Jon Bright (London, OK): There was a gripping article by Rory Sutherland in the Spectator today on the thinking of the advertising execs which are being seen increasingly in government departments. While they are, at the moment, mostly there to win elections or manage the "brands" of politicians and parties, he makes an interesting case for their role to be expanded. Rather than legislators looking at public problems, he says, we need persuaders. We need advertisers:
Why is it fine to change someone’s driving habits by building a new road, and not by, say, using advertising (or a text message) to persuade them to drive to London an hour later? Indeed, if we asked marketers to address traffic problems instead of engineers, they may ask whether we really have a transport problem in Britain at all. Isn’t it actually a timing problem?
His approach to advertising - as he says himself - is a somewhat old-fashioned one: more in common with the "psychological" approaches of the 60s which came to be replaced with relentless and overt focus on unique selling points. He calls enthusiastically for the adperson to once more embrace persuasion as the means to their ends.
I'd been intending for a while to write something about what I perceived as the large scale co-option of private media channels for the dissemination of public information. In one hour a few weeks ago, for example, while listening to XFM, I heard adverts offering me help to stop smoking, telling me condoms were "essential wear," advising me to check twice for bikes, reminding me of the benefits of availing myself of tourist information, and asking me to call a confidential anti-terrorist hotline if I see anyone looking Asian suspicious.
But Sutherland is coming from the other end of the spectrum - in his opinion this type of stuff is useful, cost-effective, and a much better way of achieving policy than legislation. And he points out the government advertising budget is actually relatively small: at £150 million per annum, it's only 5% of what they spend on consultants.
His article does tail off slightly. Sutherland is apparently a techno-enthusiast, and slips seamlessly and rather unreflectively into talking about the ability of the "medium" to change habits (claiming, for instance, that teenagers are "more likely" to donate to charity if they are able to do so through text). The blurb describes him, inscrutably, as the "Spectator's own Wiki-man," the meaning of which remains unapparent (am I, for instance, allowed to alter aspects of his personality or appearance at will?). And some of his points do appear to have more to do with lateral thinking than advertising per-se:
Why was £6 billion found to speed up the train journey from London to Paris by 40 minutes or so, but no one can find £5 million to equip the trains with WiFi — a decision that would add five productive hours to a return journey rather than just one?
But the general thrust I find fascinating. Money can be saved, and policy solutions achieved, by persuading people to change habits. If I stop smoking, have no unprotected sex, run over less motorcyclists, find local sites of historic interest efficiently, and maybe - just maybe - prevent a major terrorist attack by ruthlessly shopping friends, family and passers-by to the police, all this would be of a relatively quantifiable benefit to the public purse. And if I am persuaded rather than compelled to do so then this will be cheaper still.
Would less legislation and more persuasion be a cheaper and better way of governing? Or does changing the human to fit the situation rather than the other way round amount to a fundamental reversal of what a government of, by and for the people should be doing? At the moment, I could be persuaded either way.
