Research

All quotes come from this report (archive):

The central argument of this report is that this changed advertising environment should not happen by stealth; instead it should be discussed in the open and ultimately be up to society to decide what is advertised, when, where and how.

I agree with this central argument (though I have a feeling I will not agree on strategy). Advertising should be something that we all have deep conversations about, especially considering the ways in which it shapes our radical movements and the ways that we claim we want to live. I think it's actually subverting our stated goals, especially when we rely upon that of the status quo.

Because of its powers of persuasion and influence, governments have long since determined that it is in the public interest to legislate to restrict and limit advertising. From the earliest standards on accuracy, to bans on most advertisements for tobacco and now alcohol, from lines drawn in the sand about the advertising of medicines and watersheds for children’s TV, governments have always had to intervene on behalf of society.

I see their point but disagree with the analysis. They did not have to "intervene on behalf of society." They intervened because they saw where the tipping point was and wanted to maintain control by giving in somewhat. It enabled them to pretend they cared and shared the values we had, and this is particularly true with regards to tobacco and alcohol.

At the time of writing, the people in question might not have known what companies like Philip Morris were up to with things like the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.

• In a free society we should be able to decide when and where we are subjected to advertising. If we as individuals decide to read a magazine or watch a commercial TV channel then we are accepting the adverts that come with them.

I disagree and think there is much to learn about the differences between "tolerate the existence of" and "accept the existence of." I do not accept that there are commercials and advertisements anywhere; I merely tolerate it because I have little control.

So the report calls for a ban on all advertising in public spaces, a limit to be placed on shopfront marketing, a ban on buzz marketing (public viral marketing techniques that are contrived to look authentic) and continuing restrictions on product placement on television.

I think we all need to get better about recognising this, especially as it happens in the virality of social media.

• The advertising industry increasingly uses children’s vulnerability to its persuasive powers to unlock their parents’ purse strings. Studies show that children under 12 do not have the cognitive ability to know whether they are being sold to, let alone make decisions on what they like, or choose to ignore the marketing altogether. The government recently called for the provision of improved education for children to deal with the growth in adverts they face. But as this report shows, many of these adverts are aimed at securing an emotional rather a rational response and therefore cannot be filtered out through education alone.

"Does not have the cognitive ability" is very strong wording here that I do not approve of.

Whether children recognise things as advertisements should also be part of the lessons they learn from older people in their lives. Often, we can't recognise advertisements (see: Marvel movies, which are literally advertisements we pay to go watch that then promote the next movie in the pipeline). It's also why product placement works on us, too (e.g., KFC sponsors a program and everyone in it is eating KFC). It would benefit us all to learn the mechanics of these things and pay more active attention and try to decrease our passive reception of them.

Also "make decisions on what they like." This sounds like the same kind of research that says that children don't know who they are. It would behoof these people to find sources that actually engage with children and their perceptions of the world, rather than the adult-centric models we've been enmeshed in.

This is also why I wouldn't want a government-sponsored curriculum around advertising and its impacts. I would not trust them to do any of that, particularly because their goals are entwined with those of the advertisers.

So the report calls for a ban on all television advertising to children under the age of 12. It also calls for an open debate on a ban on all alcohol marketing, recognising that teenage alcoholism can have a damaging effect on young people’s health. Banning advertising of alcohol could help reduce this. The government should follow the example now set by Spain, which outlaws 'cult of the body' adverts before the watershed; these are linked to the rise in anorexia and bulimia in young people.

I'm curious to learn something about Spain's laws outlawing "cult of the body" advertisements. What even qualifies? And how does that look 12 years later? (There's also apparently this thing about toy manufacturers having a 'self-regulatory code' to not use gender stereotypes in their advertising, but I wonder how successful that will even be.)

It's also really odd that it's only children under 12 that would receive this? Why not everyone? This isn't about striking a balance; this is literally about outlining acceptable advertising and unacceptable advertising. Why is it okay to bombard me but not a child? (It's not okay to bombard anyone.)

• Third, the advertising industry is increasingly working online and capturing the Internet by surveying and storing every click of information we make. This information is then used to target adverts directly at us. The Internet should be a socially valued ‘common good’ and its commercialisation for private gain should be resisted. So the report calls for Ofcom to review introducing new regulations to limit the amount of information being gathered, stored and used without our expressed permission.

This is fun, considering the GDPR and all the nonsensical ways this is currently being handled.

• Excessive advertising turns a never ending series of new needs into new wants, and crowds out the space for other visions of the good society, where time and relationships matter more than what we buy. Advertising encourages us to run ever faster on the treadmill of modern consumer life; in so doing it contributes to growing consumer debt, a number of social problems which this report discusses, and to the very real prospect of climate change beyond our ability to manage. So the report calls for a tax on all advertising that encourages greater consumption to limit its scope and slow the pace of growth for the good of society and the future of the planet.

"A tax on all advertising that encourages greater consumption" would be... literally all advertising. That would've been fewer words, but ("left-leaning") liberals always try to pretend they're saying something else.

• In recognition of the enormous creative skills in the industry and the potential to use their powers of persuasion for good social and environmental causes, and not just profit, the report calls for a time and resources levy to be placed on the advertising companies themselves, so that a small percentage of their workers’ time is used for constructive social purposes – not always for commercial interests. People could then be better persuaded to recycle, donate or volunteer.

This is weird to me. They want to decrease commercial advertising (good) but then want to prompt people to work on campaigns without a critical eye to what those campaigns promote. Why not let the workers have... time to themselves to be creative? To work on things that would improve their own local communities, not just in creating NGO advertising? This is a weird balance.

Also, what if the "volunteering" they want to do an advertising campaign for is... for a transphobic group? Or eugenicists disguising themselves as people who help autistics folks? Did anyone stop to consider the potential for harm here? Probably not.

• This report argues that the industry should be held to account for the adverts it creates. Companies are responsible for the products they make and we believe that advertising should be no exception. So we are calling for regulations to stipulate that advertising agencies have their name or logo on all the adverts they are responsible for creating. Transparency is important; advertising agencies should be recognised for their contribution to good causes as well as held to account for any work deemed to be harmful.

I don't really disagree here with pushing agencies to put their name on their projects. I've always thought it strange that I can't track back most advertisements to an advertising agency; I can only link it to the company it's advertising. And that makes sense, since they okayed it. But why shouldn't we know who also helped develop it?

• The bulk of advertising is still ‘regulated’ voluntarily through the Advertising Standards Authority. Given the importance of the industry and its reach and impact on so much of our lives, this is no longer acceptable. This report calls for the Advertising Standards Authority to be put on a statutory basis, setting out criteria on what types of adverts are unacceptable. It should:
  
• strengthen local authorities’ powers to restrict outdoor advertising;
• introduce in some circumstances a right of reply by charities etc to claims made in TV advertising;
• ban advertising on mobile phones.

I think making a list of 'acceptable' advertisements is a problem and will lead to further issues, so I wouldn't support this. I also think local authorities receive too much power to decide what is allowed on 'their' streets, ignoring what residents want.

I think everyone has the right to reply to claims made in advertisement, so I don't know why it should be limited. But I'm fine with keeping people out of my goddamned phone.

We are still coming out of the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s; the advertising industry and the big corporations they serve want not just to get us back on the treadmill of consumption as soon as possible, but for us to buy more than ever, using new techniques, technology and science. This puts us at a turning point: we either go back to where we left off on the route to the world of consumption or we decide to live a better and more balanced life in which we take more collective and democratic control over the world and in particular the market, which should exist to serve our interests – rather than us serving those of the market. To do that we must address the advertising effect.

Almost wonder what these people would make of what would happen a mere seven years later, compounding an economic crisis that hadn't actually rebounded in any meaningful way.

Introduction: advertising and the good society

The goal of advertising then is not the creation of happiness and consumer fulfilment. Instead the purpose and consequence seems to be the creation of a mood of restless dissatisfaction with what we have got and who we are so that we go out and buy more. Advertising is no longer there to inform about the advantages of one product over a rival. Society, in an age of relative abundance, has long since gone past the point of rational decision making when it comes to purchasing. Everything is about emotion and in particular the ability to tap into our deepest needs and insecurities to get us to buy more. Today happiness can only be fleeting, and must last little longer than the time it takes to carry the latest purchase home; then the process of wanting more and needing more must be started again.

Was this ever the true goal of advertising? Look back at the history prior to Bernays. Con artists advertised nonsense all the time in the hopes of hooking buyers into their phony products or projects. Advertising has never really been about informing, unless you count "informing people about its existence." It has always hidden problematic elements, even in its oldest stages.

For now we should reflect on a world where everyone is on a consumer treadmill, spurred on in large part by the role of advertising in creating ever more new things to need. Others have it, so we want it. In this way advertising takes the form of a collective action problem. Driven on by the seductive images of success and aspiration we compete with each other for status, but simply make ourselves feel like failures as we out bid each other for the latest car, gadget or holiday. We cannot win this race because there is no finishing line as an endless stream of new things to desire are created and sold to us. In the crowd, if the person at the front stands on tip toes then we all have to; and everyone is worse off.

I have some questions: What is the impact of advertising on communities who actively discuss these things and actively discourage competition and material status? Because there are people within our own communities who don't engage in this nearly as much. How do they exist? And why don't we look at what they may do to help curb what these advertisements drive? I'm genuinely interested and feel like not enough is done to consider what our own actions do in combination with those of advertisers and large corporations or governments.

In suggesting this we are not saying that people should stop buying or advertisers should stop advertising altogether. Buying things is important to us as an expression of identity, sense of belonging and difference, but many of us buy too much.

Excuse me, what. Buying things is important to us as an expression of identity? How? Cultural creation and the development of items is one thing, but the act of buying them isn't an expression of identity. I could very easily have another brand of monitor, a different computer, and so on; my life wouldn't be different. Perhaps my choices lead me to choose the brands I do because the brands I choose accommodate the things I need.

I don't particularly care about Gigabyte as a company, but I like that their existence in certain areas where I live makes it easier to obtain a laptop with a keyboard layout that doesn't confuse me and force me to relearn what it looks like (when I need to look at it). It wouldn't matter to me if Dell, Lenovo, or Microsoft decided to start selling laptops with the keyboard layout I prefer; as long as I could find one, that's enough for me.

My choice is less on brand and more on what I need. Is that an expression of identity? Kind of. It at least highlights what language I use most often. But is it a necessary one? Not really. I could relearn keyboard layouts.

I also don't find the 'buying' of things to be related to my identity. I'm not the one making decisions about what is available, how, where, etc. When I buy clothes, perhaps they match some of my style preferences... but they are not perfect because that's the whole thing with fast fashion. When I make them, they are closer to perfect or more tolerable. When I have someone else make them for me, the same applies. (Except the latter is something I can't really afford.)

Money makes some things easier – it means you don’t have to worry about a big gas bill, or how to pay for the next school trip – but happiness is elusive and can’t be bought.

Mate, "happiness" is a shitty goal. Being happy, wanting to be happy... that's all fine. Making that your goal in life? Ridiculous. And not because this world is harsh or hard or difficult or whatever, but because our lives can't always be happy. We can't always be happy, and sometimes we need to not be happy. (Toxic positivity helps no one.)

That said, I hate this framing. In a capitalist society, everyone knows that having money makes it easier for people to be happy because they have less time worrying. So this framing is nonsense from the jump.

Advertising recognises this – which is why Nokia, the phone manufacturer, has the catch line ‘connecting people’, and there is a range of snacks called Friendchips. Volvo tells us that ‘Life is better if lived together’ and Orange that ‘Without others I am nothing’. Advertising tries to convince us that we need to purchase to experience fulfilling social relationships. But in attempting to purchase the relationships we need we degrade and damage them.

Have we considered that advertising is making use of alienation in society? Also, I wonder if this belief has changed in the past decade because it feels... so... out of date and out of touch. Or perhaps it just always did for me because it was never a thing I grew up hearing. Yes, the advertisements tried to sell us togetherness, but they... never met that. And the things that did are things that have almost ensured that people don't interact (e.g., video games).

Microsoft is currently spending millions trying to tell us that we invented Windows 7. If we think we built it then they think we will buy more of it.

Again, how effective is this campaign? Because we all knew in 2013, just as we do now, that there are effectively three operating systems with two being the major stakeholders: Windows and Mac (with Linux being behind those). We're all well aware that if we buy new computers, they are unlikely to come with anything else.

So what is the goal of such a campaign? Because, as an advertising one that plans to make us consume more, I can't imagine that it's really very effective. What is it doing to us? That should be what you're addressing in this report and any others in the future.

For a better society we need to get the balance right between decisions made as consumers and as citizens. Too much advertising that encourages too much consumerism undermines the chances of a good society and a good, well-balanced life.

I do not find this at all useful because we shouldn't be focusing on anything "as consumers." We should be focusing on the kind of world we want, full stop. Being a consumer should be part of that world, and we should be discussing the role of the consumer and what we want that role to mean.

Personally, I want to delete all elements of capitalist consumption.

Advertising can be an important part of the good society but it should be about providing information to us as consumers and citizens.

Please, tell me more about how advertising "can be an important part" or ever provided information. (The thing is that it hasn't. Ever. The goal is to obscure a lot of information in service if selling something, ergo you cannot have useful advertising.)

No one wants a world in which we don’t all share the enjoyment of funny adverts.

I would be very fine without "funny adverts" because we could start putting humour somewhere else.

And in times of crisis, like wars or natural disasters, public adverts can play a critical role in mobilising shared effort.

And spreading propaganda for people involved in those spaces to make them seem more friendly than they really are. For example, it's not surprising that during LGBTQ+ Pride there is an uptick in companies trying to rainbow wash themselves to "support" us. It's particularly fun when Raytheon does it, trying to make themselves look fantastic and wonderful! Same goes for the literal CIA. Both of these institutions participate in war crimes, but they're made to look nicer during that time because they're being supportive. They do not care that they are also responsible for murdering queer people outside of the United States and Western Europe.

Public adverts can easily be replaced with anything else. We do not need them. Sloganeering has done us very little good.

The first is the issue of choice and place. People should have the freedom to choose when they are exposed to advertising: when to look at product information and when not to. If we decide to buy a newspaper or magazine, or to subscribe to a television channel, then we are making the choice to look at the adverts that come with it.

No, we are not. I do not subscribe to cable television anywhere and opt-in to the advertisements; the advertisements come as part of the package, and I don't get a choice on what they are for. I also do not get a choice about which shows they choose to advertise on, so companies are able to buy slots to support shows that I find incredibly insidious.

I do not get to choose who buys ad space in newspapers or in magazines. I do not get to choose anything other than my own subscriptions, which does not influence the advertisements at all.

Here we should be free from private and commercial interest, and billboards and shop signs should not be allowed to disfigure our towns and roadsides.

Here's where I have mixed feelings. I absolutely think that advertising? Needs to stop. But there have been so many interesting signs that were artfully done as part of shops, which people in places like Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America absolutely do not get to see. There were nail salons with amazing shop signs that were just so interesting to me when I lived in Taiwan; there were shop signs that were actually really funny. There were cute ones in China.

Perhaps it's also the fact that we don't look at our shop spaces as places for art and showing people what we do in an artistic manner. This isn't to glorify China and Taiwan (they have so much light pollution that, if you're photosensitive, it can quite literally make you sick), but it is to say that there's a bizarre refusal to recognise what makes one interesting and the other obnoxious.

Which is funny for a "middle of the road, let's find some balance" kind of report.

Second, our civil liberties demand that the Internet should be a site for common good and not commercial practice without our permission. What we look at and search for should not be recorded without our expressed permission so that it can be used to compile data to sell us more.

I think if you actually mixed with people who focused more on what happens with our data, beyond advertising, you'd have a better argument. I don't disagree with this; I find it intrusive for services to sell me IVF because of my age and (wrongly) perceived gender, along with an (incorrect) assumption that all people owning uteruses want to give birth. I find the sales practices of raising prices based on how many times I've looked at something obscene.

But I really think this argument would be so much better if paired with what data tracking actually does beyond the realm of advertisement.

Third, children should be better protected. Children cannot deal with the increasing blitz of advertising they are exposed to; they do not understand its purpose and are at risk of exploitation. Armies of psychologists and child developments experts are recruited to work out how to sell more to children at an age when they don’t even understand the concept of being sold to. They need our protection.

This rhetoric is harmful. We need to work with children to both help them navigate something that is, unfortunately, not going to stop any time soon and to help them decrease their interaction with it. However, this "increasing blitz of advertising" doesn't only impact kids. Why focus on children when it impacts all of us?

And again, the protection thing rings hollow. What children need is for adults to stop inserting ourselves into their lives; they need those "armies of psychologists and child development experts" to quit, pure and simple. We need to give them an incentive to quit, to stop their harmful behaviours.

A study by the Children’s Society found that hyper consumption is causing a range of problems for children, including high family break-up, teenage unkindness and pressures towards premature sexualisation.

This feels like a really shoddy description of whatever that study found, particularly because it makes it sound like children are responsible for their families breaking up due to their own hyper-consumption. It's also not even referenced in the notes for this report beyond this, which is very strange.

I believe the reference is to a 2008 study (news article), which I could only find on the Internet Archive because the page no longer exists.

Fun to note some of the things in that report that should've been excluded, such as use of obesity as a metric (obesity does not measure health). It also politely demonises mothers who leave fathers, and the people writing the Compass report keep attributing that to financial stability as a result of advertisements. The study they use does not state that and doesn't even make that assumption. (It doesn't discuss how women having more financial independence lets them leave abusive husbands, so... Whoops.)

Anyway, there's a weird belief written throughout this paper that middle-aged people are better at reading advertisements, and I feel like that's just bias because most of these reports are written by people who are neither children nor the elderly. (And honestly, so many of us have bought into shit like "hustle culture" and capitalist programming. So how are we less susceptible?)

Fourth, society as a whole, working through government, should decide what constitutes the good society and what role advertising should play in it.

If our current governments refuse to participate in creating 'good' societies, why should we bother doing anything through them and not through more local measures? Genuine question, especially considering I have the current knowledge of how we're ignoring pandemics and fatal illnesses for the sake of economy.

Fifth, the advertising industry, because of the leading role it plays in the creation of a consumer society, has a responsibility to provide at least some help for ‘good causes’ free of charge and should be praised for the good campaigns it runs and held to account for those that are socially or environmentally damaging.

What qualifies as a "good cause?" Should we support the major organisations because they're well-known, even though they often engage in harmful rhetoric? And also have more funds than smaller ones? What if an organisation is part of a fascist pipeline but has rhetoric that average people buy into? Because... this sounds damaging, too.

The problems caused by the advertising effect

It is impossible to prove a causal link with the growth in advertising but in his book Affluenza, Oliver James describes this new consumerism as a form of selfish capitalism, intimately intertwined with cyclical consumerism: the more anxious and depressed we are, the more we must consume, the more we consume, the more anxious and depressed we become – unable to break the cycle this will only get worse.

If it's impossible to prove a causal link, perhaps don't try to pretend that there is one everywhere else? Also, is it just me or does everyone who mentions Affluenza have a severe problem around ableism and ageism? Because we're hitting close to the "acceptable" ableism of being shit towards neurodivergent people (who simultaneously are being ignored and manipulated by these reports).

Indeed David Cameron recently spoke out against the ‘harmful and creepy’ sexualisation of children, blaming irresponsible business for its aggressive approach: ‘The marketing and advertising agencies even have a term for it: KGOY “Kids Growing Older Younger”… It may be good for business, but it’s not good for families and it’s not good for society, and we should say so.’

How? I mean, this is something that is true (and can be seen in the ways in which child stars and teenage celebrities are treated), but this is more than just advertising. Also, the creepiest institutions are ones that are enabled by "good causes."

Like the Church.

Also, pretty sure David Cameron is harmful for society... as he has shown even during a global pandemic in the Greensill scandal. And in 2013, he decided to be a dick about immigration... like a lot of Europeans, which negatively impacts children a lot. So I don't know that I'd trust him on doing something to "protect kids."

Advertising is the business of creating discontent and unhappiness, and it is working.

False. Advertising can create discontent and unhappiness, but our whole lives do that, too. Advertising is trying to sell us shit through any means necessary. That also includes things like toxic positivity.

Most people probably won’t get into debt to buy a Jaguar – often it is purchases of more trivial things like clothes and shoes that lead people gradually to creep into greater debt and sometimes it is the basics like rent and food that drive people to borrow more.

Here are a few hints that are unrelated to your report and thus not things you give a shit about:

• Give people free housing.
• Give people free food.
• If we're required to wear clothes and shoes (which we are, especially in winter), make them free, too.

Perhaps your issues lie more with the economic system at hand and less the advertisements.

In the UK as individuals we now owe a collective £1.3 trillion on credit cards, store cards, mortgages and loans. This figure is around 140 per cent of household income and has increased dramatically over the last decade; it stood at 105 per cent just ten years ago.

Do people have mortgages because of advertisements? Or is there another reason? Did students take out student loans because of advertisements? Or is there another reason? Do people buy food and clothes on credit because of advertisements? Or is there another reason?

This is all correlative to the stated goal of this report.

Low income households with debt have the highest level of debt in relation to their income, meaning that their financial insecurity is much greater than those even slightly up the ladder, and this has got worse over the last decade.

Do people have debt because of advertisements?

This level of debt is bad not just for individuals but for economic stability, as the root of the current financial crisis has been traced to the collapse of the sub-prime market and easy credit.

Which can be traced to... greed? Perhaps. The debt conversation feels like an obscured way to say you want to blame individuals.

We are also working harder and longer in order to stay on the treadmill, to make the money necessary to conform to the model of human life that is advertised. This means that we are increasingly time poor.

So, let's also consider the fact that: More work doesn't mean more money. A lot of people work overtime (see: teachers) and not get paid for it. At all. This work-life balance has been in play for... decades. People have been taught that doing this means their performance reviews get better! But they don't. Companies don't care and exploit people who overwork.

So, now let's think about this: How does this relate to advertising?

It largely doesn't. Our lives on the "work-to-spend treadmill" are more out of necessity than desire for stuff. You already acknowledged that we spend more money on necessities that we require to live, which are not things that are generally advertised for. (Lidl may have advertisements, but it often can be the only grocer in the area or have low competition. And if Lidl is all I've got, its advertisements only tell me when its prices increase or when they have sales.)

We need time to be parents, friends, neighbours, volunteers and citizens. But we are constantly rushed and harried, in a long hours, high-spending culture. Working and spending is now prioritised over other social activities, particularly care. There is a finite amount of time and we all have a finite amount of money – if we choose to spend our time and money consuming we lose out on the other things. Advertising contributes to this loss of balance through the pressure it places on us to consume.

How? Genuinely, how? There are elements of it, but you are not talking about it at all. You made some really base criticisms without actually addressing any of the issues.

Also why is work prioritised? Is it because worker protections are bullshit everywhere? Oh. Maybe. Is that the fault of advertising? Not inherently, but there are advertising companies working on propaganda (otherwise known as public relations) to decrease worker protections! But you didn't mention that, did you? Oops.

Almost half of the clothes in British wardrobes go unworn – this is around 2.4 billion items.

Question: How much of this is due to bad fit, online shopping, poor return policies that harm consumers, and poor quality of materials? I don't want this information without the context, and I can say as a fat person that a lot of the clothes I own go unworn for all of these reasons.

900 million items of clothing are sent to landfill each year

Whoever wrote this should've collaborated with someone discussing fast fashion (Ghana, Haiti and Bangladesh, etc). There have been a lot of times they could've addressed this, even in 2013.

We waste 500,000 tons of food per year; it is worth £400 million and disposal costs another £50 million – only a fraction is handed to charitable organisations that could use it.

Are there regulations related to how food waste can be used? Because a lot of places prohibit giving away food waste to homeless people and shelters. Perhaps that might be something to look into beyond advertising.

There are other waste facts listed, and I feel like they need to link up with others to really figure out some of the problems beyond advertising. There are too many interconnected things that they ignore.

Advertising, a profession that should be helping us, is acting to hinder us.

It was never meant to help us, what the whole entire fuck is your deal.

How can we counter the advertising effect?

Ban advertising in public spaces

And leave this decision to whom? Examples listed include the Clean City Law in Sao Paulo, which saw some initial positive impacts. However, it feels like it is encouraging advertisers to simultaneously buy space and co-opt art for their own benefits. They also started reintroducing advertisements in a more controlled manner, so... it's not really ad-free these days, either.

Which goes back to: Who gets to decide how to use that space? Because the State, in the form of small local governments, does not seem to be ideal and often seems to run counter to the needs of the people in that city. Where do the fines go if people break that law? What are they used for? Like. Lots of questions here about how things function, especially if someone is going to say that we should be modeled off of these systems.

Of course the advertising industry and its lobbyists will say that people should have the ‘freedom’ to experience such adverts and that they can choose to ignore them.

I find it ironic this report is going to fight this idea, since they also decided that we "consent" to advertisements by buying magazines or subscribing to services. Which... still isn't how it works.

We should choose as individuals what we want to consume and not have the decision made for us, without our consent.

I agree with this, but it's still funny considering they literally said we accept the advertisements for services we buy when that isn't true.

Control advertising on the Internet

I agree with this to an extent, but they also miss something that really should be discussed with the "unauthorised data collection." The problem is that it is, technically, authorised by our consenting to be on the service; no one reads those terms of services, which we probably should. We don't because they're so excruciatingly long and full of legalese, and most of us don't have the necessary background to really make use of that information.

And even if we did, there are loopholes. And even without loopholes, we've consented to changing rules. And we consent by remaining on those services.

It's a vicious cycle that really should be focused on more than what these superficial arguments do. And it's also worth recognising that they are doing research on us, which actually is unethical and is the direction we should be taking in order to start breaking this shit down. None of us consented to be experimented on, yet these companies have been doing so almost from day one. Why not discuss that?

End the commercialisation of childhood

Children, whose minds aren’t yet ready to know they are being sold something, should be protected from adverts and commercial messages.

I really hate this phrasing. If we, as adults, worked with children to help them learn and also learn from them, we could actually be doing something of value and use. If you, as an adult, sit with a child and discuss advertisements with them and talk through with them about why they want something? Maybe you might also instill some values that would help break this shit down. It's like talking about children as things to be acted upon and for doesn't help anyone at all.

It does, however, make you feel smarter and better about yourselves.

Anyway, I also know a lot of adults who are the same age as me who cannot tell the difference between an advertisement and entertainment. I know a lot of people who are easily scammed. I know a lot of people who think certain behaviours are real and not trolling or viral marketing campaigns. Adults also don't have the capacity you're claiming of children, especially if they aren't reading things critically or trained to ask questions about what they're reading.

Most children under the age of 12 cannot tell when they are being solicited; advertising encourages dissatisfaction, and encourages children to pester the life out of their parents every time they go to the shops. The purpose of advertising aimed at young children is to use them to influence how a proportion of parents’ income is spent. Although the government promises action nothing has yet been done, and it is time to end to the commercialisation of children.

If it is "designed to get kids to pester their parents," perhaps their parents should also be more willing to explain why they cannot or will not buy something. Maybe we should start looking at ways to help adults have more time to work with children, maybe we should stop segregating kids into kids-only spaces where they can only learn from each other (and a handful of adults who are busy with all of them at once).

It's like society's structures are designed to ensure this continues. Perhaps that's our issue, too. And this is addressing a symptom.

In the USA it is currently being argued by a team at the National Bureau of Economic Research that banning fast-food advertising on television in the USA could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 per cent.

Fatness is not an indicator of health. How does this decrease help? Why will it happen? What does being "overweight" (a designation with frequently shifting and unclear boundaries) have to do with any of this? Other than as a scare tactic because people are fatphobic.

The young are awash with messages about drinking alcohol and about the increase in binge drinking and anti-social behaviour brought on by alcohol.

And rather than build a society around clear discussion and explanation of what things can do to people, how they can impact us, and so on? We continually push the regulation into silencing conversations. If children are "awash" in messaging about drinking, perhaps we need to consider broader social structures and how to work with those in order to provide them a healthier environment. Legislating it into a taboo does not do anything. (Also, who the hell is advertising alcohol during children's TV?)

Tax advertising

The polluter should pay – in this case the advertising industry is helping to pollute the planet through the unnecessary creation of wasteful consumer desires.

Questions: How would the money from such taxes be used? Where? For whom? Would companies be able to 'offset' this the way they do for carbon emissions? Where one company buys credits for an 'advertisement' cap from another company? What kind of external markets could this create and would those exacerbate the issue?

The same applies to fines. In some places, that would go to policing. I don't think that's very helpful.

Introduce a time and resources levy

The most persuasive minds in the land should be used occasionally for constructive social and public purposes, not just for commercial interests.

Who gets to define what any of this means? I find that highly suspect, especially considering...

We suggest that 5 per cent of advertising industries’ staff time should be deployed to encourage us to do the right thing rather than just buy the next thing. There would be no need to prescribe what good causes the agencies would work on, the staff and companies could pick for themselves. Then it would be easy to regulate and engender greater commitment for the work carried out. But the list of good causes the company worked for would be published and publicised each year and we are sure their clients would not pick advertising agencies that had not worked for the right people.

So here's a great scenario: An ad agency decides that working on a transphobic campaign is actually a very good thing (the "right thing," you might say) because that's the world they want to create. They want to legislate trans people back into the closet. So you tell them they have to advertise something about volunteering, donation, whatever... and they get to say "We're doing our part in the social landscape," and they're creating a more hostile environment. Using your rules against you.

Also... Out of 100% of a person's time, you want 5% on "doing good." So 95% of their time (very balanced) goes to normal ads as is. Cool.

Put the agencies’ mark on their work

I actually find this to be something that agencies should've been doing for ages. The fact they haven't should indicate their true purpose (which is not, as these people seem to think, informing us).

Introduce statutory regulation of the advertising industry

Who gets to make these choices? Because once again, this is not democratic in nature if it is the decisions of a hierarchical structure that are imposed upon a community. (Voting for representatives does not inherently make their decisions democratic because they do not inherently represent anyone beyond themselves, including the constituents who voted for them.)

From this book:

Introduction (Josh MacPhee)

There is no doubt that advertising is a form of pollution and corporations are shitting in our heads. It is one of the main social forces that convince us that the status quo is both natural and inevitable and that nothing can be done to change it. More than the messaging of any particular billboard, subway poster, or corporate commercial wrapping a city bus, the overarching ideology of advertising is that the best—and increasingly only—use for any form of shared space is as a conveyor belt bringing us from one point of purchase to another. A walk through Times Square in New York City exposes how dystopian this can get. Even the ground and sky are littered with messaging, with advertising cacophony taking over more than two-thirds of what the eye can see, never mind sound, smell, and physical encroachments. It’s not a huge leap to image that as things continue on their current trajectory, much of our world will look and feel like this.

This. It's hard to avoid, even in places where there are so few obvious billboards. It's sneaked into tiny alcoves and the backs of seats; it's plastered on the sides of trams and buses, making it even more difficult to find the doors.

I often use the term “shared” space instead of the more popular “public” because it is time we interrogate our dependence on the binary conception of public vs. private. First, it’s increasingly foggy as to what is public and what is private anymore. Almost all space is privatized to some extent. In addition, what does public actually mean? A public is a group of people with shared beliefs and ideology. But if you attempt to unpack what everyone sharing a common space have in common, it is that they are all subjects of an external sovereign, the state. In the twenty-first century, public space is space managed by the state. And most people on our planet live in contexts where they have little to no control over the state, and the apparatus that administers our lives is increasingly unaccountable to the subjects it supposedly represents. So public no longer means what it is commonly understood to mean. How can public space be public if it is almost wholly constituted by a power beyond our reach and control?

I've also found that I don't like the terminology around 'public' and 'private', especially as it forms a false dichotomy within people's thoughts. You see this in discussions around schooling, where people will hold something that is 'public' (though still managed and dictated by the State) as being better than that which is 'private', even if the goals are the same or shared while the managers appear to be different.

In the early 2000s, street art deftly moved from being an interesting and quirky form of opening up space to think and wonder on the street—What is that pink elephant doing there? How come everywhere I look it says, “You Are Beautiful?”—to just another way of advertising. Whether by artists looking for a shortcut to gallery careers or corporations mimicking and recuperating “street” aesthetics, the need to lead the viewer to a commercial exchange hollows out any other possible interpretation of the work.

This is something that I also noticed when it came to cities hiring 'street artists' to create murals. While it was pleasant to see that these artists who had so much talent were being asked to create for the places they lived in, it should've started prompting questions: What messages are they sending? What messages are in their work? What is the city going to allow in this space? What is going to be "acceptable" street art?

I love street art, and I love murals. But it's increasingly common for them to be beautiful co-opted artworks rather than the subversive elements they once were.

Subvertising is no different. We are so trained by years of looking at our commercialized landscape, that it’s likely most people read hacked ads as the real thing, and fail to fully process any detournement. This is especially true for hacks that mimic the design, aesthetic, and logotypes of the original. When a company like McDonald’s has invested billions of dollars over a seventy-year stretch to ensure that their golden arches mean very specific things, it seems woefully naive to think that a comparative handful of “McMurder” subvertising exploits could ever affect the dominant reading. More likely viewers of a McMurder or Murder King T-shirt simply get a subconscious urge to eat French fries.

I'm glad that this is something that is going to be dealt with straight away because, while I love subvertised things, it does have the opposite impact because we're so trained into seeing these things as they originally were. We see the shapes, we see the colours, we lose the message.

Although extremely simple in form and seemingly contentless, his refusal to replace the advertisements with other direct messaging—be it called art or not—may ultimately say more than any didactic ad hack can.

This is something that I've noticed as being an interesting way of saying something and nothing at the same time. Even if the space is blank or filled with shapes, you can still make it aesthetically pleasing enough that people don't miss what was there; it definitely does a bit more than replacing something with something similar.

Overnight they [StopPub] completely defaced and destroyed advertisements throughout the [Paris Metro] system, obliterating corporate messaging from many stations all together. Unlike Seiler’s more genteel and nuanced critique, there was no possibility of confusion here: all advertising must be destroyed.

Destruction also sends a very loud and clear message.

Chapter 1: PR-opaganda

(Note: This book needs to play with font casing to make their jokes more clear. I thought it was an accident that there was a hyphen instead of trying to highlight that PR and Propaganda come from the same space and are effectively the same thing.)

Chapter starts with quoting liberally from this post and this website, which I want to read. It also focuses on Edward Bernays and public relations/propaganda.

Indeed, for Bernays, the conspicuous manipulation of the masses by means of propaganda was seen not just as inevitable and benign, but important and necessary. It is a claim that rests on the idea that the mass of people—the public—are dangerous when left to their own devices, but also that certain individuals—and only these individuals—are talented enough to guide the rest. Where subvertising activists posit outdoor advertising as undemocratic (in that there is no collective control over it), Bernays suggests that public relations are vital part of a democratic society.

They go one to show that Bernays had a deeply different understanding of democracy, whether or not it made sense; effectively, he said that in order to have an democratic society, people needed to be manipulated into specific behaviours. Which would indicate that society isn't actually democratic (in common understanding of the term) if people are being manipulated into making decisions, which eliminates the freedom they have.

For Bernays, a smoothly functioning society was one marshaled around consumption; he viewed the American way of life and the capitalist system of production as completely entwined. Though he occasionally uses examples of other ways that propaganda can be used, Bernays has a special place for propaganda that promotes what he claims to be the civilising influence of capitalism. He also argues that good advertising is not simply propaganda for an individual product, or even for an individual company, but for the entire system of consumption.

This should, then, be worrisome for a lot of us in how advertising influences our decisions. And honestly, it should be part of the consideration when radical organisations participate in the same strategies and systems. Even if they aren't inherently good or bad, even if they are innately neutral, we should at least still be thinking about how we use those tools and whether or not we're building a way for people to break out of them.

It’s not that propaganda, public relations, outdoor advertising, or the intersections of all three are inherently evil. It’s just that the system of production they have been so adept at promoting throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is responsible for economic crises, resource wars, widening inequality, and, perhaps most alarmingly, environmental destruction on a global scale.

Chapter 2: Advertising Shits in Your Head

Chapter starts off discussing this article and Special Patrol Group's Ad Hack Manifesto. It also mentions this interview with Darren Cullen.

Perhaps one reason a comparison with pollution is apt is the way that advertising can accumulate in the environment—a sort of commercial clutter. And it is as background environmental accumulation that advertising can be most harmful.

If this happens in a visual medium, which often tends to be more passive in the day-to-day (unless something catches our attention and we focus on it)... Then what about other somewhat passive media? Listening? Sometimes browsing the internet and reading email? Twitter? How does it fit there?

More names mentioned: JK Galbraith (The Affluent Society) and researchers Benedetto Molinari and Francesco Turino.

Advertising may be exceptionally adept at creating needs, but it is singularly bad at meeting them, at making good on its promises. Critics claim that unsatisfied needs are a cause of unhappiness. Furthermore, they posit a new form of cyclical consumerism that follows the “I eat because I’m unhappy” model: the more anxious and depressed we are, the more we must consume; the more we consume, the more anxious and depressed we become.

Chapter ends with a quote from the 'left-leaning' think-tank Compass. (Just by looking at the cover of the report, I'm curious to see how a 'left-leaning' think-tanks wants to "get the balance right" with advertising.)

Chapter 3: Society's Story

Chapter starts with a quote from Louis Wirth from this lecture.

Advertisers like to profess that advertising only reflects existing cultural values, that their ads merely hold a mirror up to the world—any horror we might see was already there anyway. While this is undoubtedly true in one sense, subvertisers argue it’s the emphasis advertisers place on certain of these innate values over others that’s harmful. Again, the advertisers’ assertion to the public that they have no real influence appears to be at odds with the claims they make to their clients.

If advertisers want to make that claim, they're wrong. Anyone should be able to recognise that advertisers can and should interrupt these harmful values, but they choose not to for the sake of continued relationships and profit. Advertising is one of the most lucrative industries. Yet advertisers seem content to let companies get away with any harmful values rather than put a stop to it, when they could.

They are center stage with options that they choose to never use.

Jordan Seiler points out that the stories that are told by those interests are rarely, if ever, some “of our more interesting goals for ourselves as a society, like community, taking care of our children correctly and education.”

The cited location for that quote was unavailable, but I accidentally found this article from 2021 and this one from 2020.

Continues to reference other websites, such as this one. And more accidental finds include this set of interviews (by one of the authors).

This book feels like it's giving me more work to hunt stuff down rather than more information in one place.

Studies have shown that placing greater emphasis on extrinsic values is associated with higher levels of prejudice, less concern about the environment and weak concern about human rights. The values displayed in advertising reflect the values of those creating advertising: the economic elite. It is perhaps not surprising that most advertising is designed to appeal to extrinsic values. As subvertisers point out, that should be of concern to anyone who wants to promote anything other than individualistic consumption, because our values influence our behaviours.

A further cause for concern is that these values work in opposition: if a person has strongly held extrinsic values, this will diminish their regard for intrinsic values and vice-versa. Not only do advertisements place an emphasis on extrinsic values, but by repeatedly emphasising those values, it serves to strengthen them. Again, we don’t even need to be persuaded to buy the product: simply by seeing messages with extrinsic values emphasised, we can subconsciously buy into those values.

I'm curious as to how correct this is or how this kind of study was done. In saying this, it's pertinent to mention that the book also references this study.

Chapter 4: Rights to the City

Chapter starts off quoting from this article.

One member of the Special Patrol Group (SPG) tells a story about one of the first times they went out to do ad takeovers on the London Underground. As they were slotting a subvert over the original ad in an ad space, a commuter interjected and blustered at them: “You want arresting! Why don’t you just pay for your advertising, like everyone else?” It serves to neatly illustrate both the perceived sanctity of the private nature of these public spaces—that anyone interfering with them should be arrested—and also the misconception that these spaces are somehow open to all. The reason the SPG were subvertising is because not everyone can afford to access those spaces.

I don't think people realise how inaccessible and unaffordable those advertising slots are. They are really expensive, and they often require already established relationships to access them (especially the better ones).

Like, putting up posters is illegal in some places, which makes no sense. Why should we not be able to put up posters? Why should we be banned from putting up stickers? How do those make places worse than McDonald's ads?

There is no such thing as a free bench.

Partially taken from here.

Goes on to talk about Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey and the right to the city.

Chapter 5: Bani-shit

In 2015, Grenoble, France, became the first city in Europe to ban outdoor advertising; 326 advertising spaces were replaced with community noticeboards and trees. The mayor’s office stated it was “taking the choice of freeing public space in Grenoble from advertising to develop areas for public expression” (perhaps an explicit reference to a right to the city?).

While helpful, what are the regulations and structures around what can be published on those boards? Are there people or institutions who take control of them? We have "public" boards where I am, but they require express permission of people who have keys. They are routinely graffitied because of how absolutely pointless they are, for they refuse to host anything beyond city publications.

So I have to ask whether or not Grenoble genuinely provides an "explicit reference to a right to the city" in their views, values, and policies. Because not all cities do this, and it's a worry that people should have when the State (or elements of it, such as local and district governments) start making these decisions.

At first glance it may appear that advertising bans are a positive step, but academic Kurt Iveson questions the rationale for them. Though some activists may see their work as anti-authoritarian, he claims the cities that have introduced bans may be doing so in order to reassert the dominance of the state. He suggests a ceremonial normative model of public space, which privileges civic order above private commercial interests, but also views the public as a passive audience for “ceremonial, monumental and architectural displays, which might exercise a civilising influence.” State-led advertising bans are concerned with “the aesthetic integrity of the public realm… rather than its democratic accessibility.”

And there it is. We should be questioning the authoritarianism behind city bans. (This is also one of the softest ways of putting it. Even my mild concern was harder hitting.)

He also questions the motives behind the bans, and points out the ban in São Paulo has only been partial: at the same time as the Clean City Law was introduced, the city signed a contract with JCDecaux to provide advertising-funded bus shelters. By eliminating the haphazard clutter of billboard advertising, it’s entirely possible that the Clean City Law will benefit the companies that hold a monopoly on advertising infrastructure, which is slowly being reintroduced in a “controlled manner.” This effectively eliminates the competition and means that a few big companies are once again allowed to dominate.

And there it is, too. If you ban it, you can reintroduce it in a controlled manner.