new statesman says bull semen and hot chicks are out and being devious is in

from the new statesman

Day of the stealth persuaders
NS Special Issue
David Cox
Saturday 1st January 2005

2005: The decline of sex - The sexy hard sell is on the way out. You can filter out ads on television and the internet, and many people don't buy newspapers anyway. So advertisers are turning to more sinister methods, reports David Cox

A snorting bull mounts a busty blonde, who pleasures another bull with her hands while gripping a Big Mac in her teeth. Bull semen splashes up and forms itself into the McDonald's golden arches as the words "Made from 100 per cent beef" appear beneath them. All this within an ad break during your favourite TV soap. Such is the future of advertising, according to one anti-industry website. Do you share this concern? If so, you (and the website) could hardly be more wrong. Adpeople are indeed planning an onslaught on your mind, but sex will have little to do with it.

These days, pert buttocks, bulging bikini tops and glistening lips do little to enhance sales. Mercifully (or sadly), young consumers find sexually explicit advertising "boring and repellent", according to a recent survey. And this is just one of an array of unwelcome realities confronting an industry which is only beginning to climb out of the worst recession that most of its practitioners can remember.

Nowadays, advertisements that are not ignored, resisted or disdained by an ever more savvy public are increasingly being banned or discouraged. Already, tobacco ads are history. Will alcohol ads follow them, along with all advertising aimed at children? Perhaps the McDonald's bulls will be denied their fun not just by doubts about their effectiveness, but also by an anti-obesity-driven ban on all fast-food promotion. And there is more.

Increasingly, people are finding ways of avoiding advertisements completely, however politically correct and sex-free they may be. Perhaps you are one of the many who no longer see newspaper ads because you no longer buy newspapers. Do you use the web instead? If so, you doubtless deploy a pop-up blocker to keep the ads at bay, and delete your spam unread.

Audience fragmentation makes it no longer possible to assemble TV viewers in tens of millions before a single commercial, while those who record their viewing can simply fast-forward through the breaks. Eventually, we shall all create our own schedules by downloading programmes on to fancy Sky+-type recorders that can strip out ad breaks completely. Viewers who already have such equipment skip 70 per cent of the ads.

A revolution seems to be under way. Once, we were prepared to attend to advertisers' messages in return for the subsidy they accord the material that surrounds them. Now, time-poorer, cash-richer and altogether more irritable, we seem to be reneging on this historic contract. As a result, hard-sell messages delivered through the traditional mass media are losing their power to affect our behaviour. Perrier's "H2Eau" and "Eau La La" campaigns helped transform us into mineral water drinkers, but such achievements will in future be hard to match.

So are we at last to be freed from advertisers' blandishments? Of course not. New circumstances simply demand new methods, and adpeople are energetically cooking them up. One thing they are trying is to target our minds' spare moments, instead of pestering us when we do not want to be disturbed. Nowadays, most such moments occur when we are out and about, and especially when we are stuck in queues or traffic jams. So in 2003, spending on old-fashioned outdoor advertising increased by 24 per cent. Drive-time radio, billboards, posters and dirigibles are all on the up (literally, in the last case) and new outlets of this kind are constantly being unveiled.

Bus shelters and the surfaces of taxis, trains and trams have all been pressed into service. Adverts can now be encountered on students' foreheads and above urinals. Video screens beam messages at post office queues, Tesco shoppers, Midlands train passengers and motorists on filling-station forecourts. Sony Ericsson has even fitted St Bernards and Great Danes with logo-encrusted jackets and sent them on to the streets to "dogvertise" its phones.

Yet adpeople know that such measures, however imaginative (or desperate), are only scratching at the surface of their problem. Finding new pathways to eyeballs will not overcome resistance to advertising itself. So, increasingly, advertisers are trying to penetrate our minds without us even noticing. That means insinuating their messages into information and entertainment we believe to have been shaped entirely for our benefit.

How many people realise that Budweiser paid to get its beer on to the set of Friends? Well, perhaps quite a lot these days, and such "product placement" is anyway banned in Britain. Or is it? British television producers are allowed to accept free services such as flights and accommodation and to feature the providers of these gifts, so long as the terms of the resulting exposure are not precisely specified and its prominence is not "undue". As programme budgets fall, this provision is being exploited ever more heavily.



Yet why bother with such expedients? What's to stop advertisers simply creating their own "editorial" material and offering it free to media which are hungry to fill proliferating channels and pages? Well, actually, there is nothing at all to stop this. And, not surprisingly, covert "advertorial" is forming a growing proportion of what we watch and read.

You may be aware that the cars reviewed by motoring journalists have long been provided free of charge, and that intrepid travel correspondents get their fares paid by the organisations on which they are supposed to be reporting. Increasingly, however, the models, clothes, accessories and even pictures that you see in fashion shoots and articles are simply being doled out ready-packaged by the likes of Prada and Armani.

Broadcasting is supposed to be more tightly regulated than print, but it is on screen that the concept of advertorial is being taken to its logical conclusion. Programmes conceived, funded and made by advertisers are coming to be seen as the obvious answer to the demise of the advertising break. Indeed, they are already here. In 2003, the country's ten biggest commercial channels carried 36 advertiser-funded shows. In 2004, that figure more than doubled.

Perhaps you have already viewed examples, wittingly or not. These have included the reality show Fashion House on Channel 4 (funded by Nokia) and, on ITV, Red Bull Soapbox Challenge and BT's With a Little Help From My Friends. Advertisers are not allowed to promote their products directly within the programmes they provide, but they can devise content that indirectly benefits their brands. Thus, Orange, the phone company, considers that Orange Playlist, which featured ring-tone charts on ITV, advanced "downloading culture".

Maybe you expect the relevant authorities to defend the once-sacred barrier between advertising and editorial. Dream on. Government agencies are themselves moving into advertiser-funded TV programming. The National Blood Service, for example, was behind Blood Matters on Channel 4 and Lifeblood on Five. The communications regulator, Ofcom, itself uses advertorial devices to promote its own ideas.

Where next? A song composed to promote Lynx anti-perspirants has topped the UK charts. Coca-Cola has neatly combined the out-of-the-home imperative with a leap beyond conventional entertainment, by creating "Red Lounges" where teenagers can hang out, listen to music and, it hopes, drink Coke. Commercial corporations can now commission specialist agencies to create serious-looking books addressing public issues in which they have an interest.

Do you care about any of this? If not, you can count yourself a creature of the age. But if you still want to know who is messing with your mind and why, you'd better brace yourself. From now on, expect to have to work hard to find out.