Advertising—A Critic's View

Has advertising degenerated into wasteful and sometimes deceptive promotion of brand rivalry? Since the author of the present article says, “Yes,” it might be well to point out that an old-fashioned but still valid tenet is that a good marketing man must always try to learn about and understand another person's point of view. In this article, originally presented at the 1961 Boston Conference on Distribution (Colston E. Warne, “Advertising—A Critic's View,” Boston, International Marketing Institute, 1961, pp. 61–65), the author maintains that present-day advertising is featuring the irrational and the irrelevant, and is often employed as a means of consumer manipulation. For a different point of view, see the article that follows this one.