454 The Marketing Book
series of public opinion surveys dating back to
1961, that only 6 per cent of 1017 respondents
chose ‘advertising’ from among a list of 12
general social topics as one of the ‘three or
four that you and your friends talk most
about’; 5.5 per cent picked it as one of those
‘you have the strongest opinions about’, and
4.5 per cent as one that ‘most needs immediate
attention and change’. The first two results are
a little lower than in 1996, and the third is
exactly the same.
Despite this evidence that advertising is
not a salient issue for most people in the UK,
respondents were asked for a general opinion
on a five-point scale: approve a lot or a little,
disapprove a lot or a little, or don’t know.
Only one in five took the opportunity offered
to be critical, though that figure is well up on
its equivalent in the 1996 survey (21 versus 16
per cent). They were then asked to express
their feelings about the concrete manifesta-
tions of the abstract concept, advertisements,
on a five-point scale offering the options to
like or quite like, dislike or not really like, or
be indifferent. Only 17 per cent answered
negatively about television commercials, 12
per cent about press advertisements and 10
per cent about posters. There was little change
since 1996 in the first two cases, but disliking
of posters was up by five percentage points,
probably as a result of publicity surrounding
high levels of public complaining about Bene-
tton and French Connection campaigns
(among others) during the intervening period.
Nevertheless, levels of disliking are in general
lower than the level of disapproval, and nei-
ther is strong enough to suggest any wide-
spread discontent.
In late 2001, the Advertising Standards
Authority commissioned a series of 16 focus
group discussions with teenagers, ‘singles aged
between 20 and 24’, ‘parents of children
between 5 and 14’, ‘empty nesters’ and ‘greys’
(Advertising Standards Authority, 2002). They
report that ‘the public is more critical of
advertising than it has ever been... because of
a belief that advertising is better than it ever
was’, and thus potentially more powerful.
Participants defined ‘advertising’ widely
enough to encompass the whole of the promo-
tional mix: it is ‘every piece of brand, product
or service communication [including] direct
mail, door drops, the Internet, branding in
store, branded clothing, sponsorship, commer-
cial text messages and even telephone sales...
simply everything that has a name on it’.
Though disapprovers in the Advertising
Association’s surveys have always been a
minority, it would be interesting to know who
they are and what their reasons are. A study of
the postcodes of individuals who had made
formal complaints about particular advertise-
ments to the Advertising Standards Authority
and Independent Television Commission over
a five-year period (Crosier et al., 1999) con-
firmed the obvious stereotype: the incidence
reduced steadily across the UK from south-east
to north-west, and the majority of complainers
lived in strongly middle class areas. Analysis of
the nature of their complaints was constrained
by the two regulators’ own classification sys-
tems. Broadly speaking, objections to mislead-
ingness and offensiveness accounted for the
great majority of all complaints, the former
slightly outnumbering the latter.
The Advertising Standards Authority
reports one opinion that notably contradicted
the generally tolerant attitude of participants
in their study: the prevalence of advertising
that does not actually lie but is economical
with the truth (Advertising Standards Author-
ity, 2002, p. 8). This is perceived to be espe-
cially common in advertising for insurance
and financial services. It is felt that the regula-
tion is an effective safeguard in general, but
that in this particular respect the regulators
should be ‘more active, more invasive, more
controlling’.
Surprisingly, the Advertising Association
has not asked those who expressed disappro-
val in their surveys about their reasons since
1976, at which time the answer was broadly
that advertising drives up prices, is mislead-
ing, and creates false needs. Another obvious