The High Priest of Materialism Recants
The advertising world is waking up to these issues. You can be sure there is a forceful “tide in the affairs of men” when Sir Martin Sorrell – surely materialism’s high priest? – seems to be recanting from the altar of mammon, as is evidenced by an interview with Marketing Week in early 2008: “All our instincts as clients, agencies [and] media owners are to encourage people to consume more – super consumption.” He added that people had become used to “The aspiration that you should consume more; the aspiration that you should have a bigger car; the aspiration that you should have a number of holidays, bigger houses [and] multiple houses. Our view, which is counter to what you expect our industry to argue, is that conspicuous consumption is not productive, and should be discouraged.”
“Conspicuous consumption is not productive, and should be discouraged”, Sir Martin Sorrell
Adam Werbach, one of the US green movement’s leading lights, joined forces in 2008 with Sorrell’s arch rival Publicis when he sold his consulting firm Act Now to Saatchi and Saatchi. It will be interesting to see if Werbach can effect change within the advertising model. A number of other advertising and Communications sector companies are known to be positioning themselves to either try and grab a piece of the green cake or understand how to co-opt or convert the movement’s thinking in order to stay alive in their current form. They are in the wrong space. It is no longer viable to pay for the space to lecture the Consumer.
So we see there are good reasons and pressures encouraging society to rethink its relationship with consumption. This will have a knock-on effect to the way business is run and the way products and services are marketed.
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