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Badvertising - Andrew Simms and Leo Murray **

In their book, Andrew Simms and Leo Murray tell us that ‘the enabler of [a] great shift in expectations and attitudes has been the advertising and marketing industries. Advertising is selling us an imagined lifestyle – the premise is that we can only we feel we are all living our best lives by flying around the world, driving ever bigger SUVS [sic], eating beef from cattle raised on cleared rainforest, and enjoying a vast array of consumer goods like there was no tomorrow.’

This book covers two of my interests, climate science and influencing the brain, so I thought it would be right up my street, but I found it depressingly bad. It's a polemic by enthusiasts that isn't really science driven. I don't like advertising, I think it can be manipulative - but the whole story was wildly overplayed here. I am certainly not aware, for example, of advertising making me eat beef from cattle raised on cleared rainforest, I have rarely seen advertising for beef per se, and only buy British beef – the UK is not famous for its rainforest (it does have some but it isn’t threatened by cattle so much as invasive species, disease and wild deer). Of course, I have seen advertising for companies that sell beef, such as fast-food chains, though many of those only claim to use British or Irish meat.

A lot of claims made in the book seem to be poorly substantiated.  Some aren't backed up by evidence at all, for example 'what is clear is that [adverts] have an effect whether or not we are consciously aware'. Is it clear? Others rely on dubious data. Like, I suspect, most of us I don't usually check references that back up claims in a book, but several looked dubious - and when I checked there were some real problems. For example, we are told that we are 'estimated to encounter between 6,000 and 10,000 ads every single day' - but the source is a blog that appears to pick the statement out of the air. Worse,  Simms and Murray say this is the figure for 2023, even though the blog was written in 2021, and seems to have been updated simply by changing the year in its title.

One statement had me rolling on the floor laughing: 'As Freud's nephew, Bernays knew all about psychology…' I'm sorry? Freud was not psychologist and very little of his work had a scientific basis. But even if he had been… My uncle was a sailor, so I presume I should know all about life at sea ? I don't. (I'll let them off calling Tony Benn, 'Tony Bevins' - who was a journalist, not a politician - a page or two later.)

It's such a shame, because we need to do more to combat climate change, and to limit inappropriate advertising. But this isn't the way to do it.
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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free hereShort
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