CAP ANDY NOW
ADwARS I, which accompanied the university advertising class which I ran at Sciences-Po (Paris) until 2009, has come to an end. This one-year-plus experiment showed that the internet can be, at the very least, a highly useful pedagogical tool for university students and teacher.
However, serious reflection on the medium of the blog "ex-faculty" is required, due to the virtual nullification it engenders by its massive usage, in terms of the production of meaning. The unfortunate truth is that the blog, Facebook and Twitter have become a 'must' for any self-respecting young person using the Internet. And that the resulting low quality and interest value of many blog posts is manifest. Not information, just attempted communication. We must therefore reflect as to the next step for ADWARS.
To sum up, it is ever more strongly my belief, especially in the light of the severe ongoing global financial and economic crisis, that the advertising industry must equally be regulated and made more responsible, at the European level for a start. It must be regulated in the same way as banks require quite strict controls on their activity, for Man, though a creative animal, is also first irrational, individualistic and destructive in the absence of clear rules. You have only to experience crowd behaviour first-hand or observe driving attitudes on French roads to know what I am talking about...
Advertising's tendency will always be to cross that double yellow line at some point, so in the absence of speed cameras, we need legislation. And certainly not self-regulation, which is like asking the fox to run the chicken-coop.
Regulation is mandatory due to the fact that this particular industry remains :
- highly influential within the (capitalist) system
- intertwined incestuously with modern media, themselves powerful tools of opinion-making
- fundamentally morally and socially irresponsible if left unregulated
Of course, although advertising does provide certain direct (information) and indirect benefits (see Part 1 of this blog) to our societies, it remains a powerful moral, political and societal force, which if not questioned and controlled by an independent authority, could come to exert a totalitarian influence over any society, a 'Big Brother' with a fat wallet and a heavy hand.
The image that I have chosen above (a French ad for 'Handicap International') symbolises my view of the current situation in most Western societies, i.e. the dependence felt and the handicap undergone by whole populations under the sway of this massively influential industry, with little intellectual or moral opposition, driven by uncontrolled mass consumerism.
Let us all remain vigilant.
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