Advertising has always attracted plenty of criticism. We have already met Daniel Defoe, who complained about Conjurers and Witches plastering posters all over London in the 17th century. And, as we have also seen, these complains became more common once the same type of ads started appearing in newspapers.

Early complaints were mostly about such advertising excesses. However, slowly but surely a more intellectual dislike of advertising developed. This critique of advertising was perfected by post-Marxist philosophers in the second half of the 20th century. In the end, capitalism wasn't overthrown, and nowadays complaints about advertising are again mostly limited to advertising excesses.

There has always been criticism within the advertising industry as well, though that has mainly been limited to discussions about the effectiveness of different advertising techniques. William Smith was one such critic; throughout his book on how, when and where to advertise he essentially argued that advertising should become more respectable — all those messy posters simply needed to be arranged more neatly. In this chapter I mostly focus on the intellectual dislike of advertising, as it is the most interesting. It challenges the very existence of advertising.

Puffery and the destruction of planet Earth

So far, I have introduced William Wordsworth and Daniel Defoe as people with an intellectual dislike of advertising. Another early critic was the Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. In Past and Present (1843), Carlyle denounced the all-deafening blast of puffery of advertising and went on to write that there is not a man or hat-maker born into the world but feels, or has felt, that he is degrading himself if he speaks of his excellences and prowesses, and supremacy in his craft..

It is not know how widespread this view was, but there were definitely tradesmen who felt that advertising lacked respectability. The fact that many quack doctors used advertising no doubt contributed to this feeling — a hat-maker who took pride in his craft surely didn't want to have an ad next to an ad for a charlatan selling a cure for syphilis. Perhaps this weariness of advertising also explains why the early tradecards were carefully designed and relatively free from puffery.

In any case, this early dislike of advertising was mostly intuitive. You don't need to advertise if you are the best hat-maker in town — people will know about you. Advertising was for inferior tradesmen and charlatans, not real craftsmen. Of course, the real craftsmen eventually had to give in — Carlyle actually hints at this by stating that his beloved hat-maker feels, or has felt that he is degrading himself. Increasingly, advertising became a necessary evil. In the second half of the 19th century the local economy started to make way to a national economy, in which large companies sold products all over the Kingdom and used newspapers to advertise their goods. To compete as a local hat-maker you had to speak of your excellences and prowesses.

Creating wants

The criticism of advertising developed from an intuitive dislike to a proper intellectual critique in the 20th century. For instance, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith argued in The Affluent Society (1952) that advertising was used to create "wants" that didn't exist before. In capitalist societies, economic exchanges are supposed to benefit both the buyer and seller, which in turn benefits the economy and society at large. As a simple example, we all need to eat but it isn't efficient for everybody to bake their own bread. Instead, most of us get bread from a baker. That benefits us, as we can get a nice loaf of bread without spending hours on yet another loaf that didn't rise properly, and it benefits the baker, who gets some of our hard-earned money.

However, this isn't true for all products. A loaf of bread is a product most people genuinely want, and it pretty much sells itself. The same can't be said for the endless stream of new products and services that are invented — there are very few that appeal to real "wants". That, according to Galbraith, is why producers spend huge sums of money on advertising; they need to convince people they actually want a product. Or, to put it slightly differently, the product is created first, and the producer then uses advertising to create a want — and the more we produce, the more wants are created. Galbraith called this the dependence effect.

All this is a fancy way of saying that there are a lot of products and services we could do without — and we would probably be happier for it. We live in a consumerist society, in which people have become mere "consumers". And it is all underpinned by advertising, which presents fantasies as "wants". Raheem Sterling is apparently successful at kicking a football because he uses Gillette shaving products (it helps you get into your flow). Eating at McDonald's is associated with fun and happiness (and not junk food, litter and the exploitation of animals). Flying with British Airways results in experiences that will create new memories (which you somehow won't get if you fly with one of the company's competitors). The list goes on.

There are two counter-arguments. The first is that advertising isn't purely a vehicle for consumerism and that there are plenty of people who find adverts informative and entertaining or, in the case of online advertising, accept it as a way to get a free service. This is a fair argument. Nobody forces people to buy superfluous stuff, and people can choose to live a simpler, less consumerist life. You could argue that capitalism has brainwashed people to the extent that people have lost all individuality and just work, consume and watch television, but such debates aren't very fruitful.

The second counter-argument is that advertising is everywhere because it works. Nevett, for instance, points out that early attacks on the desirability of advertising were doomed to failure, because it was filling an obvious need and because it brought results. He goes on to point out that the people criticising advertising were able to quote the names of major advertisers (in the same way I just rattled off a couple of brands). The same argument is often made in discussions about junk mail: if people really disliked junk mail as much as they say they do then it wouldn't exist. This argument is false; it ignores the importance of brand recognition in consumer societies. Just because a company relentlessly advertises a certain product doesn't make the product popular. However, it does put the name of the company and/or product in people's head, and people generally buy products they know. And, perhaps more importantly, it helps companies secure a section of a market. Without brand recognition it is near-impossible for manufacturers to get a place on supermarket shelves. All this has nothing to do with a product's desirability in terms of price and quality. It is purely a function of consumerism.

In the last decade or so the debate about consumerism has made a modest of a come-back, as more people realise that our planet can't possible sustain our level of consumption. This debate goes back to the early 1970s, when the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth. Producers are responding to this — we now see lots of ads claiming that this or that product is "environmentally friendly". Critics such as Naomi Klein and Juliet Schor dismiss such advertising claims as greenwashing; they serve to sustain the myth that overconsumption is compatible with a "green" lifestyle, even though it is abundantly clear we are trashing the planet.

Ineffective advertising

Within the advertising industry criticism has mostly focussed on ineffective advertising. This started with William Smith, who has been called a prophet of modern advertising. In the previous chapter I talked about how Smith argued that door-drops (then called "bills") and letters addressed "To the Mistress of the House" were a waste of money. He didn't like flyers either. In 1861, he went for a walk through London and took every bill, book or pamphlet he was offered. He ended up with 251 of them. His criticism was that such advertising excesses are ineffective. No doubt he wouldn't be impressed by the weekly bundle of junk mail leaflets Royal Mail distributes nowadays.

Smith didn't like sandwich-men either, but for a different reason. The problem with sandwich-men was the same as the problem with all the posters on buildings: they looked miserable. In the same way that posters should be neatly arranged, sandwich-men should be supplied with proper clothes, so that they wouldn't look so poor. I should add that Smith also acknowledged the plight of sandwich-men, who were routinely bullied, abused and sometimes attacked:

Few men who earn their living in the streets are better abused and more persistently jeered at than the unfortunate individuals who let themselves out for hire as walking advertisements.

Criticism of ineffective advertising continues to this day. In fact, advertising has become somewhat of an odd science, where people get paid to calculate the "return on investment" of advertising campaigns (I call this "odd" because, in my opinion, advertising is largely about brand recognition rather than direct sales). You also see the results of this on the world wide web, in the form of "clickbait", "search engine optimisation" and pop-ups begging you to create an account with a website or sign up to a mailing list.

Advertising excesses

The third type of complaints are about advertising excesses. Most people didn't mind advertising posters, but they didn't like the whole city of London being covered in ads. People didn't object in principle to someone handing them a "bill" but they didn't want to be stopped over 251 times while walking a few miles in London. But most of all, people objected to ads that were scams or grossly misleading — and there were plenty of them even in the late 19th century.

Worse, some fake doctors blackmailed their unfortunate patients. In Advertising in Britain, Nevett gives the example of Captain Montague Augustus Clark, who had seen a quack doctor about spermatorrhea. The doctor demanded £150 for his services (over £16,000 in today's money) and threatened to tell his employer, the War Office, about his condition. Instead of paying the ransom, the Captain took the doctor to court and won. The reason we know about this case is that The Times wrote an editorial about the scandal. It turned out the Captain wasn't alone, and it helped lift the lid on other crimes operated via newspapers adverts, such as illegal abortions, loan sharks and tricking young women into prostitution.