Thursday 2 February 2012

Trust in advertising

A story in the Independent, here, attributes the following words to Guy Parker, the Chief Executive of the Advertising Standards Authority (in the fifth paragraph):

"Trust in advertising has been declining for a number of years and this is not good news."

If trust in advertising has declined (and I do not know whether it really has), that is extraordinarily good news. If people have become less likely to be taken in by the tricks of advertisers, who mostly abstain from direct lies but who do not hesitate to use carefully chosen images and words (including carefully devised brand names) in order to create unjustified mental associations, that is a sign that the public is becoming more discerning.

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