Word: admen
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...told, five major U.S. agencies-the newest comers: Foote, Cone & Belding and Doyle Dane Bernbach-are now operating in West Germany. Not unnaturally, home-grown German agencies are wearying of the transatlantic competition. Sighed one U.S. agency chief in Frankfurt last week: "The German admen aren't so friendly these days. Like they don't even talk...
...would the world's have-nots benefit if advertising contracted, and the consumer economy spent less on itself? Admen answer that the only reason the U.S. can spend billions for foreign aid and public welfare is the existence of a rich mass-production economy made possible by steady sales-and advertising. Says Fairfax Cone, executive committee chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding: "If the money spent on ads were to go instead into public works, as some of the critics advocate, where would the money come from? They never seem to get down to that." As for another familiar accusation...
...Intestines. Admen do fairly well in defending advertising's value to a free enterprise economy. But, points out David Ogilvy, president of Ogilvy, Benson & Mather Inc., much criticism "is not on economic grounds, but on the grounds that advertising corrupts public taste, and makes lying respectable." Admen themselves concede that too many ads are strident, misleading, dull or offensive. "People are irritated by some ads on TV," says Charles Brower, outspoken president of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. "The audience gets bored when yet more intestines appear on the screen as the evening goes on. Who wants to wake...
...basis of such criticism is that advertising, besides being a valuable economic force, has social and cultural obligations to society that it is not fully meeting. But admen themselves are badly split on just what advertising should do. "Advertising should be creative and edifying and should strive to be an art form," says Doyle Dane Bernbach's Maxwell Dane (whose agency has won plaudits for its artful ads for Volkswagen, Polaroid, and El Al Israel Airlines). But Norman B. Norman, president of Norman Craig and Kummel, insists that "the business of advertising is solely to move goods. You bastardize...
Purpose & Pomposity. The advertising world, controlling a powerful medium to influence men's choice, is now begining to debate whether-and how-it should use that medium for society's good as well as its own. If admen are often fair game for critics, it may well be because they have too often pictured themselves as society's savior instead of its servant. "Some admen get pompous," snaps Foote Cone's Fax Cone, "and they come out with statements such as, 'Our lives are better because of advertising.' This is not true. Our lives...