Give me an A. Give me an R. Give me an S. Give me an E. Give me an H. Give me an O. Give me an L. Give me an E. Give me an S.
When I started in advertising the chairman of our agency had a personal project he wanted some creative help with. It was a campaign to save his local hunt/shoot, which was under threat from the kind of forces that prize base-level kindness over brutal death etc.
He asked the rest of the department, all of whom declined the opportunity (possibly using the words ‘fuck’, ‘off’, ‘you’, ‘posh’, ‘fat’ and perhaps ‘cunt’). However, when he got round to us we said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I think it was a combination of having little or nothing to work on, wanting a chance to make some kind of mark, pleasing the über-boss, not being immensely bothered about animal rights and the murky arguments for and against shooting animals for fun.
So we created a campaign and we weren’t (as far as I’m aware) ostracised by the rest of the department. Things rolled along until we got fired for an unrelated incident, and I thought no more about it until a couple of days ago when I wondered about the extent to which principles should come into play in your advertising career, or indeed your life.
Of course, the great Bill Bernbach famously said that a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money, but where should you draw the line? If you dig into most corporations these days you can find dubious practices of one kind or another, from zero hours contracts to shady investments of pension funds, so do you refuse to work for any of them?
I remember being on a Pepsi shoot back in 2001 when I was reading No Logo. Like many others, I was quite taken with the ideas and examples in that book and found myself pretty pissed off with these giant corporations and their shitty methods of making lots of cash at the expense of the poor, overworked sods who couldn’t even go to the lav when they needed to. Sitting next to me was the major Pepsi client, a 70something fella who had seen and done everything in corporate America. He pronounced such concerns to be bullshit and bit of a drag on the essential point of human existence: to keep the wheels of capitalism spinning as fast as possible.
So this isn’t an easy question to answer.
I can’t find the link, but I’ve written before about how we are all essentially cheerleaders for each company we represent, whether as advertising creatives or people who plunk down a Barclays credit card in a restaurant or order a pint of Stella in a pub. We endorse all those corporations to one degree or another, generally without a second thought for the consequences or the alternatives. For my part that’s down to sheer laziness/love of convenience; I mean, would I have the balls and/or inclination to bother that would be required to turn down an HSBC brief on the grounds that they laundered so much drug money? Or refuse to work on a massive multimedia campaign for a 20th Century Fox movie (or indeed refuse to see such a movie) because I disagree with the effect Rupert Murdoch has on the planet? I’d say probably not. And should I feel guilty for that? I suppose so, but whether or not I’d take things to the point where my ‘principle’ would actually cost me money, I’d have to say it’s unlikely.
When I worked at AMV there was a fundamental corporate principle not to advertise cigarettes or products aimed at kids. A few years into my time there I was given a brief for Monster Munch, a product aimed squarely at children. I pointed this out but no one seemed to care very much and then neither did I. When push came to shove it wasn’t a principle at all, or perhaps it was, but that principle had long been beaten into submission by the need/want to generate cash. Maybe we wouldn’t advertise toys, but we’d turn a blind eye to snacks.
So I wonder, have you ever turned down a brief based a a disagreement with the operating practices of the corporation involved? If so, what happened? And if not, what stops you taking things further?
Answers on a Socialist Worker subscription postcard.
If one has principles one doesn’t work in advertising.
One.
I’ve turned down a job offer to work on a tobacco client. There’s no way you can come out of that job unscathed. The agency is still looking to fill the role, as far as I know.
Good post Ben. Principles are indeed easy until they are tested. And for everyone not just those in advertising.
You may already be familiar with the ‘trolley problem’ a philosophical thought experiment that pits consequentialism against utilitarianism.
Do they really say trolleys in the U.S.?
http://people.howstuffworks.com/trolley-problem.htm
The experiment can be altered further, what if the you hated the man you need to push. Or what if he was a member of your family and so on, you get the point. What if they were cars and not people. What if one of the cars was yours.
There is a great podcast on this by Very Bad Wizards, I think you’ll like VBW podcast full stop Ben, piss funny, enlightening and with rap in the interludes.
http://verybadwizardspodcast.tumblr.com/post/77837905702/do-the-moral-dilemmas-proposed-by-the-trolley
I spoke to a financial advisor once about making my pension ethical and fair trade etc. He laughed and said I’d probably lose money on it. Pretty depressing really.
George, something similar happened to me, but then my ethical fund started outperforming the others, so stick to that principle and maybe it’ll make you (rather than cost you) money.
Jim, thanks for the tips and that interesting link.
Dougal Wilson, doesn’t do car ads. He also never used to shoot abroad out of principle, then went all the way to New Zealand for John Lewis, but i think he offset his carbon emissions. So he’s going straight to heaven.
I wish i could afford to be so picky, but i can’t.
Yeah I’ve had qualms about selling juices, e-cigs and a cereal brand aimed at dieting. I spoke up about the latter and questioned whether its claims had been checked by a nutritionist. I just got half-hearted assurances and then got taken off the account. I’ve come to conclude that every industry has its shady parts: lawyers defend criminals, doctors push certain drugs, and so on. Perhaps when I’ve enough money to pay rent I’ll be able to stick to my principles more. Or will the need for money just quietly wipe away my principles, one by one. Hopefully not. We should demand more regulation. But to many of us creatives are meek / lazy.
Interesting topic, Ben. The subject of principles and ethics is one I had to think about carefully last year, when I started working for a major tobacco manufacturer.
The brands I now market sell over 40bn cigarettes a year in over 100 markets, and I have absolutely no qualms over this.
Below are my reasons:
1. The company I work for sell a legal product. This product is available in every shop, on every street across the world. Much like any number of other FMCG products.
2. The health risks of the product I market are well known to the general public. These health risks are even written and shown pictorally on all sides of the packaging. So if people choose to smoke, they do so in the full knowledge of what those risks are.
3. The company I work for contributes towards the pensions of millions of people across the world and pay hundreds of millions in taxes to the UK government, unlike many other companies in this country. We also have a long history of philanthropy (for example, we were one of the first to offer paid holiday to all employees).
I don’t think I am an unpleasant person because of the work I do, and I certainly don’t think that working for this company makes me a bad person. I believe we all have our own set of perceptions, which for better or worse are guided by the society we choose to live in.
Just like in the Trolley example, we can condemn or praise someone for their actions, depending on how we perceive the world around us.
At W+K we frequently decline new biz opportunities that make us feel uncomfortable. There aren’t really any hard and fast rules; it’s more a case of ‘would we feel proud to say we did that?’. We work on booze, and soft drinks, and confectionery, and cars. And most of us are fine with that. But we tend to say no to fags (and e-cigs), gambling, payday loans, corrupt regimes and companies that lie and/or cheat people. But it’s a tricky area and we concluded that we couldn’t make any hard and fast rules, we can only make a judgement on what feels right to us. And sometimes you just have to meet the people, ask them some direct questions about how the company does business, and see if they feel like good people or not.
Yeah on the e-cigs I was unsure too, so I did some research and felt that there’s enough to suggest they’re 90 to 95% better for you than normal cigarettes. Being an ex-smoker I felt that people understand the risks and that at least e-cigs aren’t a starter drug. It’s a quitter one. But yeah, there’s blurred lines. In a way confectionary to kids is almost as bad. It’s all about enabling informed choices whatever you’re selling, I suppose. And not just diluting the proverbial blood on our hands to the point of no one caring.
Journalists face a similar problem, but the need to work usually trumps principle – and ok, most journalists wouldn’t recognise morality if it pinched them on the bum. Plenty of lefties work for the FT, the Mail on Sunday poached a whole raft of hacks from the Guardian a few years back, and I have worked for Murdoch papers for years (people forget he is a great journalist, which may or may not underline the point I made at the start). I draw dividends from tobacco shares, and naturally agree with Guy. The true saint in the commercial world should draw a moral map of companies to spend with, work for and invest in, but hardly anyone does. We make tut, tut noises and boycott firms if it’s not too inconvenient. The truly discriminating person should opt out altogether and live off a self-sustaining vegetable patch – or, as many deliberately do, work in the public sector and turn a blind eye to what the pension fund is investing in.
i once refused to work on a pitch for Doritos. I tasted them and decided they were just wrong on every front. no major repercussions for me personally. actually I was a bit surprised i felt so strongly about a snack.
I was once on a political action committee’s account (when I was quite wet behind the ears). We did a whole bunch of work and laughed about it, but it rubbed the AD the wrong way. He deleted all of the work he’d touched and just said, nope. Not doing it. Stuck to his guns. I admired that. I decided to make a list of stuff I wouldn’t advertise. Short list.
Politics, pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, and lawyers.
And then, years later, I was interviewed by some agency who wanted my TV experience and I found out that they basically were a shop that just did spots for lawyers. So, not just creepy but incredibly derivative and creatively bankrupt as well. Fuck and that.
Morals are a very personal thing and shouldn’t have to be justified to anyone but you should have some and stick to them. It makes you feel so much better in life. Don’t let anything compromise your morals. No job or money is worth it in the end.
I worked on 3 election campaigns for the SNP.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, it was fun having 5am meetings in the Scottish Parliament and stuff, but bloody hell I do now.
However, my boss at a nameless agency I worked at was a miner in a previous life. Was on strike and even had to steal sheep to feed the people in his street. He was the CD on 2 Tory election campaigns. Go figure.