Advertising, Persuasion and Power: why 2024 is not 1997, and what might we anticipate in 2040?

Nick Manning wrote over the weekend that Elon Musk reminds us that, “Advertisers should support high-quality, reliable, responsible media that provide a benign advertising environment, an engaged and appropriate audience in both scale and profile, and an effective, measurable return on investment.”

The point is well made. But how is it to be actioned, what is the real meaning of Elon Musk’s acquisition of and purpose for Twitter/X, and what does it tell us about the future?

I believe marketers and advertisers do not appreciate our importance. While action to improve public discourse, the media news, and advertising, can only be realized by government, the advertising industry should work with the new Labour administration and lobby hard for regulation and standards:

• To achieve reliable, responsible media requires strengthening media regulation and content moderation in the public interest, starting with applying the same standards to social media that are well-established, at least in the UK, for television and the press.
• To ensure a benign environment requires breaking up the platforms, starting with alleged monopolist Google, making illegal their data surveillance and content scraping, and mandating transparency in their algorithmic amplification.

With Peter Kyle and Lisa Nandy in ministerial roles, these are hopefully attainable missions.

Consider then the underlying purposes of Musk, and his backers, of which the ad industry is na?ve; and to what this controversy says about the future of advertising, brands, and marketing.

Two alternative views on Musk were out yesterday, one from two Brits in the U.S., another from an American in the U.K. A supportive one (mostly) is in a conversation on the Andrew Keen podcast with his fellow Brit in California, Keith Teare . The pair debate Should Musk be arrested for the Lies and Hate on X? I admire Teare for his entrepreneurial career and considered perspective on technology, but less for his libertarian outlook. Yet he states he will vote for Kamala Harris while Musk endorses Trump.

Then there is this critical view from Robert Reich in The Guardian, Elon Musk is out of control. Here is how to rein him in. Reich writes “Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth – he’s the richest person in the world – into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world.”

Rather than reminding us of a time when advertising felt a force for good, most corporations, certain advertisers, many consumers, and some politicians may have reached very different conclusions from Elon Musk’s attacks on advertising and advertisers.

• Most corporations observe Musk’s promotion of Tesla and conclude brands can be built without paid media advertising.
• Certain advertisers note Musk’s claims of Full Self Driving capability and conclude that exaggeration can trump truth*.
• Many consumers read their news on X or Meta and conclude the mainstream media hide the whole truth.
• Some politicians envy Musk’s reach and influence to influence public discourse and win political power.

(*In April near Seattle, a motorcyclist was killed by a Tesla in FSD mode while the driver was on his mobile.)

The ad industry believes Musk does not know what he is doing. WAKE UP! Musk does not care about the small change (to him) of X’s advertising revenue decline. Nor do the petrostates who are his major financial backers care about the minor fall (to them) in X’s valuation.

The objective of the acquisition of Twitter was power. The most important source of power today is persuasion. Musk and his backers will be concluding they have achieved their goal.

Over four volumes the historian Michael Mann tells the narrative of the changing dynamics of power, through the modern era in The Sources of Social Power: Volume 4, Globalizations 1945-2011. Mann identifies four types of power which, with my apologies for simplification, are:

• coercion (do what I tell you or you’ll die)
• economics (do what I tell you or you’ll starve)
• administration (do what I tell you because I’m in charge)
• persuasion (do what I tell you because I’ll make things better for you).

Persuasion through ‘truth well told’ was the original premise of advertising. But, as Mann observes, persuasion was always wielded by elites (politicians, celebrities, the wealthy, and their corporations) and – as it became industrialized – by special interests (governments, cults, and sects). After 1945, until the internet, persuasion worked mainly through the government communications, the media and advertising, all of which were regulated.

With the internet, the drivers of persuasion became invisible and unregulated. Hidden behind data and algorithms, persuasion morphed into manipulation.

Stephen Markey’s novel, The Deluge, covers over two decades to 2040. An advertising strategist is one of his seven protagonists, and an early hero.? Yet her arc over the decades of the novel’s span involves using her persuasive skills to orchestrate the oil industry’s response to fossil-fuel opposition and joining an investment fund based on mathematical modeling. I’m only half-way through the absorbing 900 pages, but in her and others' stories the growing power of persuasion morphing into algorithmic manipulation by AI is a major theme.

Today in Britain 2024 is being compared to 1997. The excellent The Persuasion Industries. The Making of Modern Britain. by Steve McKenna is a fine history and a must read for anyone who wants to remember advertising’s once positive, persuasive and often frustrating but mostly enjoyable role in the British economy, society, and culture. McKenna ends with a chapter on Cool Britannia and the Emotional Consumer.

I’ve written that if advertising and marketing are to reclaim their integrity, it can only start in Britain. Only in Britain is there the depth of insight and talent, and an ad industry less corrupted by neoliberal economics with less of its authority handed over to big tech. Yet the industry must wake up and avoid the worst aspects of the future Markley warns us about:

• the dangers of the concentration of power in the tech platforms: the advertising industry can develop innovative solutions to build brands directly by empowering their own communities
• the end of truth amid the growth of AI generated content: the advertising industry can set ethical content and communication standards that can be collectively enforced
• the short-termism and shareholder supremacy: the advertising industry potentially has access to more data than any other functions and can demonstrate successful brands balance well-being and sustainability for their communities with profits for their shareholders.

Finally, has Britain already forgotten the role Musk played during the summer riots, personally posting patently untrue allegations about the elected British government?? Or in openly allowing back on X previously banned individuals involved in inciting these riots?? Listen to the Media Confidential podcast Has Musk gone too far? ?Twitter’s former VP for Europe believes Musk should be threatened with personal legal liability.?

The advertising industry can at least join Reich in boycotting X, to which he adds boycotting Tesla, and to which I add boycotting Musk enablers including the Cannes Lions organizers and WPP's Mark Read.

Stewart Pearson

Stewart believes in Consilience, the unity of knowledge across disciplines. He has lived, worked, and traveled globally in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He settled in the Evergreen State and Seattle. After studying Statistics and Marxist Economics in the U.K. he had four decades of experience in marketing and advertising focused on building client brands directly and globally.?He was Global Chief Client Officer and Vice-Chairman of Wunderman when it was the fastest-growing major agency in WPP. David Ogilvy once sent him a telex from India and Lester Wunderman told him stories of Picasso from the village in France where both of Stewart’s heroes had lived. Stewart is on LinkedIn and Twitter, and at [email protected].