The Character of Advertising

Modern advertising is almost infinite in its variety. The notices of Births, Marriages and Deaths on the front page of The Times are advertisements; so is the announcement of a house to let, whether it appears in the classified columns of a newspaper or on an agent’s board planted in the front garden. These and a hundred similar examples represent advertising in its primary purpose of giving public information. Nobody questions either the propriety or the utility of advertising of this kind, unless indeed the information given is false or misleading, or the manner of giving it is so obtrusive or ugly as to cause offence. Then it may lead to questions of an ethical or social kind. But in general all the vast daily mass of advertising which can be regarded as strictly informative in character may be regarded as not only unobjectionable but plainly useful and necessary.

It is apparent, however, that a very large proportion of modern advertising is by no means limited to the purpose of giving useful information to the public. Its primary object is not to inform but to persuade. Sometimes the informative and persuasive functions of an advertisement are so closely linked that it is difficult to separate them. A publisher’s catalogue, or a list of steamship sailings, may be regarded as primarily informative. But the question will be one of degree. If, for example, the publisher takes a large space in one of the Sunday papers, decks it out attractively and quotes extracts from the more favourable reviews of his books; or if the steamship company adds to the bare notice of a forthcoming sailing some enticing descriptions of the places to be visited; then it is fairly safe, to assume that the main purpose is not to inform the public, but to persuade them to take some action which mil be of benefit to the advertiser; to buy the book or to register for the cruise in preference to spending their money in some other way.

Now this is the kind of advertising that gives rise to the main questions dealt with in this book. Advertising which is purely informative in its object can be ignored for our purpose. Very little observation or reflection is needed to jihow that it is a small proportion of the whole. Yet it is important to notice the distinction between the informative and the persuasive functions of advertising, since some writers have sought to use this distinction as a basis for their separation of the sheep from the goats.

Nearly all modern advertising is persuasive in intention. Some advertisements mingle much information with their persuasive appeal, some little, and some none at all. But for our purpose advertising may be regarded as a vast apparatus of persuasion, by which the eyes and ears of the public are constantly assailed with cunning inducement to do this, or to buy that, or to think favourably of the other. It cannot be rightly justified or condemned by its incidental effects, though some of these, to be considered in their place, are of very great importance. The information given by advertisements is generally only incidental to their main purpose, which is persuasion. Is this vast business of persuasion really necessary? Does it serve a useful social purpose? These are the main questions to be answered in judging modern advertising.