advertising

basically advertising is the art of selling (oops that should be informing) you of products and services that might fill a need that you have. generally it is non-personal (meaning that you do not have a salesman standing in front of you talking directly to you) and it is paid for by the advertiser in order to persuade you to buy something.

there are some wonderful ads out there. some make you think about the message they are trying to get across (often they are too clever by half and you wonder what on earth they are talking about), some just make you smile because they are funny, more often than not they do not make you buy something you didn’t already want, they serve more to remind you of what brands and models there are out there when you decide to buy that thing you wanted.

i would like to say i have not been persuaded to by something on the strength of the ad, i just can’t remember the last time i saw something advertised that made me go “oh i never knew one of those existed and i never really knew i had a use for it – i had better buy it…”
i have yet to rush out to check out the latest phone, car, booze, razor etc based on the advertisements i have seen in the magazines or at the cinema.
in fact we are going through the advertising versus editorial coverage argument at work. (a slight digression here. we have been placing more ads recently, and every time one of them appears one of our colleagues brings it into us to show us in a gosh wow look at this kind of way. he seems so surprised we have an ad in this or that magazine. it would be so bad but he booked the ads. go figure).

some of the worst ads are those that sell you financial and legal services, generally done cheap (think debt consolidation or personal injury claims) where they have a “star” and “staff members” hamming it up in front of the cameras. this is to show us (i think) that they are sensible with the money they have and that they are ordinary people: just like us.
then there are the slick ads from places like banks and building societies that get us all excited about this card, or that account but can never give us all the small print (and of course have to be taken with a pinch of salt (after all they are not going to say that their competitor is better than they are – that is for us the consumers to discover).

hopefully you can see where i am coming from here for products and services you know you want but are just not ready to buy advertising can be fun to watch and read (as an awful lot of creativity goes into them). for advertising for important once in a while type services the ads are generally not well done and the information given is at best minimal and very partial, leaving you with lots of work to do. buying a pension scheme is not like getting toilet rolls (mmm shall i get the one the puppy likes or the one the bear uses?)

yet somehow into the world of advertising we will soon see our local hospitals.
now i don’t know about you, but i know i do not want (or need) my local hospital (or any hospital) advertising on tv, radio or in print.
what i want is that my gp has an impartial knowledge of which hospital does the best work in whatever i need doing and that i can get treated there in the fullness of time.
in a conversation i had with emma about education she, rightly (but in a left leaning way) pointed out that the easiest way to remake the education system in the uk was not by adding faith schools and such like – but by making all schools state schools and place them on a level playing field (well for those where they have not sold the playing areas off to local developers…)
the principle of free at point of use is the one at work here.
it is the same with the national health service.
so often i hear that the state can’t run national sized industries, that it has to be cut down into local “markets”. such utter twaddle (but a different debate for a different night). both the tory and labour government have gotten hung up on having markets, competition and choice in the nhs that they seem to have spent most of their periods in charge making the service worse than before.
the nhs was one of the jewels in britain’s crown, it worked and delivered health to the nation.

now instead of worrying about making sure we are healthy it can worry about which ad agency it is going to use, and these will be headhunted for them by the financial consultants that they use. the process will mean money that should be going on patient care will go instead on a media presence.

now of course we all want choice, but hospitals are places i want to avoid,. if i live to be 150 and never go inside one i will be a happy man. when the times comes for me to go into hospital i will not have the necessary knowledge to know which one if going to be good for me, i am going to rely on an expert to tell me.
nor am i going to be dying of a heart attack and think better check the ads to see which hospital is the best for me… oh shit it is in scotland…. for the ads to work they are going to have to be national ads, so they are not going to be cheap. by their very nature they are not going to be able to tell you all you need to know about an operation or a procedure and just how long are you going to wait until you make up your mind? well i suppose it will depend on the pain you are in and how urgent it all is. the last times i went to hospital because i needed something check and dealt with my choice was based on one thing and one thing only: how close was it.

i don’t want to see the nhs throwing money away on a stupid sound bit idea. i want to see the nhs invested in, i want this done in a coherent sensible fashion. it shouldn’t be a case of hospitals competing to get patients through their doors, it should be a case of a high level of service and commitment throughout the whole of the nhs, with some hospitals specialising in some fields of medicine.

there should be no need for a hospital to advertise. this is just another way of there being less money for the service to provide the care it should.
but hey ho after the various public private funding and the various expensive consultants the new labour government have employed why should i think that they would shrug off their tory coats and put back on the coat that labour used to wear with pride.

still i am sure jonathon miller has already offered to direct the first of the hospital ads.