Advertising

Looking for a cause

Philip Kleinman

The International Advertising Association is a body which, as far as the majority of admen in this country are concerned — to the extent that they are concerned with it at all, i.e. not very much — exists to organise junketcongresses in far-away places, nice places to go to if your company can afford to send you. Last year actually the venue was Dublin, which was not all that exotic for the British but made a nice change for the Japanese, Lebanese, Americans, Italians and others who turned up.

Last year's congress was noteworthy because of the IAA's attempt to give itself some importance other than as a meetingplace for people in the business to have a few drinks together, pick each other's brains and perhaps fix up the odd deal. The Association came out with a portentous White Paper on the Global Challenge to Advertising in which it urged the formation and strengthening of industry self-regulatory bodies in order to head off government interference.

The Dublin congress, in other words, was about consumerism and was evidence that, after twenty-five years of existence, the IAA had woken up to the fact that advertising presented some cause for public concern. _ This year's congress, which has just taken place in Teheran, has gone one step further. Instead of defending the industry's record, the programme was devised, in the words of Paul Fabricius, head of the relevant IAA advisory committee, to "demonstrate that the professional use of communications in general, and of advertising in particular, can further other than purely commercial causes. It can contribute constructively to solving some of the problems plaguing the world today."

The theme of the congress was "Communications in the service of human rights" and essentially it was about the different kinds of public service advertising which have been sponsored by governments or voluntary charities in various parts of the world.

Ad agency people love to do public service ads, not only because they are thereby enabled to think of themselves as "communicators" rather than hucksters but because the subjects often provide an opportunity for much more original creative work than would be possible in a campaign for, say, soap powder.

For a number of agencies their public service work has been a kind of loss leader, not very profitable in immediate cash terms but immensely rewarding in terms of public attention and reputation gained within the industry — which in the long run most certainly can turn into cash.

For instance Kingsley Manton and Palmer, as a small, young agency some years ago, got themselves a lot of publicity for their imaginative ads for the Salvation Army. It was one of the things which put KMP on the road to becoming the Kimpher group, now controlling several formerly independent agencies. Likewise Saatchi and Saatchi's eye-catching anti-smoking and contraception campaigns for the Health Education Council (remember the pregnant boy?) helped them to grow into a substantial agency.

One thing which Britain lacks but which has often been mooted here as a good idea is an equivalent of America's Advertising Council. This is a body

representing the ad industry and which organises free campaigns for deserving causes. Free in the sense that agencies do not charge for their work and media donate the space and time used.

Teheran is a long way away, but it could be that the IAA congress will help to revive British interest in the Advertising Council idea. At a time when admen in this country are anxiously trying to prove what good citizens they are they could hit on worse tactics.

Meanwhile the only obvious effect the congress has yet had here is to have sparked off a 12-page supplement in The Times supposedly devoted to "human rights" but serving in fact largely as a prestige advertising vehicle for Iran. All the ad space in it was taken by the Iranian Government or Iranian companies.

While the editorial matter included articles critical, and rightly so, of the record of various countries, including Russia, vis-àvis human rights, the only coverage of Iran was an entirely sycophantic question-and-answer interview between the paper's Teheran stringer and the Shah's sister, Princess Ashraf, who opened the congress.

Despite the prominence given in the supplement itself to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and in particular the article which states that "everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country" and that "the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government," nothing was said in the interview about the fact that the Shah's regime takes a rather different view.

Though the interview was not paid for as an advertisement, it ought to have been. It seems sadly clear that in this case the advertising which was paid for influenced The Times's editorial stance and in so doing was used to "further other than purely commercial causes." But not quite in the sense that Paul Fabricius meant.