'Balanced Advertising' may be the finest example ever created of the figure of speech known technically as oxymoron, and in plain English as a contradiction in terms. Other examples - 'dry water', 'cold heat', 'German comedian' - pale into insignificance alongside it.
Remember the story of the frog in the saucepan? Ladies and gentlemen, we in financial services marketing communications are the frog, and our esteemed regulator, the Financial Services Authority (aided and abetted from time to time by other regulatory and supervisory bodies such as Trading Standards, the BACC and the RACC), own the saucepan and control the cooker.
In the story, the frog jumps into the saucepan and finds it full of nice fresh cold water. The frog is happy. The saucepan is on a stove. Someone lights the burner. Gradually the water starts to heat up. It’s nice and warm. The frog is still happy. The water starts to get hot. The frog feels a bit of discomfort, but the main thing he feels is sleepy. As the water gets hotter and hotter, the frog gets sleepier and sleepier. The water boils. The frog dies. The end.
This simple and rather depressing tale strikes me as a remarkably accurate analogy for the development of the regulation of financial marketing communications (or ‘financial promotions’, as the FSA like to call them) in recent years. In particular, the analogy works because of the fantastically stupid behaviour of the frog. Frogs can jump out of saucepans. In fairy stories, which I guess this is, frogs can very probably remonstrate with whoever is working the cooker. At the bare minimum, the frog should certainly try some shouting and splashing to attract attention. Instead, the stupid frog just sits there getting wasted.
We’ve done much the same. Specifically, what we’ve done – or rather, what we haven’t done – is to utter not even the faintest squeak of protest as more and more and more ludicrous, pointless and usually counter-productive impositions have been placed upon our communications, to the benefit of absolutely no-one except the media owners (from whom we have to buy larger amounts of expensive space and airtime to make room for this absurd gibberish) and the regulatory bureaucrats whose incomes depend upon a continuing requirement for the creation and enforcement of stupid rules.
As far as I can remember, we felt the first slight sensation of warmth from the water in the saucepan back in the late eighties, when Trading Standards introduced new rules for mortgages and other lending. I think the very first of these was about the presentation of interest rates, and required us to display a new thing called an APR in type larger and no less prominent than any other interest rate shown in a communication.
When it comes to analogies for this, thin ends of wedges come to mind more than water in saucepans. Modest as this requirement was, it carried the crucial hallmark of almost all the subsequent obligations placed on us: consumers couldn’t make head or tail of it.
This was partly because most consumers thought that ‘APR’ was what came between ‘MAR’ and ‘MAY’. But it was also because the obligation to state an APR usually didn’t make any sense. Whenever you were promoting, say, a discounted rate or a fixed rate – which you usually were – the APR defined a rate that no-one would ever actually pay, either during the discounted period or afterwards.
The figure was meaningless. No matter. It had to go in. We greeted the development glumly, but without protest. The water in the saucepan got warmer.
Fairly shortly afterwards, we saw early signs of what were to become two of the lunatics’ favourite forms of madness. The first was the requirement to shout incomprehensible nonsense at the public. This applies particularly in radio commercials. In a development worthy of the heyday of surrealism, we were forced to buy at least ten seconds of additional airtime so that respectable members of the theatrical profession hired as voice-over artistes could frantically gabble meaningless mumbo-jumbo at speeds previously achieved only by cattle auctioneers in the deep south of America. The public were bemused.
The second, which again focused on mortgages, was the need to order up vast quantities of minuscule type – the chosen size was 4-point, which looks like this, in order that our ads and other communications could contain pointless and unbelievably detailed workings-out of the terms and conditions of the loan. If the ads in question had been application forms, this information might have been of some importance. Since they weren’t, it was of no importance whatever. This was just as well, since the overwhelming majority of consumers could neither understand it nor, indeed, without the help of electron microscopes, read a word of it.
I could go on wandering along the timeline of regulatory fatuousness for a long time, but in the interests of space, my blood pressure and your patience, I am obliged to jump to the present and perhaps my favourite folly yet: the FSA’s wonderful new invention, ‘Balanced Advertising.’
This, I think, represents the point at which the water in the saucepan starts bubbling and the frog’s condition becomes critical. ‘Balanced Advertising’ may be the finest example ever created of the figure of speech known technically as oxymoron, and in plain English as a contradiction in terms. Other examples – ‘dry water’, cold heat’, ‘German comedian’ – pale into insignificance alongside it.
Somehow, incredibly, it seems to have escaped the regulator’s attention that advertising isn’t about balance. Certainly you can have ‘balanced’ communication, but it isn’t advertising. Advertising is persuasive communication. Certainly, in the ASA’s famous phrase, it should be ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful.’ But it is difficult, to say the least, to understand why advertisers would want to spend very large amounts of money on drawing the public’s attention to every bad thing they can think of about their products. The consequence of an insistence on balanced advertising will not be balanced advertising. It will be no advertising. Death of frog.
We have been very stupid to keep sitting quietly in our saucepan while these and so many other follies have been inflicted on us. If there’s still any life left in us, we really must start splashing and shouting without a moment’s further delay.
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