With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

As an advertiser, you play a very important role. You control the way your audience (the world) will see your ad. While it may not be shocking that most people are skeptical of advertising, this also leaves opportunity to use your powers for good! Being transparent and honest is so important, in life and in advertising.

Be the good guy. There are so many products and services that help people, or send out a great message. We have such great power to influence the way people see things. A great example is the campaign by Rethink that features the photos of animals with plastic straws down their throat. Sometimes photos say what words can’t. So they make your head turn, then what? Well, Walt Disney World and Starbucks have banned the use of plastic straws and now use paper ones. Talk about effective.

In any kind of industry, there will always be bad eggs. This doesn’t make them all bad, but they do exist. Hold out for the good ones. Not everyone is trying to rip you off or leave out details about their product to make you think it’s something else. Probably just the ones that start off with some kind of weird problem you didn’t know you had, and if you buy it within the next ten minutes, you’ll get 2 for the same price of one.

We are not salespeople, we are advertisers. It’s not about making a sale, it’s about making a difference. Be honest, be clever and be the best that you can be. Do not be deceiving, do not be tricky. My goal while working in this industry is to minimize the opinion that advertising is not trustworthy. I picked a profession where you can quite literally change the world one ad at a time and I plan to do so.