Is this an honest approach to advertising that we are now showing the real average man in the street rather them the perfect looking man you get in perfume ads? And they don’t get any less glamerous than Johnny V in PG Tip ads.

Or maybe, as my girlfriend suggests, because the average creative is a beer drinking, burger eating, football watching bloke (85% of ad agency creative departments are blokes) they put themselves in the ad?

I remember pitching for Butlin’s a good few years ago and as part of the briefing they sent us to a camp for 24 hours. Was more like a POW camp – utter hell!

I snapped a picture of a typical Butlin’s family against a poster outside their rebooking centre. The poster showed a model 2+2 family, healthy, smiling, slim and fit. By contrast the Butlin’s family were massively overweight, and looked miserable. I wondered if maybe we should propose that they used images of real customer in their ads, after all if you are 22 stone white van driver and ugly why would you want to go to a place full of 12 stone models who drive Ferrari’s?

We were lucky and didn’t win it. Mind you, the client treated its agencies with so little respect it must have been hell for the winning agency, the main marketing director didn’t even turn up for the pitch. So no surprise when the winning agency did part company after just 6 months.

It’s somewhat ironic that while guys are getting the honest treatment, we are still portrayed as the bad guys in advertising for showing perfect women in ads and making young girls anorexic (according to the tabloids). Except that’s not actually true.

Excluding shallow American ads for vanity product and perfume ads, most UK ads show quite ordinary women because most ads are for everyday things like food, cleaning products and the rest. It’s actually the media that is fascinated with the perfect woman, and it the media who are the main influencers. Lets be honest, most ads get ignored.

Of course the reason we often write into our ads perfect looking people is based on a marketing myth no one challenges – that we all aspire to be like that. Well if that was even slightly true we’d all eat low calorie foods and live in gyms, but instead the masses do the opposite, proving that most tubby people are happy the way they are.

Which opens up a debate, just how many marketing rules that we follow are true?  Here’s one I can blow up – showing women sitting around a kitchen table talking about any product does not appeal to women (as proved in a Mumsnet ad survey). In fact it turns them off. But as long as you have beer drinking, burger eating, football watching blokes writing ads aimed at women, what do you expect?

I say, let’s have more honesty in TV ads, more plumpness, spots and greasy hair, bad dressing and poor taste. After all, it works for Eastenders.

Top of the pile was the bus group First Group. Go Ahead, another transport company, came 10^th. GlaxoSmithKline did well too.

20% of UK companies, they looked at, got an A rating. Compare that to the US where only 2% got an A.

Internationally, German sportswear company Puma came top. Brands like Phillips (Dutch) did well too but Apple and Google did badly. Toyota, makers of the Prius, also did badly. And no surprise that Nestlé were also in the poor performers league.

No surprise that the oil companies Exxon Mobile, Chevron, Conoco Philips and Occidental got the lowest E grade. But with the money they are making from inflated fuel prices at the moment, they probably don’t care.

Of course, as there is really no universal agreement as to the definition of ethics, it’s all academic. I also have a cynical view of these evaluations as they are based on what the organisation thinks matters and often is more about figures than real facts. But at least it’s good to know that UK companies appear to be leading the way in ethics.

See the report at here

Referred to as the ‘biggest company you’ve never heard of’’, Glencore is a commodity giant, worth £27bn. It trades huge quantities of wheat, coal and much of the world’s copper.

In this week’s BBC Panorama special, John Sweeney interviewed CEO Ivan Glasenberg, who became a billionaire five times over when the company was listed on the London stock exchange last year.

Glasenberg said that Glencore took corporate responsibility seriously, saying: “We care about the environment. We care about the local communities.” He added, “We definitely do not profit from child labor in any part of the world.”

Despite claiming to be community and socially conscious, Sweeney exposed the truth of what was happening; from links to child labour in Africa (children as young as 10 working in the Tilwezembe mine) and land grabbing massacres in Columbia (10 people were murdered at El Prado), to acid pollution of a river in the Congo.

Glencoe’s history is hardly ethical – the company, now based in Switzerland, was founded in 1974 by Marc Rich, once one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives (for illegal oil dealing with Iran and tax evasion). He was later pardoned by Bill Clinton (why?).

As a PR exercise it was an utter disaster for Glasenberg as he ducked Sweeney’s questions and the shocking facts the BBC laid before him.

The company you’ve probably ‘never heard of’ now is one you probably wish you could forget. It was a classic case of ‘brand suicide’.

I recommend you watch this episode of Panorama. “Billionaires Behaving Badly?” – it’s always shocking just how the lust for money by large corporations can result in unethical behavior. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01gk8zc/Panorama_Billionaires_Behaving_Badly/

Read more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17726865

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/14/glencore-child-labour-acid-dumping-row?newsfeed=true

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/16/us-glencore-panorama-idUSBRE83F0SH20120416

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2130163/Glasenberg-tackles-allegations-Glencores-environmental-human-rights-record.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2130163/Glasenberg-tackles-allegations-Glencores-environmental-human-rights-record.html#ixzz1sXMb3zok

Unlike Stonewall’s more pragmatic ads, those by Core Issues Trust & Anglican Mainstream are plain hate, ‘NOT GAY! EX-GAY,POST-GAY AND PROUD. GET OVER IT’.

Speaking on LBC on the subject, I pointed out that if you replaced the word GAY in either ad with BLACK, JEWISH, ISLAMIC, DISABLED… then Stonewall’s would still be ok but the religious group’s one would be racist and even an incitement to hatred.

In defense, CORE claim to be ‘a non-profit Christian initiative seeking to support men and women with homosexual issues who voluntarily seek change in sexual preference and expression. It respects the rights of individuals who identify as ‘gay’ who do not seek change’.

‘It respects the rights of individuals who identify as ‘gay’ who do not seek change’– evidently not!

Anglican Mainstream claim, they, “provide news, resources and contact details aiming to be a resource for those seeking to understand the issues in human sexuality and orthodox faith.” Really!! So why have they got a petition on their website that reads, ‘I support the legal definition of marriage which is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I oppose any attempt to redefine it.’ If that isn’t a blatant attack on gay marriages, what is?

Both organisations are evidently anti-gay. And into spin. They quote the ASA as having approved their ads – this is a lie. The ASA doesn’t approve ads as such, it can advise against the Advertising Codes.

To quote the ASA, “Following widespread news coverage of a planned advertising campaign by Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues, the ASA would like to reiterate that it is not involved in the pre-clearance or vetting of any advertisement, including this campaign”.

The ASA can only assess whether or not ads adhere to the Advertising Codes once they appear, not before.  Since Transport for London (TfL) have stated that this particular ad will not be shown, the ASA will not be taking any action at this time.’

Given that Boris Johnson and TfL have blocked the latter ads (and rightly so), the big debate was,  ‘is this a denial of freedom of speech’. This opens up another debate, is advertising freedom of speech in the first place?

I argued that advertising and freedom of speech are different. If we can respond and debate with someone then that’s ok, but advertising (above the line) is a one way message (and we in the industry know it’s a powerful vehicle).

If this was a Twitter or an online forum debate them it’d be far less influential as it’s open to comment (debate).

Regrettably, Core Issues Trust & Anglican Mainstream got too much publicity over the ban but at least they haven’t come out well, I am guessing that most Londoners think they are extreme or even nutters based on LBC listener comments.

Interestingly, both Ken & Boris have backed Stonewall – well there are over 350,000 gay voters in London.

Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill has been quoted as saying,  “In recent months Britain has been subjected to vitriolic political campaigning from people who want to impose their 19th-century values on 21st-century society. Our very moderate and straightforward campaign will help those who have been offended by anti-equality prejudice to tell the government why equal marriage is important to them.”

Stonewall’s campaign was on 1000 buses for a month, whereas Core Issues Trust & Anglican Mainstream’s campaign was on less than a 100 for two weeks.

Personally I think a church group should be spending their money on helping people not hating people.

Ironically, if Boris and TfL hadn’t banned the ads no one would have noticed and Core Issues Trust & Anglican Mainstream wouldn’t have had a chance to speak. So by default, banning their ad gave them more freedom of speech.

What do you think?

(Twitter #freespeechvsads)

LINKS:

http://www.stonewall.org.uk

http://www.core-issues.org/

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net

http://www.asa.org.uk/Media-Centre/2012/Planned-advertising-by-Anglican-Mainstream-and-Core-Issues.aspx

As sugar prices rise, they have almost doubled since 2010, food and drink brands are looking to alternatives, mainly artificial sweeteners like Tate & Lyles super sweet ‘Sucralose’ (E955) or Ajinomoto’s ‘Aspartame’ (E951).

Other artificial sweeteners used in soft and sports drinks include ‘Splenda’, ‘Ace-K’, ‘Erythritoll’ and ‘Acesulfame Potassium’, but sugar still remains the number one sweetener.

The UK is one of the biggest users already of artificial sweeteners because of the high cost of sugar imports, yet many brands don’t use this factor to push a healthier message. According to Mintel, a third of low calorie drinks launched since 2010 don’t carry a diet drink claim. In the current climate this can only be a missed marketing opportunity.

Britvic brand SoBe V-Water has opted for ‘Stevia’, a natural South American herbal sweetener (a member of the sunflower family) and not before time as it has been heavily criticised for its sugar content.

Stevia, due to its steviol glycoside extracts, is about 40 times sweeter than sugar so has allowed SoBe to dramatically reduce calories.  It is more commonly used in the US and it’s probably only a matter of time before Coca-Cola introduces it into UK lines like Fanta (targeted at kids) – they already use it in France in their Fanta Still product.

Of course the drink that goes down in history for sugar deception is Sunny D. Originally marketed in a way to make it look like it was a natural orange drink (it was even sold in the chiller cabinet) it was a big hit with kids. But when consumers found out it was nothing more than coloured sugar water (with just 5% juice) millions was wiped off of the brand’s profits and value.

I remember sitting in a meeting when I was a CD at Saatchi’s with a P&G marketing manager discussing a relaunch brief for Sunny D. It was a hopeless mission and one that failed. I suggested they bin the brand and launch a new one built around honesty and health, which was meet with puzzled faces. “But we’ve invested millions into it,” he commented. “Yes you have,” I replied,” millions in deceiving mums when you could have invested in a decent product in the first place. But now you’ve lost their trust you can’t buy it back, no matter how deep your pockets.” It was a lost argument when you are talking to someone trained just in ‘Profit & Gain’.

In Australia research has linked the consumption of sugary soft drinks with an increase in child heart disease, not to mention the common problems of rotten teeth and over weight. Kids as young as 12 are showing early signs of heart problems has shocked Aussie mums.

Despite their benefits, artificial and natural sweeteners can be controversial with some parties questioning their side effects. In the US, due to actions of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and following the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, Stevia can only be sold legally in the United States as a “dietary supplement.” At one time it was banned.

The big question you have to ask is, when there are so many low calorie alternatives why do drink brands still fill their bottles with up to 6 spoonfuls of sugar? Probably comes down to the sweet taste of fat profits.

Sugar in drinks facts:

http://www.sugarydrinkfacts.org/

And as so many creatives theses days don’t look any further than YouTube (remember when we used our imaginations rather than a Mac?) one creative team have decided to use Hitler to sell a hair wash brand called Biomen.

It certainly win an award for bad taste! And not surprisingly has got loads of publicity.

The ad, voiced over in Turkish (so no idea what it says) does carry the line ‘”If  you’re not wearing women’s clothes, you shouldn’t be using women’s shampoo…here it is, a real man’s shampoo. Biomen.”

Turkish newspaper Hürriyet also described the advert as “irresponsible and tasteless”. And Jewish communities all over the world have slammed the ad. But despite the controversity, the ad is still running on Turkish TV.

I guess the Turkish versions of Clearcast and the ASA don’t have very sharp teeth like ours do.

Odd fact: Turkey has long had an apparent fascination with Hitler, as the Nazi leader’s autobiography Mein Kampft, became a bestseller in the country in 2005.

See the ad on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLzxuiQtzqE

(Biomen is produced by Biota Laboratories)

In the ‘Call for Action on Obesity’, Andrew Lansley (MP) challenged the food industry to reduce calories by over 5 billion, the surprise is how many have responded.

The Department of Health says England has one of Europe’s highest obesity rates and that consuming too many calories is the cause of the problem. With growing obesity rates, especially in children due to poor fatty and sugar heavy diets, we are heading for a series health issue in our society.

Ironically, around 3 million people in the UK have a form of malnutrition due to eating processed foods that don’t contain enough nutrients (report by The British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition).  In short, UK is in the middle of a serious food & drink crisis.

Meanwhile, almost a quarter of adults (22 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women aged 16 or over) in England are classified as obese.

Only this week obesity topped the media charts when 33 stone Sara Agintas hit the headlines and shocked readers by revealing that she was spending over £200 a week on takeaways, as well as eating a jar of pickled onions a day, followed by three packets of crisps, two large pork chops with veg for dinner followed by two Big Mac meals, washed down with beer. At one point she was eating eight tins of sausages a day

Rather than diet, like the rest of us would do, she wants a £14,000 operation to fit a gastric band. She commented, “I can’t work because I’m too fat to fit in an office chair and can only stand for two minutes at a time. I know it’s my fault I’m fat. I can’t afford a personal trainer or weight-loss surgery – I need help from the taxpayer.”

As part of the “calorie reduction pledge” brands have set themselves the following targets:

Tesco aims to reduce 1.8 billion calories from soft drinks. Plus reducing its Eat, Live & Enjoy range to no more than 500 calories a meal.

Asda is developing a new lower calorie range, with 30% less calories than products in its Chosen By You range.

Premier Foods (which includes Mr Kipling, Lyons, Hovis, Hartley’s, Robertsons, Batchelors and Ambrosia ) is aiming to cut calories across a third of it’s brands.

Subway, who have one of the most calorific sandwiches of all, is also cutting calories across its ranges.

The king of sweet drinks, Coca-Cola is planning to cut calories  across a range of soft drinks (which includes Powerade, Oasis, Dr Pepper, Lilt, Relentless, Fanta, Sprite and Kia Ora) by at least 30%.

Mars is aiming to cap all it’s chocolate bars to just 250 calories.

Other companies include Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Kerry Foods, Kraft, Nestle, PepsiCo (owners of Walkers), Unilever, Beefeater (Whitbread) and contract caterer Compass.

However, the Labour party have criticised the scheme, claiming it is not the change needed in the nation’s diet, recommending instead better food labelling and shielding children from adverts for junk food. (As usual, politicians blame advertising rather than parents.)

Surprisingly, England is better eaters than Scotland, Wales or Ireland. People in England eat more fruit and vegetables and less salt and fat, reducing heart disease and some cancers, according experts from the Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford. Last year researchers estimated that more than 30,000 lives a year would be saved if everyone in the UK followed dietary guidelines on fat, salt, fibre, and fruit and vegetables.

The group are recommending bringing in food taxes like the fat tax brought in by the Danes, who have a tax on foods high in saturated fat. Other countries are also looking at taxing fizzy drinks or high-calorie foods.

Of course many cynics claim that paying lip service to reducing calories is easier than actually delivering it, some believing many will fall far short of their claims. For that we’ll have to wait and see.

The trouble with being a large American corporation is that you are always going to be a target of left wing anti-capitalist groups, radical greens and anyone who wants to vent their inner anger at large American corporations.

As green as I am, I’ve actually always been a supporter of both brands (and not just because I’ve worked for Starbucks, though I’m still waiting for a McDonald’s brief!) because when they change their ways for the good it makes a really big difference.

Starbuck’s latest shareholder report is good green reading. They are aiming for 100% of Starbucks coffee to be “ethically sourced” by 2015. That means, for Starbucks, meeting their CAFE Practices standards. They have already reached 86%.

Ben Packard, Starbucks’ VP of global responsibility, pointed out that Starbucks is one of the top purchases of Fair Trade coffee in the speciality coffee market, though recently they are moving beyond the Fairtrade certificate to a broader scheme they feel will help and support more coffee farming communities (see my previous article).

Starbucks are also increasing recycling and encouraging the use of reusable cups (personal tumblers) and even offer a discount to incentivise customers to use their own cup.

As for community, something Starbuck’s is big on but don’t shout about, they are on target to engage 50,000 young people to innovate and take action in their communities by 2015. Hours of community service by Starbucks employees doubled in 2011 to  442,000 hours, with a target of 1 million hours by 2015.

Energy use in stores was down by 7.5% with 50% of Starbucks electricity worldwide coming from renewable sources. So overall, their logo is as green as their ethics.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s is trying to get rid of its polystyrene foam cups and is currently testing a double-walled fiber hot cup in the US. Globally this will massively reduce landfill. McDonald’s has made big strides in reducing waste and packaging by adopted an industry leading environmental packaging policy that included both continued progress on the increased use of recycled fiber but also took a comprehensive approach to its non-recycled paper packaging. (Check out the Dogwood Alliance report – http://www.dogwoodalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/0911104-Dogwood-Packaging-Report-Final.pdf .)

But no matter what theses brands do there will be no lack of people who will scoff and find fault with other areas. The key thing is that if we, and especially the media, encourage brands, rather than slag them off, they’ll do more. And when big brands do even small changes, globally they make a big difference.

Retailers, campaigners, fashion, food, arts & culture, big ideas, business initiatives, whatever you rate, even sporting stars (well it is the year of the Olympics) they can be nominated.

I’m nominating Method, Food from the Skies and Thornton’s Budgens in Crouch End. Andrew Thornton has been a leading light in the ethical retailing field and has proved that the more ethical products you put on the shelves, the more people buy. He’s also helped establish a good few new entries to the market. And they sell a bread product we invented.

The last time I attended the OEA it was great to see young fashion brands get a big lift up thanks to the awards. Last year’s winners included Pachacuti Fashion, The People’s Supermarket, Riverford Organic Vegetables, Compassion In World Farming, The Bristol Bike Project, The Co-operative Group and for the Big Idea award, Pavegen,?who came up with an idea that uses wasted kinetic energy from footsteps and turns it into electricity, allowing people to take part in energy saving in a fun educational way.

However, a memorable event was being mistaken for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – we have more than a passing similarity.

Hugh headed off after he picked up his green gong so I suddenly found myself getting lots of handshakes. Despite many attempts to convince people I was NOT the ethical legend Hugh, especially to one Scotsman who ran an organic fish farm and wanted me (well Hugh) to visit it, I finally settled for the line, ” I’m not Hugh but his brother Chris.” It worked. What else can you do? Well at least we also have ethics in common.

This year’s award is sponsored by the greenest of all cleaners, Ecover (who alas won’t be winning any awards for their press ads – sorry guys but that ‘Feel Good Cleaning’ ad in the Observer magazine was a Golden Turkey nomination if ever I saw one). Other sponsors include the Body Shop, Timberland and the National Grid.

Judges include Vogue’s Jessica Bumpus. Model Lily Cole, TV presenters Rick Edwards and Stacey Dooley and many other notable ethical champions.

At least the Observer have some genuine green sponsors, unlike the Climate Week Campaign (March 12^th – 18^th) who were a bit shocked that I refused to support them this year because EDF (and a big car company) were main sponsors. Dooh! Obviously they have never read my blogs on them. Further more, I don’t agree with their eat less meat claim as it’s actually a vegan propaganda argument that has been discredited – rice and many vegetables are just as bad at producing methane.

So give those ethical brands you buy a chance and start nominating. I’ll be reporting on the winners once the awards are announced.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/observer-ethical-awards-2012

http://www.climateweek.com/

Rose, who started his retail career shelf-stacking and sweeping floors, said it was “baffling” that anyone would complain about unemployed youngsters being given opportunities.

Even though these young people are pulling in benefit payments during the work experience period, Right to Work, brandished as a left wing Marxist organisation by ministers and the papers, sees everything within free markets as exploitation.

“They hate bankers, bosses, just about anyone who doesn’t support the idea of giving work shy people a big salary for doing bugger all,” to quote one forum comment.

One comment on LBC was that maybe Poundland (one of the businesses involved in Rose’s scheme) “should charged the kids £1 a day to gain work experience, at least they’d appreciate it more”. Others suggested we bring back national service, paid of course.

The reality is, we have a very different youth entering the job market. Having worked in schools on creative projects over the years I am shocked at the attitudes and lack of work ethic many kids have. A good friend who has taught for over 20 years is even more critical of the decline in values, work ethics and educational achievement of modern day youth, “It’s nto a question of finding employment as whether employers can find kids that even employable these days.”

This has a dramatic implication for us in marketing. Firstly, a changing consumer. Secondly, recruiting future talent. The question is, are the graduates we are seeing as good as the ones over the previous years? My own conclusion, and I see lots, is no they aren’t. Certainly the idea that you have to work you way up in the creative industries is unacceptable to many.

Of course it’s ok for colleges (run as businesses) to charge young people for 3 years of training – the point is that some young people believe that after gaining a massive debt of over £20,000 they deserve a job. Yet, some are leaving college with little good or up to date training to be employable. And worse, some think they deserve a big salary and are already God’s gift to creativity.

One grad I interviewed started the interview with, “Before I show you my book I need to know what your work life balance policy is… oh, and I am looking for £25k with a mobile phone, with the possibility of a car within a year.” What planet was he on? God knows, but his book was rubbish and his ego over inflated by a college that told him he was great when he really wasn’t.

I ran a deprogramming scheme at Saatchi’s when I was there because too many young creatives were being run through colleges like a “sausage factory”. This is a term used by a tutor at a well known college, she blames the beaurocratic system that’s sees education as just a number game. “If we were able to train them the way we wanted it would be the way the politicians want us to, she remarked to me.  “Given the importance of the Creative Economy to this country, I really fear that we aren’t training young people with the right thinking or skills.”

It opens up a previous debate I raised, that maybe the industry should offer an alternative to college and train our future talent ourselves. There is something to be said for apprentice schemes. If college can charge money, then why shouldn’t big agency groups? Surely, 3 years spent at a WPP, Publicis, BBDO or Omicom agency is better education than 3 years at one of the underperforming colleges? And they’d make money out of it too.

No one will disagree that there’s a big difference in taking young people on and giving them real experience and real training, against just using them to do the bad jobs like filing, doing databases and running erands.

But groups like Right to Work have no idea about how business work and see everything in black or white, and through a negative anti-capitalist viewpoint. They don’t see how important work experience is in making young people suitable for work. How valuable real experience is. Or how much a company has to invest in young people before they can actually be productive.

Fact is, most of us had to work our way up in the industry, I worked for peanuts for my first 3 years. But that was how we learnt the real art of advertising. How we gained the experience that was necessary to make us employable. Those who weren’t prepared to didn’t make it into the industry. This is true of most of the creative industries.

After all, any employer has a right to work too – the right to get a real day’s work back for what he pays you.

The Right to Work group have also being targeting brands like Tesco, Waterstones, TK Maxx, Poundland, Oxfam, Burger King and McDonalds’ with their “I’m hating it” campaign (hate seems to be something they like to cultivate). Of course, they offer no sound alternative economic solutions and actually threaten the future of youth opportunities through their campaigns.

Beating up brands that can train youth means that sooner or later the big brands will withdraw support of schemes like WorkFare, leaving a generation with no hope at all. And what can Right to Work offer them as an alternative? Nothing.

The fundamental point the Right to Work has missed is that no one has the right to demand work in a free economy, only in a communist one (well they are a Marxist group). To quote a comment on Right to Work’s own site (having a go at them) “If you want a fair wage for a fair day’s work you have to earn it. A salary is not the same as benefit. One you earn, the other you don’t.“

It seems we are entering a period where trying to do good is portrayed as bad. This could mean that work experience, so needed by grads to get jobs, is stopped because it causes too much grief and instead companies start to hire from abroad. To quote the Telegraph “Only in Britain’s warped welfare culture could putting the unemployed to work cause such a furore.”

Discuss on Twitter  #learntoearn

LINKS:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2106897/Sir-Stuart-Rose-tells-firms-defy-Right-To-Work-militants.html

http://righttowork.org.uk/2012/02/messages-of-support-for-right-to-work/