| 1 | 1 | | This month readers of American glossy magazines are being treated to a campaign |
| 2 | | from the Esprit clothing company. A black girl stands in profile looking fed up. Next to |
| 3 | | her is a slogan: 'End racism and the killing of my people in the streets.' It is horrid to be |
| 4 | | cynical- but honestly. What is this ad saying? 'Want to end the killing of blacks in the |
| 5 | | streets? Simply buy some lovely Esprit clothing, and the nasty racism will end.' Or |
| 6 | | perhaps: 'Be a bit startled by this advert, and - hey - why not buy some Esprit clothing |
| 7 | | while you're at it?' |
| 2 | 8 | | The ad is just one of several in a US television and press campaign featuring real |
| 9 | | young people, giving their thoughts on a range of moral issues: abortion, the rainforests, |
| 10 | | Aids control and the land rights of native Americans. The trend for using real people in |
| 11 | | clothing ads is nothing new. But this right-on selling through human and social issues is a |
| 12 | | vibrantly current thing. |
| 3 | 13 | | According to Mark Edwards of the advertising industry magazine Campaign, 'This is |
| 14 | | mainly a trend in companies which advertise across a lot of countries. The global approach |
| 15 | | in the past has been to find the lowest common denominator with a wide appeal, such as |
| 16 | | success or feeling good, often producing adverts so sickeningly bad as to be meaningless. |
| 17 | | This is a way of finding a common denominator which is less low and very big - birth, |
| 18 | | death, love, hate.' |
| 4 | 19 | | The people at Esprit would be very hurt by all this. Barbara Shafer, the company's |
| 20 | | promotional consultant, describes how, for many years, Esprit has been putting its money |
| 21 | | where its mouth is as far as youth is concerned, sponsoring youth projects and allowing |
| 22 | | employees paid time-off during the working day to do voluntary work. |
| 5 | 23 | | 'We wanted to let the youth of America know that we really understand they have a |
| 24 | | lot on their minds. We wanted to give them a platform. It's a way of giving something back. |
| 25 | | If we sell clothes from the ads as well, then that's great.' |
| 6 | 26 | | But Barbara is a realist. She acknowledges that 'you can't educate everybody in the |
| 27 | | world in one month', The point is that 'the intention behind the ads is a good one', though |
| 28 | | the company accepts that there will be objections from different minority groups to |
| 29 | | individual ads. |
| 7 | 30 | | And yet, with advertising being such a pervasive medium, with such able |
| 31 | | communicators behind it, you can see the appeal of using it to promote world-improving |
| 32 | | ideas at the same time as product-selling ones. Why not try to make young people think, |
| 33 | | while selling them clothes, rather than just making them want to be tall, thin and pretty? |
| 8 | 34 | | The answer is that the combination of the cynical process of selling, with its |
| 35 | | emphasis on short, simple messages, and the - difficult, complex, huge - process of |
| 36 | | addressing the world's problems is not exactly a match made in heaven. The needs it |
| 37 | | creates for integrity, commitment, research, sensitivity and communicational brilliance is |
| 38 | | too much to ask of money-making corporations and human ad-men. |
| 9 | 39 | | Even when companies are as careful and committed as can be, their good intentions |
| 40 | | can still come to grief. The Independent Television Commission (ITC) has therefore stated |
| 41 | | that it has 'serious reservations about attempts to merge social messages, however well- |
| 42 | | intentioned, with commercial messages where there is no direct relevance between the |
| 43 | | two'. As the ITC stated at the same time, though, the right to freedom of speech, even |
| 44 | | from advertisers, must be respected. |
| 10 | 45 | | But let us not be old miseries. When the Esprit ads bit the British newsstands and |
| 46 | | screens, go ahead, write in with your world-improving ideas and try to get in the photos. |
| 47 | | I'm certainly going to. This is what I'm going to say: 'The amount of money wanging |
| 48 | | around in the world of advertising is a bloody disgrace, and everyone who works in that |
| 49 | | business knows it. Let them carry on spouting whatever nonsense they want at us, but cut |
| 50 | | all their wages by 60% and give all that money to The Poor. ' Woolly? Too easy? Oh come |
| 51 | | on. My heart was in the right place when I said it. |
| | | |
| | | from an article by Helen Fielding in 'The Sunday Times', September 29, 1991 |
