In varying degrees, as it happens, they are consumer- conscious and socially conscientious, bui their function is to sell—essentially they are extensions of their clients' sales and distribution organisa- tions.
The new kind of agency would be on the con- sumers' side. Like normal agencies it would have to be convinced that good advertising is economically necessary and socially useful and it would help to sell its clients' goods and services with all the skill a professional advertising team could command. But there would be two impor- tant departures from normal agency practice. First, it would be highly selective about its clients, Secondly, all the advertising and promotional material it prepared would be submitted to a consumer panel (as well as to the client) before being made public.
Some agencies are already fairly selective about their accounts, but the public does not know what they base their selections on. Con- sumer-orientated agencies would publish criteria for client acceptability and advertising practice. In these criteria they would try to define both what is a 'good' product and what is 'good' advertising from the consumer's point of view, and would guarantee that any product they advertised and every claim it made conformed to these criteria. I am not suggesting that there is any set of rules which will infallibly reveal the consumers' best interests in every situation, but the difficulties of deciding what the customer really wants are often exaggerated. Some people want the service which Harrods gives and are willing to pay for it—fine; some people want the social satisfaction of keeping up with or ahead of their neighbours—fine; some people in some of their shopping want to be gloriously irrational —good luck to them; but most people in most of their shopping do want to be rational and do want value for money. One can be sure that enough people want to buy the best quality pos- sible at the price they can afford often enough for an agency which made this its guiding policy in client selection to win public support. But price is not the only factor; there could be other agencies based on different consumer policies.
in a sense the Design Centre is already one of these. Consider how it works. No product can be displayed—advertised—in the Design Centre unless it has been approved by the Council of Industrial Design and put on the design index. But, as the Design Centre is in the Haymarket, millions of people never see it and will go on buying lousily designed products all their lives for aught the Centre knows. Its effect on the general population is limited by the size of its audience. What might not be done to make the country more design-conscious if the Centre put out regular magazine-type TV programmes about well-designed products? These programmes, paid for by the manufacturers of the products but de- vised by the Centre, could be effective (and socially useful) advertising. Moreover, if the effect of this were to make manufacturers pay more attention to design it could also have export repercussions. One of the reasons often submitted for our export failure is the backward or indifferent design of many British goods.
Similarly, if a general consumer agency en- couraged manufacturers to consider the objec- tive needs of the public, advertisers might bother less about short-term marketing advantages and put more research into the real developments which will keep our industry viable. Here, very tentatively, are a few of the rules which a price/ quality-based consumer-research agency might consider.
It would exclude: any product which does not come up to the British Standards wherever applicable; any product whose manufacturer enforces resale price maintenance in regard to it or who enters into restrictive price agreements with his competitors; any product which is more expensive than rival brands which are materially the same; any medicinal or proprietary product which .was not unconditionally approved by a competent, independent medical 'jury.'
It would also ban the following practices: the making of unsubstantiable, pseudo-scientific or meaningless claims; advertising directed at children; the use of sponsors and testimonials unless accompanied by an affirmation that the sponsor had not been paid in money or kind by the advertiser; the use of guarantees which re- strict the purchaser's rights under common /law.
The omissions which this list no doubt contains will illustrate some of the difficulties in drawing up advertising rules. So much that is dubious about advertising is a matter of inflection, sug- gestion or innuendo. This is the main reason for the second part of this plan—the consumer panel. Like the 1TCA, this panel would have a veto. It could use it on any advertisement it thought dishonest, socially undesirable or mean- ingless. Because the whole agency would be oil the consumer's side and because it would only be handling products it believed in, I do not think that the veto would be used very often, but its existence would be a safeguard.
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