How to understand the dual responsibilities of advertising agency management

From the perspective of human communication, advertising is a communication activity. The formation of information must go through source, encoding, channel, and decoding to finally reach the audience, and then come back to form feedback.

If this model is applied to advertising, the advertiser is the source, the advertising producer is the encoding when creating the advertisement, the advertisement is the message, the channel is the medium or the advertising publisher, and the consumer cognition is the decoding , the target audience is the recipient. There is a great deal of fictitiousness in the information source level of advertising communication, there are false phenomena in the coding process, and channel control is not rigorous. Therefore, advertising has great flaws. Among them, the most worthy of attention is the issue of honesty and falsehood in advertising. This article focuses on the three most problematic steps in the advertising model, namely advertisers, advertising producers and advertising publishers to discuss the social responsibilities they should bear.

1. Social Responsibility

William Ahrens proposed in the book "Contemporary Advertising" that social responsibility means what is most beneficial to the people or specific social groups as determined by society. act according to the standards.

I think social responsibility refers to the responsibility an organization should have towards society. It usually refers to the social obligations borne by the organization that are higher than the organization's own goals.

2. Social Responsibility of Advertising

Some scholars in the United States usually believe that social responsibility of advertising means that advertisers, advertising publishers and advertising operators have the obligation to protect and promote social development. , advertising not only has economic and legal obligations, but also has other responsibilities beyond these obligations. The so-called social responsibility of advertising refers to the responsibilities or obligations that the advertising industry should bear towards society while pursuing profit maximization or during the operation process, and ultimately achieve the sustainable development of the advertising industry. Specifically, in addition to considering the interests of advertisers, advertising publishers, and advertising operators, advertising should also give due consideration to the interests of other interest groups and society that are closely related to advertising behavior. In addition to considering whether its behavior is harmful to itself, In addition to being beneficial, you should also consider whether it will have an adverse impact on others, such as whether it will cause public hazards, environmental pollution, waste resources, affect social atmosphere, cause mental pollution, etc. When making advertising decisions, considering these issues and taking appropriate measures to avoid them is an act of social responsibility. (Childhood at Nankai University, "On the Social Responsibility of Advertising and Its Implementation Methods")

I believe that the social responsibility of advertising means that in the process of advertising activities, while promoting enterprise development and economic prosperity, we must guide people Establish correct consumption concepts, care about social welfare, advocate a value trend of honesty and trustworthiness, and promote the construction of socialist spiritual civilization.

3. Why advertising should bear social responsibility

1. The speculative psychology of advertisers

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, once said: "We The purpose is to sell, otherwise it is not advertising. "The first task of advertising is to make the audience remember the product it promotes. From a psychological perspective, extreme emotions tend to create profound memories. (Wang Huaiming. "Principles of Advertising Psychology". Beijing. Tsinghua University Press. 2012.3) Advertisers are well aware of this. Through advertising slogans, picture content or broadcast methods, in a repetitive, boring, vulgar or dull form Promote its products to cause negative emotions such as disgust, revulsion, nausea, etc. in the audience. These negative emotions will cause the audience to subconsciously form a deep memory of the advertised product, so that the advertiser's purpose can be achieved. However, this kind of advertising only partially meets the needs of advertisers, but it is an extremely irresponsible behavior.

2. The quality of advertising producers

In the late 1970s, there were only more than 10 professional advertising companies and thousands of advertising practitioners in our country. Today, there are more than 80,000 advertising practitioners. Business units, an army of 1 million employees. The rapid and violent tide of the commodity economy has forced advertisers who are not fully prepared to rush into the battle, and it is inevitable that they will suffer from some discomforts.

First, it is reflected in formal advertising education. Although advertising education at the junior college and undergraduate level in mainland my country has been in the ascendant since 1983, there is a widespread educational ideological bias that emphasizes "tools" and neglects "tao". This has led to a gap between the teaching of advertising techniques and the profession. There is an imbalance in moral education, and social responsibility education in advertising has not received the attention it deserves. Second, in terms of talent recruitment standards, some advertising and recruitment units unilaterally emphasize the professional background and social relationships of applicants, focusing on performance indicators and neglecting moral performance, which objectively provides a breeding ground for the unhealthy professional mentality of eager for quick success and quick gain. Third, due to some oversimplified social evaluations, in the eyes of many people, the social prestige of the advertising profession is not high, and the prejudice that "advertising is uneducated" still has a strong market. This unjust social opinion has a negative impact on advertising. Consciously forging a sense of professional honor will undoubtedly cause some psychological damage and lead to unhealthy social interaction behaviors. Fourth, advertising production agencies only act according to the will of advertisers and voluntarily abandon legal principles. (Childhood at Nankai University, "On the Social Responsibility of Advertising and Its Implementation Methods")

I think the quality of advertising producers can be divided into two points, one is internal reasons, and the other is external influences. The internal reason is that ad producers follow the advertiser's intentions without thinking of their own and have no time to consider social responsibilities. External influences are divided into three parts: advertising education is imperfect and social responsibility education is not taken seriously; the recruitment of advertising talents focuses on performance rather than virtue; the society does not have a high evaluation of the advertising industry, which is a psychological harm to advertisers and leads to non-benign social interaction behaviors of production. A combination of internal and external reasons lead to a lack of social responsibility among advertising producers.