Can’t Sell Won’t Sell: Advertising, politics and culture wars. Why adland has stopped selling and started saving the world

Our politics dictate the ads we create and distance us from our audience. The advertising industry has lost interest in selling. According to the IPA, we face "a crisis of effectiveness". And our politics are to blame. We are now so culturally left-leaning, we’re no longer willing to stoke capitalism’s engine of growth. Instead, we have a new raison d’etre: we’re saving the world. But who are the activists and careerists who are pushing this progressive agenda? And what of the angry mainstream who are alienated by the ideas we’re imposing upon them? Most urgently, as our clients emerge from the pandemic recession, will advertising rediscover its commercial purpose and help them revive the UK economy? Or will our agencies and institutions double down on social purpose and the monoculture that’s suffocating a once brilliantly creative industry and forcing it to the margins of British business and cultural life?