Saving Advertising's Superpower

“In my younger more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”.

The opening lines of the Great Gatsby. A story of success and social upheaval. Like Gatsby, as advertisers, we talk a good game and work hard getting to know our audience, but we live in our own social bubble (notably, this is also like F. Scott Fitzgerald who was guilty of shortcomings in his own views). Add to this, unfortunately our powers to empathise with people different to ourselves aren’t what we think they might be.

Try as we might our unconscious bias becomes pervasive, especially when we aren’t afforded the luxury of time. Ideas based on a sample size of one are easily reaffirmed through confirmation bias from peers that largely look and sound the same. It should be no surprise a lot of our advertising ends up the same.

Quite predictably then, creative effectiveness is in decline. The equilibrium in advertising’s great story is broken. Our superpower of creativity is waning. But in this simplest of narrative structures, surely this is the moment of saviour?

In the quest to rediscover our superpower and avoid pressing repeat, we must paradoxically change what so often makes us great: our people and our network.

How can we possibly hope to be original without a diverse workforce to draw upon? As it stands, “our social, cultural and economic experiences are not representative” (Andrew Tezner, 2020).

It is not enough to broaden our own minds. Diversity of thought is not a substitute for diverse representation. We are missing out on a diversity of lived experiences. Original thought requires new thinking and new thinking requires new people.

PwC, former Channel 4 CMO Dan Brooke and countless other academic studies have shown before, “diversity is a solution, not a problem”.

As Gatsby demonstrates, talent is distributed equally but opportunity is not. The solution clearly follows: we must expand our network, hire talent from untapped, under-represented areas and redistribute opportunity.

One fantastic example, tackling this head on is Brixton Finishing School. BFS have launched two open-to-all virtual, industry access points so that when fresh ideas are needed, there is a diverse pool of work-place ready recruits, willing and able to go.

As an industry we have a lot to offer but so much to gain from Brixton Finishing School and the creation of a diverse workforce. Ally Owen, founder of Brixton Finishing School, recently wrote “the bottom line is this: without a diverse workforce, we’re not going to be able to successfully rebuild”.

So, let’s be clear about who needs saving and avoid a saviour complex – remember it is advertising that has lost its superpower. This mustn’t be pseudo-purposeful campaign to rebrand advertising. It's the future of it.

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