Rory Sutherland is one of the few people in advertising who hasn’t completely lost the plot. He’s funny, sharp and – crucially – understands that human beings aren’t spreadsheets with feelings. In his latest Triggernometry interview he makes some good points. He takes a swipe at the moral grandstanding infecting the industry. He exposes how marketers are too often more interested in activism than actually selling anything. And he rightly ridicules the Bud Light catastrophe, a textbook case of what happens when brands forget who their customers are.
So far, so good. I agree with him – up to a point. But then he says the fatal line: that marketers are just trying to “do the right thing”.
Sorry, Rory. That’s not just wrong, it’s dangerously wrong.
These people aren’t misguided do-gooders. They’re not well-meaning but naïve. They’re not making mistakes. They’re doing exactly what they set out to do.
They are moral authoritarians. Worse still, they think they’re the heroes of the story.
What’s happened in marketing isn’t accidental – it’s structural. And we know this because of the research.
Take The Empathy Delusion by Andrew Tenzer and Ian Murray. They showed that marketers are wired differently from the general public. High openness, low conscientiousness and high agreeableness. And crucially, they conflate their feelings with public opinion. They don’t see themselves as selling to customers – they see themselves as educating the ignorant. As Tenzer puts it: “Marketers mistake their feelings for the public’s values.” Spot on.
Research indicates that individuals exhibiting high openness to experience and low conscientiousness are more likely to hold Left-wing political orientations.
Then there’s Jonathan Haidt. In The Righteous Mind he explains how Left-liberals operate with a narrow moral palette, obsessed with care and fairness, while ignoring loyalty, authority and sanctity. These are the people designing your ads. Is it any wonder they keep producing campaigns that insult the very people they’re meant to attract?
This isn’t accidental. It’s strategic. It’s marketing rebranded as moral signalling.
Women consistently score higher than men on agreeableness, neuroticism and openness across the Big Five personality traits.
And so let’s go further. Jordan Peterson’s research with Christine Brophy shows that the psychological profile most predictive of Left-wing authoritarianism is low verbal ability, high agreeableness and feminine personality traits. Which, if you’ve worked in marketing for more than five minutes, will sound eerily familiar. You don’t get a lot of ideological diversity in a room full of HR and DEI managers – the same is true in marketing.
So no, Rory. These people aren’t confused. They’re missionaries. And the worst kind – the ones who don’t even know they’re preaching.
They believe it’s their job to correct the customer. To lead the culture. To spend your advertising budget telling the world how good they are.
And it’s killing brands.
Marketing used to be about persuasion. About seduction. Now it’s all scolding and sermonising. No wonder the public are switching off. No wonder they’re buying from competitors who actually respect them.
The strategic implications are clear: if your marketing department is staffed by people who think the average customer is a backward bigot, you’ve got a problem. You’re not speaking to your audience – you’re sneering at them.
This isn’t about pandering. It’s about respect. It’s about remembering that the job is to sell, not to lecture.
Until that reality is faced, marketing won’t just be ineffective – it will be actively repellent.
Time to stop making excuses. Time to clean house.
Lee Taylor is the Managing Director of marketing agency Uncommon Sense. You can contact him on email here. Find Uncommon Ad Space on X. The Uncommon Ad Space website can be found here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Talking of moral authoritarians, also read activists, academics and related rear-sphincters.
Rory says a lot of very interesting things. ‘Trying to do the right things’, and ‘Doing the right things’ are two very different matters. Lee Taylor is spot on the mark about ‘Missionaries’, they are authoritarian bullies, trying to force you to see the world as they do. We are a long way from the happy days of representing products by their added value.
Why does every ad feature a black lead? This systematic repression anglo saxon Brits, particularly men, is offensive and off-putting.
And no, I’m not ‘racist’, never have been.
it’s racist to blacks too, I think. Many have their own culture and yet they are portrayed as white culture people.
Good point.
I could imagine that West Indians find it as embarrassing as we do, they are by and large a very conservative bunch of lovely people. And it’s always blacks, never Asians, middle-Eastern, Chinese, Inuits, Scandis, etc ….ads are an embarrassing joke. For full inclusivity we need to see a Muslim in a Carlsberg ad – let’s not pretend they don’t drink it……
And only ever mixed-race families; or friends gathered around the table who are black, white and mixed race ….. but seldom Indian and never Chinese.
It’s blatant multi-culti propaganda …. not reflecting our society which is still, despite the Establishment’s best efforts to destroy it, predominantly white.
I asked an old friend recently “When did you last see a TV Ad with 5 white people in it”. —–He was silent for a moment as he tried to think of one, then he replied—- “Eh 1978?”
Surely, you must recognise that that last sentence proves you are?
Good article – yes, these ad people really do think they are the heroes of their own shallow little worlds. I knew some in the 80’s and 90’s in particular. Shallower than a puddle in the Sahara – and they knew it. To compensate for that they adopted any faux intellectual cause they could – and they do this even more now. The tragedy is they cannot tell the difference between real and false intellectualism. Anything beyond a soundbite and they are lost.
I don’t know the people who make the ads but I think I despise most of them.
I’ve been thinking (and writing) for a while that people in this “profession” and in many others (notably the arts, the media, academia) see themselves first and foremost as making the world a better place rather than doing a job.
Spot on.
I remember when Kleenex decided to change the 50+ year old ‘mansize’ brand of tissues to ‘extra large’. It was on the back of a tweet from some woman that was walking through the supermarket with her 4yo son who asked her whether girls, boys and women can use those. It was my favourite brand of tissues and not because of its name, I just liked the box shape and design, so I found it completely ridiculous that they simply changed it because someone who wasn’t even a customer thought it’s sexist. Perhaps she is a customer now, not guaranteed of course, but I know for sure they lost me forever.
Now I buy Sainsbury’s own brand tissues, because I like the design of the box. Funny enough, they’re called ‘mansize’ on their website. And it looks like Kleenex only dropped the brand in the UK, you can still buy the old brand on Amazon. All this because of one tweet…
Then there was retiring Mrs White from Cluedo.🤨 Maybe there was some legitimate reason for this I’m unaware of but my mind automatically jumps to the conclusion that it’s the woketards what dunnit. 🧐
Why did Fairy Liquid change the sweet baby into a baby hooligan?
The same parasitic woke mind virus that has infected the advertising world has infected government, media and academia. They want to preach and ‘teach’ good behaviour and scare you into compliance for your ‘safety’ and the ‘common good’. Freedom of speech is the antidote to this virus and that is why every liberal western government is busy creating laws to actively persecute and limit our liberty and freedom. They think because they have a position in government they know best and anyone who challenges their authority is a threat. They hate the great unwashed.
Anyone pushing Wind Power as the answer to Electricity on Demand is just as deluded, especially if they argue, and lecture me on my misinformation, quoting the BBC. 🙂
Yes and that is what “Hate Speech” laws are for. A tool for government to silence all opinion that deviates from theirs.
Very true.
PG Tips & Yorkshire Tea jumped on the Woke bandwaggon……It was one of those that proclaimed (around 2020 when this was taking off) if you don’t agree with our values, don’t buy our products, so I don’t to this day unless nothing else is available. You’re a Tea company, concentrate on telling us how wonderful your tea is and you won’t go wrong!
This piece was exemplified in the recent Jaguar debacle, a once great motorists brand and product.
I’ve had five Jags (if you count the X-Type that everybody calls a Mondeo) One series three 1982 — Two XJ6s (X300) and one XJ8 (X308). Those X300s 1994 -97 are pretty bullet proof, I ended up getting rid of one because of a relentless immobiliser problems. Don’t see the point of an immobiliser if it stops the bloody owner driving it.
Claiming moral elevation become default position of experts at Telling Other People What To Do – witness promotion of mandatory altruism to stave off respiratory virus with age-fatality profile that paralleled general mortality.
Likewise Planet Savers playing the denialist card. Seize the contradictory high ground and under no circumstance fight moral authoritarians on ground of their imaginings.
Failing that, cut off at the knee.
Could the DS or at least somebody possibly have a ‘woke index list’ for companies so that we can ‘push back better’? ! In some instances it is impossible to influence companies eg banks, without dire consequences, yet we want to do what we can.
You might find this useful: https://www.cancelthiscompany.com/index.html
“do the right thing for who?”——-Governments with a diversity agenda? Shareholders seeking to get everyone onboard with buying the product they have shares in by making sure for every white person in a TV ad there is a black person? The ESG agenda that seeks to eliminate small companies who cannot afford the luxury of wokery? —-WHO?