Defending ads from the advertisers.

• Author: Howley, Kerry
• Position: Advertising - Interview

We're used to the usual charges against advertising: that it manipulates defenseless children, promotes crass materialism, and compels consumers to buy ever more of what they don't need. But when John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, a free market think tank in North Carolina, set out to defend the social value of product promotion, he found himself up against an unexpected group of critics: advertisers themselves. In Selling the Dream (Praeger), Hood defends the art of advertising from the self-hating sloganeers, telemarketers, and admen who help create it.

Q: Why are advertisers apt to believe the worst about their profession?

A: Advertising has drawn from pools of talent that do not traditionally consist of libertarians or free market people-graphic artists, writers. A lot of them have a set of cultural beliefs that do not lend themselves to defending free markets. They may be very talented at the work. But often they hate themselves doing it, because it hasn't occurred to them that a clever slogan has any social value at all.

Q: Do we lose a sense of authenticity when we start defining ourselves through brands?

A: Authenticity is a kind of a brand. People buy various goods because they have authenticity; that's the brand. Human beings like to identify with categories, behavior, people. There is nothing that can be done to squash that impulse. If you banned all advertising, people would find other brand identities. They wouldn't be commercial, but they would be brand identities.

We went through a period...