School ads are bottom of class
It may be legal, decent, honest and truthful – but is it wise? The decision of a junior education minister to endorse advertising within school premises (albeit later qualified) is pregnant with significance. Not least because it may throw the steady advance of marketing to schools into reverse.
Strictly speaking, Mrs Gillan’s pronouncement marks nothing new. Advertising within schools has long been on the books. What’s really interesting is why no one has mined this apparently lucrative vein before. We’re beginning to learn the answer.
There are of course many products which rely largely, or exclusively, upon their appeal to children. And few of them fail to attract a degree of controversy. Toy makers are frequently assailed, fairly or otherwise, for promoting pester power. Tobacco manufacturers and brewers are pilloried for their covert exploitation of under-age appetites. Embassy’s Reg campaign and the launch of Hooper’s Hooch furnish recent examples. By and large, the manufacturers’ response to public criticism – whatever its merits – is extremely muted. And for good reason. This is the marketing which dare not speak its name. Putting it explictly onto the agenda can only lose sales.
Which is precisely what is likely to result from the Gillan ‘initiative’. Stirring up public debate moves the issue away from the cosy confines of commercial logic to the distinctly less comfortable habitat of ethics. Here the businessman has relatively few friends and plenty of natural predators. And if an issue were calculated to bring them out of their dens all at once, it could not be better devised than this one. After all, little effort is required to portray marketing and advertising executives as sinister acolytes ministering to a fiendish capitalist Moloch, once the emotive subject of child exploitation has been raised.
The best course of action for marketers is to follow the example of the Advertising Standards Authority, and take rapid evasive action. There are unlikely to be many takers for advertising in schools anyway. For who wants their market performance constantly under critical public scrutiny ?
A more interesting, though unanswerable, question is whether the Government’s cack-handedness will damage other, subtler, initiatives in the rapidly growing educational marketing industry. The National Consumer Council, which recently published guidelines on school sponsorship, reckons the industry is now worth about 300m a year – though accurate estimates are notoriously difficult to arrive at. All three of the major supermarket chains, not to mention WH Smith, Pentax and McDonald’s, clearly regard it as an important part of the marketing mix. Soon the Co-op will be adding to their number with the announcement of an educational voucher scheme offering schools 100,000 musical instruments.
One thing’s for certain: we haven’t heard the last of this sensitive issue.
