Advertising on Higher Ground

Kevin Lynch

Founder and CEO of Lynch Jarvis Jones, Inc.

1. Who This Booklet is For

One of the defining characteristics of advertising is its cloying ability to reduce extraordinarily complex ideas to simple ones, and vice versa. In that spirit, let's start with a vastly oversimplified premise. Namely, that there are three types of organizations out there who might consider the use of advertising.

1% are completely and inherently good. Their need for advertising may be marginal because, for the most part, their products sell themselves.

1% are despicably and irreversibly evil. The sad truth is, more often than not, their products sell themselves, too.

98% are somewhere in the gray area of the middle. Some closer to the evil, others closer to the good. They need advertising, big time, because they operate in the vast and barren wasteland of indifference.

Few among the 98% will ever achieve complete goodness, nor surrender to complete evil. The demand of investors, employees, communities, regulators, and suppliers, as well as the demands of the marketplace, make that very unlikely.

But over towards the white edge of the gray area of the 98% is a small and sincere group, the size of which can't be neatly calculated, which is committed to the quest for goodness. They are often called socially responsible or socially conscious businesses, but such labels are both limited and misleading. The fact is, they blunder, they make mistakes, and their consciousness sometimes takes naps. Some succeed wildly, others go under.

Indeed, many such enterprises are not even businesses at all in the traditional sense.

But they share one distinctive characteristic: They see their enterprises as vehicles for creating some sort of social change. They try their hardest to operate according to a set of basic principles which are fundamental to the survival and well-being of humankind, such as:

1. respect for the planet, its resources, and all the species thereon;

2. consideration for the fundamental human rights of each person;

3. connection of individuals within harmonious communities;

4. equitable distribution of the earth's plenty;

5. and sustainable consumption of resources.

The direction and momentum of these organizations is toward the common good. So much so, in fact, that they might accurately be referred to as common good enterprises.

If this sounds like your enterprise, this booklet is for you.

2.  The Trouble with Advertising

If you are a committed leader in a common good enterprise, you're likely to feel great conflict about advertising.

You may be angry at advertising for fueling the over-consumptive frenzy which is ravaging the earth and her plenty.

You may resent the massive injustice in distribution of wealth which is encouraged by advertising's message of greed and selfishness.

You may worry that your daughters and sons will succumb to the overwhelming avalanche of crud - violence, sexual exploitation, cynicism, disrespect - which is the stock and trade of advertising and media today.

You may fear that the range of voices and alternative ideas expressed in the media is steadily narrowing, as the global media industry consolidates to serve fewer, bigger, worldwide advertisers.

You may have a bone to pick with advertising, for all these reasons and more. In fact, it's exceedingly difficult to argue that, by its very nature, advertising can be anything but a socially negative event.

But you have other instincts about advertising, too.

If you're the David in your competitive arena, you know the potency of your Goliath's advertising war chest. You've felt its wrath.

If you've used advertising yourself, you know it works — half of the time, anyway. (You're just not sure which half.)

If you're at all attuned to the barrage of media messages around you, you may even grudgingly admit to liking many of the ads you see. Even for products and companies you loathe.

And finally, if there is intense competition for resources within your common good enterprise (and where isn't there?), you weigh every dollar you could spend on advertising. Against dollars you could plow into the community, share with employees, invest on customer satisfaction, or spend on whatever squeaky wheel is currently in need of the most grease.

It's a conundrum. You abhor advertising's underlying premise. Yet you suspect advertising will be needed if your enterprise is going to reach the next level and go beyond.

What's a person to do?

3. Guilt Relief Ahead

You probably wouldn't be reading this booklet if you weren't somewhat confounded by your responsibilities as an advertiser. Give yourself credit - your heart is in the right place.

Fortunately for your conscience, advertising is only one of many marketing tools, albeit a highly potent one.

In many cases, there are less expensive, less toxic and more effective gadgets in the tool kit. They can serve your organization very well during certain phases of your evolution. By all means, use them and use them well, for as long as they serve.

But when and if it's time to advertise, please know that there are valid justifications for your decision.

If you can harness the power of advertising, you can take business away from the bad guys. What could be wrong with that?

If your product or service has real meaning, if it can truly enrich and improve lives, good advertising can bring it to more people. (If not, please do us all a favor and don't advertise!)

There are ways to do advertising with little or no toxic impact. And, in fact, it is possible to use advertising to make a net-positive contribution to the planet and the people who live here. That is the essence of Higher Ground Advertising.

Listen. If you're going to advertise, you can't afford to not advertise effectively. To do otherwise would squander your enterprise's precious resources.

At the same time, it is a moral imperative that you approach your advertising endeavors as consciously and scrupulously as you do any other organizational activity. It deserves no less thought than the decisions you make regarding environmental issues, human rights, community impacts, workplace dignity, etc.

4. The Continuum of Advertising

There are five different dimensions of social consciousness on which a common good enterprise might operate its advertising program. While these dimensions are not necessarily sequential, nor mutually exclusive, it's a fair bet that this model captures most of the ways in which a common good enterprise might think about its advertising.

The five dimensions of social consciousness are :

• Telling The Truth

• Cause Marketing

• Sharing Your Values

• Doing No Harm

• Advertising On Higher Ground

Telling the Truth

This is the most basic level of responsibility, the level of fundamental business ethics. Say what you do and do what you say. Avoid puffery. Don't make false or unsustantiable claims. No marbles in the soup.

One would hope this would go without saying for any organization, socially conscious or otherwise.

But it is surprising how often it is neither said nor done, even by the best-intentioned advertisers. The subtle power of words and pictures is staggering. The difference between putting your product in the best possible light and putting it in a different light altogether is very slight, yet very important.

Was it an advertising man who coined the phrase truth is a relative thing?

In fact, Telling The Truth is quite possibly the hardest thing to do in advertising. It goes against the very essence of what some believe is advertising's main function: turning whole lies into half-truths. Subtly shading what is real and true about your product is the most tempting apple the serpents of advertising can offer.

There are many sad examples of marketers who have sincerely employed some of the other socially conscious advertising principles, while failing to accept the responsibility and possible limitations of Telling The Truth.

There's only one way to make sure you're operating at this level: be a highly attuned person of integrity. And bring your integrity to every word and picture, via your nose. If it doesn't smell right, it isn't right. If it isn't right, then send your advertising people back to the drawing board.

It's that simple.

In one of the most effective ads in the entire history of advertising, Volkswagen called its own car ugly. Startling proof that humility and truth sells!

Cause Marketing

This interpretation of what it means to be a socially conscious advertiser has been in vogue for several years now.

Cause marketing is the practice of publicly aligning a company with a high profile cause or a non-profit organization with whom the public sympathizes. Generally, the alignment is created through the donation of promotional dollars, tied to consumer purchase of the product, to the partner organization. For example: With each purchase of a widget between now and Christmas, we'll make a contribution to Children Without Widgets Worldwide.

There is widely cited research which concludes, according to the practitioners, that consumers want Cause Marketing. In fact, what the research says is that consumers want cause, period. They can do without the attendant marketing.

Being aligned with a cause was a point of differentiation when the first cause marketers attempted it. Today, it is so widespread that its differentiating power is vastly diminished, and there are distinct signs that the consumer is becoming more suspect of the sincerity and motivation of the marketer.

Even many recipients of cause marketers' largesse will attest that there are many pitfalls to it. Often, the recipient organization becomes captive to, and dependent on, the sponsoring marketer. Frequently, the core social message is co-opted by the marketer and loses its essence.

The best advice regarding Cause Marketing is to tread cautiously and consciously.

Help worthy causes, by all means. Do it because it's the right thing to do. But think twice before promoting yourself through the cause.

If you choose to cause market, make sure the interests of the sponsee are fully represented at the table, not held hostage to your own agenda. And make a large and sincere enough commitment to really make a demonstrable impact on behalf of the cause.

Finally, be soft-spoken and humble about it. Let the news of your participation in a cause be pleasant surprise to your customers. Don't trumpet it so loudly as to give them more cause for skepticism.

Sharing Your Values

The message here is quite simple: "We are an enterprise that conducts itself with a certain set of values. Here's what those values are. If your values are similar, we should get together."

This is probably the most universal dimension in the advertising programs of common good enterprises today. And with good reason: assuming comparable functionality and value of products and services, consumers will naturally choose affinity with kindred spirits.

In fact, every advertiser shares its values at one level or another. A fashion company does it when it sexually objectifies teenage girls, just as surely as a natural personal care products company does it when it makes an ode to pure and simple things.

Both may be doing "effective" advertising. It's just that the values of most marketers are an anathema to those who work for the common good.

Recently popularized research estimates that over 40 million U.S. consumers have a world view, lifestyle, and value set which is roughly consistent with the principles by which common good enterprises like to conduct themselves. Even though many common good enterprises with sizable customer bases believe this number is overstated by a factor of ten or more, it still suggests a sizable audience upon which a consumer franchise can be built. A shared values message is a way for those consumers to pick you out of the morass of products and services.

If the values you claim to share are real, not fake, this is a valid and sensibly approach to advertising. Unfortunately, such is not always the case. The insincerity of some marketers hurts the credibility of others.

In any case, a shared values advertiser is still not quite at the Higher Ground.

Doing No Harm

Advertising's natural inclination is to be a toxic event. This dimension concerns itself with being diligent and proactive about reducing emissions.

How is advertising, intentionally or not, toxic? Obviously, in its role as an agent of rampant consumption and greed. But even worse, in its not-so-obvious role as the commercial force behind a media environment stuffed with images and messages of violence, gender objectification, perverse body image, irresponsibility and an endless array of other poisons.

How can you ensure that you are not contributing to a toxic media and advertising environment?

Demand content analysis of the media you're buying. Don't buy the junk. Vote with your media dollars. Communicate why you reject certain media opportunities.

Troubleshoot the words and pictures which make up your own advertising to make sure you're not unwittingly sending socially negative messages.

Set and communicate a written set of standards to internal and external staff who touch your advertising. For example:

We will not use media or create advertising that contains a preponderance of gratuitous violence, objectifies or exploits women, portrays unsafe sexual practices without consequences, portrays aggression and disrespect as humorous or attractive, displays irresponsible use of drugs or alcohol, or encourages unhealthy body image. We will be particularly careful with regard to advertising and media which are widely accessible to children.

Educate yourself and your staff by providing media literacy opportunities.

Fight the concentration of media ownership by sponsoring or creating alternative media vehicles at every opportunity.

Higher Ground Advertising

This is the new frontier that has barely been explored. It's the idea that advertising, in and of itself, can be a socially positive event.

It starts with the premise that advertising persuades. And, therefore, that it can be used to persuade society and the people therein, to do healthy, peaceful, sustainable, humane and decent things.

It believes that advertising which promotes positive attitudes and behaviors creates a net-positive community dividend. Just as surely as locating a plant in the inner city, or reducing packaging, or creating a family-friendly workplace or providing a living wage.

It moves advertising from something which can help a common good enterprise achieve its mission, to something which is part of the mission.

The difficult part is defining and deciding what is really a meaningful message, and by whose standard. And, having done that, connecting that message to the brand, since the advertising must still deliver some sort of return on the advertiser's investment.

It can be done, and a few enlightened advertisers are already doing it. For example:

• A progressive long distance company uses its advertising as a bully pulpit for influencing key legislation.

• A clothing company uses its ads as a forum for disenfranchised youth to tell adults how they'd like to change the world.

• A healthcare system sponsors radio ads which quietly suggest personal actions we can all take to reduce violence, isolation and anger in our community.

• A condom company depicts men and women as erotic partners, going against the macho-male-as-conqueror norm.

• A state health agency runs ads in inner city media, making heroes of everyday peacemakers.

• A toy store offers to buy back toy weapons from children.

Higher Ground Advertising represents virgin territory which offers a potential social and marketing home run to any organization with the courage to try it. It combines the best of the other dimensions and takes the advertiser to a new level.

5. Reaching for the Higher Ground

To advertise on higher ground is really quite simple.

All you have to do is change your mind.

You have to believe that if advertising can make people buy junk they don't need, it can also make them buy ideas we all need.

You have to believe that advertising has as much potential for good or bad as any other activity your organization undertakes. And, therefore, that you have a responsibility to wield it for the good.

You have to believe that there is an inherently good idea at the core of your enterprise which is somehow parallel to an inherently good idea at the core of our communities and world. You have to believe that connecting the two will ultimately be good for you organization.

And you have to believe that if you don't advertise on higher ground, your competitors surely won't either.

Once you've changed your mind, consider these tips on how to proceed.

Make sure the rest of your organization is operating on higher ground, too. Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.

While Higher Ground Advertising isn't necessarily about your mission and values, it can't be done without understanding them. Use it as an opportunity to reexamine and rearticluate what you stand for.

Seek your product's inherent truth. It is there that the connection to a positive attitude or behavior - the basis for Higher Ground Advertising - will be found. If that truth is hard to come by, advertising is the least of your problems. Higher Ground Advertising would be premature.

Fund a portion of what you spend from your community dividend budget. This will fundamentally change your organization's perspective on the role and expected return of the campaign.

Measure results so you can prove it works and thus maintain your funding.

Remember, part of what makes advertising a toxic event is its constant intrusion upon involuntary recipients. Get to the point; don't waste people's time.

Of course, these tips are only a starting point. Your Higher Ground strategy will need to be invented from the ground up. The magic of advertising is different for every product and is created from whole cloth every time.

Finally, it is exceedingly important to understand what Higher Ground Advertising is not.

It is not about overtly saying you are a socially responsible organization. That might come through loud and clear as a result of your message, but it's not the message itself.

It is not about being politically correct. The English language doesn't work without the use of gender pronouns, and every photo reveals a bit of the ethnic history of the subject.

It is not about gaining an immediate return on investment. It's about investing for the long run.

It is not about doing dull, drab creative. In fact, the types of ideas and issues which find their way into Higher Ground Advertising campaigns are the stuff of which some of the most interesting, creative and provocative advertising on the planet can be made.

And, finally, it is not about perfection. It's about progress. Some of which you have, hopefully, already made, just by reading this far.

On behalf of the planet and the people who inhabit it, thank you.

Lynch Jarvis Jones is an advertising agency in Minneapolis. Our mission is to create positive social change through the power of advertising and marketing.

We try to make great advertising for clients who deserve it.

If you'd like to know more about us, contact Kevin Lynch at (612) 371-5720. E-Mail: klynch@ljj.com. Or write us at 119 North Fourth Street, Suite 301, Minneapolis, MN 55401.

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About the Author

Kevin Lynch is founder and CEO of Lynch Jarvis Jones, Inc., a $9.4 million, nine year old advertising agency in Minneapolis. Lynch Jarvis Jones' mission is to create positive social change through the power of advertising. In 1993, Lynch decided to focus the power of advertising exclusively on common good products, services, issues and ideas. At the core of the business is the belief that common good advertisers need the same level of incisive strategy, creative impact, media precision and production values that other advertisers rely upon.

Lynch began his career in 1980 at Bozell & Jacobs, rising to Vice President and Account Supervisor before he left to start Lynch Jarvis Jones. He has a B. S. (1980) from St. John's University. He is a member of Social Venture Network, and co-chair of Business for Social Responsibility, Upper Midwest Network.

This information was part of a presentation  to the Minneapolis and St. Paul business community on July 15, 1998 by Kevin Lynch. The program was part of a series entitled Business Ethics Management Series.

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