Background
Advertising is homogenising itself into oblivion.
And more and more in the industry are openly sharing concerns, theories and data that advertising is in fact less effective.
We can plot these on a continuum - starting with Peter Field’s Crisis in Creative Effectiveness report, which raises the alarm of a drop in creative effectiveness, with campaigns at their lowest levels of effectiveness in 24 years. Field blames a focus on short-term campaigns and tight targeting.
Orlando Wood (2019) attributes declining creative effectiveness to the industry producing less emotional work. His research finds work producing strong emotional responses in consumers tends to produce larger business effects - but this relies on diversity of thought in agencies. The result? Creatively awarded campaigns are no better than their non-awarded counterparts at provoking emotional responses.
Here, Steve Harrison (2020) steps in. Taking the diversity-of-thought baton, he moves the debate towards the dominance of the white middle class in the advertising industry. Only 19% of Adland come from working class backgrounds, yet comprise 39% of the UK working population (IPA 2021). The absence of working class advertising professionals results in creative work that doesn’t resonate, and therefore doesn’t perform effectively.
And so we reach the other end of the continuum, where Tenzer and Murray (2019) detail just how different adland is compared to the modern mainstream, and the ways in which this impacts the industry’s output.
In the vast body of work around this subject, we see three clear themes emerge:
The role of cultural capital in the deep barriers faced by the working class
The link between the dominance of the white middle-class and decreasing creative effectiveness of advertising
Recruitment, progression barriers, and models of best practice to foster diversity in the advertising industry
At E Corps, we wanted to know exactly how these themes work together. Is it in fact a simple chain of advertising being less effective because it’s less creative, and that it’s less creative because it’s not diverse? Or is there something else we’re missing?
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Explore the themes below.
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Diagnosis
This research review is just the beginning. It acts as a base. And from here, allows us to see where we need to take our next steps if we want to understand how the advertising and media industries can produce more effective and creative work again.
Working class advertising and media professionals face deep and entrenched barriers in their industry. These barriers rise from a young age in the ‘tastemakers’ - the elite who hold the power in agencies - and spread through the entire employment journey, from entry through to getting promoted.
Today, the industry is experiencing what happens when it excludes or marginalises groups of people. Advertising and media is struggling to produce work that connects with the mainstream population, and as a result, sells to them.
And just getting more working class people into the industry won’t suffice. Rightly worried their colleagues will reject their habitus and cultural capital, they lose confidence in their abilities. They try and change who they are so they can ‘fit in’. And in doing so, the industry loses the tension it needs to make creative advertising.
So is there a way to intercept and prevent those moments where a person’s habitus is denigrated or overlooked? And what are those moments anyway? What prompts them to happen? Can we save Adland from itself? No one has explored these questions yet. Which is where E Corps comes in.