Mad Men are taking over the world. And that’s no bad thing

Bob Macdonald

I agree: I have personally transformed the perceptions of several countries in massive economic crises, and it works. Whenever I go in, I always work with positive enthusiasm and like a coach to bring the best out in people under stress. I never do what people like Brown do, bullying and chastising people with a black, plume of negativity. No wonder the UK is so screwed up!

Oh, yes - I AM available at US $500/day if they want it.

Neil McEvoy

Mr Sutherland,

You have the cart before the horse. In a democracy, it is not the job of the government to persuade the people of anything, which is a gross impertinence, but the other way around.

Grahame Priest

I'd echo Neil's point about the cart and horse. Representative democracy is supposed to reflect the views of the electorate and enshrine those views in legislation where appropriate. The moment we start manipulating public opinion, no matter which profession is assisting in the manipulation, we're on a slippery slope.

Sadly, I think we're sliding down it now when the overt manipulation of public perception is expected and accepted as legitimate political activity.

Consider the classical liberal democratic view of minimised state interference and intervention in the lives of the citizens. Now consider how that has been supplanted by some who'd apply that label to themselves yet hold the view that here to do as we're bid, think what we're told is right, and express views that conform with the tramlines set out for us by the state.

Once government starts to consider it has the right to manipulate how its citizens should think, freedoms start narrowing and politically incorrect opinions will be expunged by legislation designed to 'send signals' to society.

I'd argue we're there now. Living in a giant political re-education camp of a society isn't the same as living in a representative democracy. But then we've only got ourselves to blame for quietly accepting the sales message that proscriptive nanny-ism enhances our freedoms and rights when, in fact, its the precise opposite in so many ways.

When as citizens we collectively stop for breath and look around us, left-leaning or right, we see the same problems and perceive similar solutions. Most of us share a pretty common vision of how our society should work and yet – it isn't the society we have or the one we're going to get. Strange isn't it? What a democracy!

John MacManus

I'd love to think that this was a joke. Sadly it is a sad reflection of the superficiality of our times and a classic example of old bunkum dressed up as new age wisdom.

Mr. Sutherland deserves several medals, for chutzpah at least.To criticise civil engineers for providing the engineering solution requested while advocating that PR practitioners get the gig instead requires quite a brassneck.The assumption that wi-fi access would compensate for spending an extra hour on the train demonstrates the pro-business blinkering (every man's a business man) that infuriates so many.God forbid the lower orders may like to see Paris.

Mr. Sutherland is no more than an old fashioned elitist with the typically scornful view of the great unwashed that proliferates in his profession. How can we dupe people next seems to be the modus operandi; although in fairness he makes little attempt to hide it. His chosen examples highlight his scornful attitude to the collective intelligence of the population. Quite how The Spectator can peddle this rubbish is puzzling. Or maybe not!

Rory Sutherland

"It isn't the job of the government to persuade the people of anything"? Not even, say, to discourage them from committing crimes against property?

I am a minarchist myself, but this is bizarre. You are showing the very bias I observe in the article - which is to be more comfortable with a smoking ban than with, say, advertising to encourage courteous smoking. I completely respect your opinion to support neither, but you must acknowledge the persuasion is less offensive than compulsion.

I have an immense aversion to nannyism - but voluntary paternalism needs to be considered slightly differently.

And even Timothy McVeigh couldn't object to information on road congestion, could he?

TRH

Mr Sutherland proposes solving problems through marketing when most of those problems were caused by marketing in the first place: over-work, debt, envy, insecurity, status anxiety etc.

wossname

So...letting the insincerity industry loose in government is no bad thing eh? Applying advertising techniques, to manipulate the multitudes and convince them that things are other than they seem is good for democracy??? What is Rory Sutherland thinking of? Blair's nauseating performance as an evangelist telling us that there were no WMD? Or Brown, the proselytising calvinist telling us that he had single handedly put an end to boom and bust and we will be prosperous forever? If that's what overpaid ad men and PR people have achieved for democratic government with the fat fees they are paid from our taxes, I'd like my money back.

Grahame Priest

That's a good point Rory, and one I wouldn't disagree with. Consider too there are also issues arising in government about which the public is simply unaware, let alone informed at even a basic level. It's fair to say we elect people to sift through those issues and make decisions on our behalf. Sometimes we need guidance and we look to those we elect to provide that guidance – I'd just argue there's a quite a gulf between guidance and manipulation.

I recall an excellent example of manipulation. A year or so after the first New Labour government was elected, a government minister on Newsnight was seeking to justify the introduction of thousands of new speed cameras across the country. At this point it's worth bearing in mind that 'speeding' wasn't perceived by the public as an issue at all (apart from localised campaigns for specific changes); indeed we enjoyed the safest roads in Europe per mile travelled. The minister told us that it wasn't a revenue generation exercise but purely a safety one, evidenced by the fact that the money would stay within the safety camera partnerships and used for road improvement measures. He went on to say, rather chillingly, that it was their intent (the government's) to make 'speeding' as socially unacceptable as drink driving!

There's a couple of point in this worth considering. The first one is that government would have to make money available, one way or another, for road improvements anyway – so developing a new hypothecated revenue stream meant, whilst government wouldn't receive the monies directly, it would benefit indirectly. The second point is that the minister clearly felt he had the right to dictate and manipulate how the public perceived this offence in order to suit the goals of the administration. It's worth mentioning that I never heard this line being peddled again.

This isn't government by the people, for the people (or an equivalent). We are simply electing people who consider themselves our rulers and feel they can act accordingly with just a token nod in the direction of democracy. Even the party whip system is undemocratic. If we as citizens elect a representative, any attempt by government to enforce his (or her) support against his freely given vote for a specific policy, is a subversion of our democratic will as citizens in favour of any policies the state may consider appropriate notwithstanding our 'will'. (Iraq is a good example here). If all MP's had a free vote on every issue, how many of the more extreme policies would ever get passed? And I'd argue we'd have a lot less public manipulation and a lot more democracy if the state considered our rights as citizens in a democracy to be paramount..

Neil McEvoy

"It isn't the job of the government to persuade the people of anything"? Not even, say, to discourage them from committing crimes against property?

- Correct. There is no impediment to any individual or voluntary group persuading others that such acts are reprehensible. We do not need the government to do this for us. We do need a government to enact and enforce laws to restrain people from committing them, but this most basic task of government is lost sight of in favour of "sending signals".

Rory Sutherland

My point is exactly Graeme's: the Labour government have been very bad marketers indeed. But spin is a subset of marketing, and not the other way round. Speed camera policy is an excellent example of atrocious and immoral marketing, where it was used not to solve a problem but to create one. However that is not to say that good marketing could not be used to improve road safety: perusasion and advertising *has* probably helped demonise drink driving - at least among my generation. Moreover I have a very simple aqnd democratic solution to traffic camera policy - I call it speed camera 2.0 - where the speed at which cameras would be triggered is a simple factor (say 1.4) of the average speed of the previous fifty cars to pass the camera. Hence only deviant fast driving would be punished - and safe speed would be determined by "the wisdom of motorists". This would cause the cameras to vary their speed-triggers according to climate, time of day, etc. This what I mean by deploying 21st Century Marketing thinking in service of good government, not a campaign of lies to convince us of a problem we never had.

I can't agree with Neil's position. How can he argue that compulsion (law) is preferable to persuasion?

Rory Sutherland

Quote: "Mr. Sutherland deserves several medals, for chutzpah at least.To criticise civil engineers for providing the engineering solution requested while advocating that PR practitioners get the gig instead requires quite a brassneck. The assumption that wi-fi access would compensate for spending an extra hour on the train demonstrates the pro-business blinkering (every man's a business man) that infuriates so many.God forbid the lower orders may like to see Paris."

Are you saying that the lower orders are incapable of using wifi? Or that Paris is such a wonderful place that people who don't want to go there should pay £6bn so that a few culture vultures can get to the Jeu de Paume at 11am instead of noon? Well, you're a funny kind of populist, mate.

If you want a really shocking case of pro-business bias, what about the fact that all engineering works on the trains take place at the weekend?

Neil McEvoy

"I can't agree with Neil's position. How can he argue that compulsion (law) is preferable to persuasion?"

Rory - I don't. I merely assert that society can do persuasion for itself, but only the government can do legislation. Given that, I suspect that I'm no more in favour of legislative incontinence than you.

Rory Sutherland

Just a few points.

1) Noone, I asume, finds it offensive that the government used advertising extensively during WW2. Dig for Victory was an acceptable exhortation, I think. Forcing everyone to plant vegetables would have been more dubious.

2) The media environment is now different: noone, not Murdoch, not government, has much of a stranglehold over media any more. Hence government advertising is less propoganda and more encouragement.

Let's assume for a second that the most effective way to curb CO2 emissions (assuming, too, that anthropogenic CO2 is a cause of climate change) is to encourage the Western population to eat a vegetarian diet four days a week. Using persuasion to encourage this behaviour would surely be relatively inoffensive? Certainly less than enforcing it? No?

Neil McEvoy

Rory,

Granny and eggs and all that, but mass media was in its infancy in WW2. Bandwidt was scarce and it made sense for the government to control it in time of total war. Nowadays, there are multiple routes into a person's consciousness, so the flow of information is not a problem. I think there is an underlying assumption in your thesis that the gentleman in Whitehall really does know best: I prefer a world in which competing ideas circulate and in which the man in the street can indicate his preference to the powers that be; fortunately, that is facilitated by modern media.

I think you belabour the point about persuasion being preferable to legislation; I very much agree, provided that everybody is allowed to attempt it. I think J.S. Mill made very much the same point, though he cautioned against oppressive moral fervour.

mark

interesting stuff - it is certainly true in industry that the solution to a problem depends on who defines it - hence in my business a push for increased knowledge sharing and use of mult-discipline teams.

I especially like the road congestion issue example - we have plenty of road-miles per car on a 24 hour basis - we just try to squeeze them all into 8 or so.

But here is the rub - with all the advances in the technology (some quoted in the article - e.g. text messages) - the human still wants to get together and inter-act.

A conundrum........