The advertising business is going through a difficult time. We — the audience — are no longer watching television en mass. We’re just as likely to be spending time on the internet or playing computer games.

When we watch TV, we skip through many different channels, not just the same old few (in Britain and Ireland, at least). We watch TV at different times to our friends and neighbours. We watch DVDs, downloaded movies, or online clips. We can pause live tv, and even skip ads completely.

We have a greater choice of newspapers and magazines than ever before. And we can read many of these online too. On websites, we tend to ignore traditional, magazine style ads — a phenomenon known as “banner blindness”.

As an audience, we’re becoming fragmented. Advertisers are finding us harder to reach. We’re also becoming more savvy, more immune to advertising. Authenticity is valued; fakery is rejected — particularly by the younger generation.

Does this mean that advertising’s power is waning? Not for long, if at all. Advertising is being forced to evolve. Like the relationship we have with virulent micro-organisms, while we may develop anti-biotics, the micro-organisms eventually counteract these drugs. So too, our increased resistance to advertising only provokes corporations to pursue spikier strategies that previously would never have been considered. Necessity (read:profit) is the mother of invention.

In the coming pages, we will consider what new methods advertisers have begun to employ, and what we are likely to see in the future.

A woman who had appeared in a TV ad for detergent once confessed that she didn’t believe the ad would make people buy the product. After all, she reasoned, when she watches ads for detergent, she doesn’t suddenly think “I need to buy some washing powder; I better rush to the shops!”.

A lot of people believe that advertising doesn’t affect them. But if advertising didn’t work, why would companies spend so much money on it?

When you see an advert for Degerent X, you are unlikely to suddenly rush out and buy it. But next time you’re choosing a degerent, which one are you going to pick: Degertent X, which you “know” (because you’ve seen the ad for it)? Or Degertent Y, which you’ve never heard of?

Our perceived immunity makes advertising more effective. We are willing to tolerate advertising because we believe it doesn’t affect us.

Ever notice that TV ads are louder than the shows they intersect?

Advertising is not evil, but it is often unethical.

Many adverts:

• Are liberal with the truth
• Exploit our anxieties
• Use “experts” who seem impartial but aren’t
• Use children to pester their parents
• Portray highly processed foods as natural, wholesome, and healthy
• Make it difficult to read the catches, penalties, terms and conditions

“Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.”

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (1985).

David Ogilvy has often been called the “Father of Advertising”. He understood that advertising was necessary in our world, where business success depends on communicating messages to the public.

“I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.”

Paul Arden, creative genius behind many of the world’s best known ads, argues that advertising has a useful function:

“We are all advertising, all of the time. If you want to sell your car, what do you do? You clean and polish it and make it the best you can. Some people bake bread when they are trying to sell their house because the smell adds a friendly feeling. Even the priest, with all his or her fervour, is advertising God. Everybody is selling. It’s part of trade, barter, dealing and negotiating – it’s a part of life.”

He who thinks that what he has is insufficient is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world.
– Epicurus (341-270 BCE)

Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who believed that individuals should actively pursue happiness in their lives.

Alain de Botton, a scholarly writer and film-maker, says Epicurus identified the three elements of individual happiness:

1. Spending time in the company of our friends
2. Being free from stresses, strains and mental clutter
3. Regularly reflecting on our lives

De Botton insists Epicurus would be scornful of modern advertising, because it makes us believe that things are missing in their lives.

Whether we realise it or not, advertising can make us feel miserable.