Excessive Advertising: When is enough too much?

This week The Guardian issued a report regarding the independent panel set up by the Government to tackle the effects of last year’ riots. The report, by the Riots Communities and Victims panel concludes that the riots were fueled by a range of factors including a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting, a failure of the justice system to rehabilitate offender's materialism and suspicion of the police.

The report points out that half of the recorded offences in the riots were for looting, often high-value products, including TV’s, trainers, designer clothes, mobile phones and computers. The report has issued a plea to the Advertising Standards Authority to work to increase children’s resilience to advertising and to be protected from ‘Excessive Advertising’. So, we ask the question, when is enough, too much?

You must firstly understand that here at Freer PR we love advertising. We enjoy receiving a brief from clients, and then developing the creative process involved with finding a great advertising hook, then running with it up to final completion. We, of course, love the final return of investment our clients receive from a successful advertising campaign.

   

We are not disputing that advertising is a great way to build a reputation with your customer base, however, we purely ask, can there be too much advertising? The answer, of course, is yes!

We all know the major contenders for Forbes largest advertising campaign. But is it really necessary? If a worldwide hamburger chain spent a little less on their advertising, would people stop going? Would people suddenly forget about them after all these years? Of course not.

Would we struggle to find running shoes? Or give up running altogether? Because a certain trainer brand spent less money on advertising? Of course not. But yes, we are being slightly melodramatic here.

With so many advertisers spending so much money to advertise and market their message across so many mediums and platforms to so many people, will we one day get to that point? Will we all one day collectively say ‘enough is enough?’

I surely hope not for as I mentioned previously we love advertising and I think it plays a very important role in the consumer ecosystem. Advertising informs. Advertising educates. Advertising entertains. And of course, advertising sells.