In my book How Advertising Works (Advertising Association, 1992), I ended with a number of conclusions about the nature of advertising. I think these still hold true, and a brief restatement of some of them may be a good introduction to this chapter.

The sheer variety of advertising means that it will always be an art rather than a science and that generalisation is dangerous. It is worth keeping this in mind whenever we think about advertising. That said, advertising (as distinct from other marketing actions) does have some distinguishing features, which give it a special place.

First, advertising works within economics, not against it. It cannot swim against the tide of a market. In the West especially, there are many markets which have reached the limit of their development: advertising can do nothing to expand these. Individual consumers do not do things they do not otherwise want to do, purely as the result of advertising.

Colin