Advertising alone can't cheer people up. But advertisers could.
Rory Sutherland 3:39pm
Generally the view of marketing and advertising is that it is a zero sum game. A nifty piece of advertising might steal a bit of brand share here and there, but at the expense of someone else's sales. That's the usual assumption. Today I'm not sure it's true.
I think we are now in a position where we need to stimulate demand rather than merely redirecting it.
In some cases, marketers have already responded ingeniously to this problem. Hyundai in the US offers a kind of redundancy insurance with every purchase of a new car and under the banner of "We're in this together" the car manufacturer offers to take back any new car for a full refund if the purchaser finds himself out of work in the 12 months after purchase. It's an ingenious idea – after all, the reason people have stopped making major purchases is generally not because they are less well paid, nor because prices are high (there's never been a better time to get a bargain) but because of uncertainty. This offer neatly sidesteps this problem.
But, bizarrely, whenever they seek to create demand in the press, advertisers now find themselves inadvertently depressing it: for they are merely funding the media's own doom-mongering.
Every time you pay for a full page in a British newspaper, half of your money seemingly goes towards paying a clutch of journalists to write doom-laden articles discouraging people from doing anything except cower inside their homes waiting for redundancy and repossession. In short advertisers are unwittingly paying newspapers to damage their businesses.
What is the point in spending £10,000 to buy an advertisement in the Daily Mail that says "Buy Stuff" if that £10,000 merely pays for the three adjacent articles which tell readers "Don't Buy Stuff!"
Would it be unacceptable for advertisers to work collectively to withhold money from newspapers until they learn to cheer the f*** up?
It would be controversial. Except that the journalistic bias towards pessimism in this country seems insane. Some of it is driven by a political animus - the urge to find fault with free markets wherever possible. Some of it, let's be frank, is driven by a journalistic resentment of bankers - almost every journalist will remember attending school or university with five or ten fairly dull people who now live in far larger houses than they do; this must rankle. A lot is simple sensationalism: no one ever got promoted for writing a cheerful story. There is also a peculiar bias whereby falling property prices (and stock prices) are always conveyed as a bad news story. This is simply wrong.
Until the newspapers sort their act out, we should redirect all advertising spend towards Britain's Got Talent, or Pets do the Funniest Things. Why would you pay to make people miserable and depress demand?
I don't know if you've spent any time in Singapore, where the press is largely uplifting propaganda. Hate to say it, but it's really quite pleasant to be able to read a good news story once in a while.
Previous
mac
January 31st, 2009 5:15pm Report this comment"cheer the f*** up?"
Are you on a retainer from G. Brown?
Old Singapore Hand (I love it really)
January 31st, 2009 5:26pm Report this commentAh yes, the Straits Times and its famous good news headline back in the Nineties when Singapore was trying to shake off its boring, stuffy image with its neighbours:
"We're Going To Have Spontaneous Fun - Here's How"
Rex Burr
January 31st, 2009 5:28pm Report this commentFalling property price is good news.
Ask the hundreds of thousands of students who will, in the next few years, be looking to buy a house without putting their neck in a financial noose.
Ray
January 31st, 2009 5:59pm Report this commentIt's exactly the same with local newspapers. Every day one is confronted with headlines like "Drivers facing more roadworks misery" on account of such-and-such a street being dug up. No one ever runs the story with the good-news headline "Backlog of highway repairs tackled at last" or "Old sewers replaced after massive investment".
Verity
January 31st, 2009 8:06pm Report this commentRay Burr - What an utterly bizarre post.
Rory Sutherland
January 31st, 2009 9:25pm Report this commentIt's not a bizarre post at all. Falling property prices are very good news indeed. In the longer term, it's also good news for the economy as people will have their incomes freed up to spend on better things than mortgages.
Most important of all, high property prices were spectacularly and arbitrarily divisive. Anyone who happened to enter the job market in the wrong decade, or to be born without property-owing parents, was condemned to a decade or so of squalor, drudgery - or, worst of all, living with their in-laws.
Verity
January 31st, 2009 10:57pm Report this commentOld Singapore Hand - I love Singapore, too, and they do treat their leaders with respect. Of course, given the quality of their leadership, it is respect well-earned. The Cabinet recently voted itself a (if memory serves) 10% pay cut; and PM Lee Hsien Loon announced that he would be taking a 19% pay cut. Voluntary. To share the pain. (I also think PM Lee is the world's most attractive head of government, but I guess that's by the way.)
Andrew
February 1st, 2009 9:39am Report this commentYes, Singapore is a great model.
Imagine The Great Helmsperson remaining in office for decades more, until John Macaulay Brown assumes the premiership.
My, that WOULD be good news.
Alf Tupper
February 1st, 2009 12:27pm Report this commentThanks all the same Rory, but I'll save my cheer for a more appropriate time and regime.
Verity
February 1st, 2009 2:14pm Report this commentAndrew - LKY was elected. Elections in Singapore are held at the regular and proper intervals. Many people didn't like LKY personally, but acknowledged the incredible prosperity that he had brought to their tiny island with his intelligence and vision. It is the second largest port in the world after Rotterdam. Given that it is also one of the large oil refinery centres in the world, what it earns per day in demurrage alone would keep the population afloat. Many Singaporeans didn't like LKY's iron-fisted governance, but then they reflected on the alternative ...
Bob.India
February 1st, 2009 2:27pm Report this commentVerity. The salary cuts you mention as having been volunteered by members of the Singapore Government do sound impressive but you must remember that they are cuts from an exceptionally high base line (PM Lee Hsien Loon is paid three times the US president's salary - a level pioneered by his father, former PM Lee Kuan Yew). The Straits Times (aka Strait Lies) conveniently glosses this minor detail in the good news manufacturing process.
Verity
February 2nd, 2009 2:48pm Report this commentBob.India. No need to instruct me on what to remember. I doubt whether you have anything to teach me about Singapore.
The people in the Cabinet, and LHL himself, are all people of exceptional mental calibre. They could all find positions overseas for very high salaries, so, in their pragmatic Chinese way, Singaporeans choose to pay those top salaries at home and enjoy the benefits of the intelligence of these individuals in their own government.
Thanks, I know that Lee Hsien Loong's father was LKY. I also know that he was the first prime minister of Singapore and the whole successful shebang is his brain child - from the port of Singapore (the largest port in the world after Rotterdam), earns vast amounts of money in demurrage and transshipments. Singapore is the second largest oil refinery venue, after Houston, in the world. The Sembawang shipyards are immense. All projects envisioned by LKY and all making money hand over fist for the last 40 years. The Causeway over the Straits of Malacca carries over 100,000 Malay commuters in and out of the island state PER DAY. A tiny island with around 4.5m inhabitants is rolling in clover. They can afford to buy the best minds for their government. A pity we can't say the same.
If you want any information about LKY, don't hesitate to ask me as he is my hero.
Bob.India
February 3rd, 2009 2:26am Report this commentVerity. Whilst I feel certain that we are all highly appreciative of your taking the trouble to provide us with a glowing brief on the undoubted merits of Singapore Inc, you may, in your enthusiasm, have missed the point, previously alluded, that the Republic may not, as yet, be in a position to provide the best example of a free press that can spontaneously and independently provide a positive and “good news” spin on either domestic, regional or international events, as they unfold.
I note with great interest your assertion that “in their pragmatic Chinese (Hokien?) way Singaporeans choose to pay those top salaries … etc, etc”. My own memory serves to remind me that democratically determined choice over this and other matters in fact does not enter into the political equation in a one party State controlled by the Peoples’ Action Party (PAP), the predominant and ruling entity since independence. A combination of the draconian, British Colonial Internal Security Act (in force to this day), periodic judicious ward boundary changes, serial number marked and hence identifiable ballot papers, selective Housing Development Board (HDB) property upgrades rewarding PAP supporting wards and punishing dissenting wards plus spurious defamation suits brought against credible opposition spokesmen, including J.B. Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan, serve to turn the periodic “general elections” into the predetermined pantomimes a wearied and cynical population necessarily endures on the appointed dates.
In terms of a free press, you may be interested to learn that the perennially upbeat Straits Times newspaper is part of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) which is regulated by the Singapore Newspaper and Printing Presses Act of 1974 and, as specified by that Act, all issues and transfers of management shares have to be approved by the Ministry of Information Communications and the Arts and in any resolution relating to the appointment or dismissal of a director or any member of the staff the vote of one management share is equivalent to 200 ordinary shares.
Ties between the directors of SPH and the Singaporean government are thus close. Director of the Security and Intelligence Division and later President of Singapore, S R Nathan served as SPH's executive chairman from 1982 to 1988 and the first President (1995-2002) of SPH was Tjong Yik Min, former chief of the Internal Security Department.
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