George Monbiot's attack on the advertising industry was all too familiar (Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it, 26 October). "Somehow, the sector which stitches together this system of hyper-capitalism together gets overlooked," he says, before going on to blame advertising for UK debt, anxiety, depression and family breakdown.
Advertisers "employ neurobiologists to find ingenious methods of bypassing the conscious mind," he warns, adding that "people who watch a lot of advertisements appear to save less, spend more and use more of their time working to meet their rising material aspirations".
Monbiot's analysis betrays a myopic view of what advertising is, is rooted in myth, and ignores a near-constant scrutiny from government. To attack advertising is to attack a system which, imperfect as it may be, does more than its fair share to buttress our free press, our freedom of speech, our democracy. Monbiot admits this to a point – "I am becoming more dependent on it. As sales of print editions decline, newspapers lean even more heavily on advertising" – but fails to recognise how this undermines his central premise that advertising's social impact is wholly corrosive. I love the BBC but, like most, am very glad that it isn't the only media game in town.
The article is a one-sided list of why adverts, which "act like a battering ram against our minds", are harmful. But what's actually required is a two-sided analysis of the costs, the benefits and – conspicuously absent – the alternatives. You are reading one of the benefits right now. Tonight you might travel to an ad-funded cinema on an ad-funded bus, sheltering beneath an ad-funded bus stop. We all, thanks to advertising, benefit from new products, better services and great ideas. Google, anyone? So if a debate is to be had, let's have it about advertising – the ads we make, the agencies that make them, and the media and services it funds.
Monbiot writes: "Advertising encourages us to compare ourselves with those we perceive to be better off" – a description owing more to Mad Men than advertising today. Here are some more memorable recent campaigns: a meerkat selling car insurance; rapping farmers selling yoghurt (from a family-owned organic farm); British Airways reminding us that its purpose is "to fly, to serve"; Tesco saying "Every little helps". Do these ads "trash our happiness"? Of course not. Society has moved on and advertising, forever searching for a connection with society, has done so too.
"We're hooked on a drug that is destroying society," says Monbiot. Advertising is not a drug but neither is it a panacea. It's not good, and it's not bad. But let's recognise how it oils the wheels of developing society towards civility, tolerance, progress and choice.
That's why, despite the one-sided rhetoric, I believe the advertising industry will, with slightly gritted teeth, welcome his critique and the report – Think of me as Evil? – that sits behind it. I have always found it odd that the case for advertising is so rarely heard. In a strange kind of way, here's our chance. And besides, it's good to talk.
