This New Year's, Make a Resolution to Improve Your Social Impact

2020 sucked And many of us if not all are eager to ring out the old and bring in the new Indeed in the wake of the BlackLivesMatter protests this summer myriad agencies brands tech and media companies pledged to quotdo betterquot But what does that look likeIn the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook39s general inability to control hate speech election meddling and misinformation on their platform Douglas Rushkoff wondered aloud quotWhat If Mark Zuckerberg Had Stayed in Schoolquot In other words by dropping out of Harvard at the end of his sophomore year Zuckerberg missed out on an education that would have expanded his understanding of the historical cultural economic and political context that his invention would eventually inhabit and inexorably shapeamp8230creating blind spots with massive and even deadly consequences for people all over the worldSo in the midst of social movements seeking justice for Black lives women in the workplace and the environment just to name a few I think Mark should resolve to go back to school in 2021 And I think you should too Not literally of course but figuratively And for those working in the advertising marketing and media space reading Tony Kelso39s book The Social Impact of Advertising Confessions of an ExAdvertising Man would be a great place to startKelso39s pictured right perspective is unique After working in Detroit at Young ampamp Rubicam YampampR as a broadcast producer and in Atlanta at J Walter Thompson JWT as a copywriter he went to graduate school at NYU got his PhD and decided to use his insider perspective to write a textbook that would challenge advertising majors to think more broadly and critically about the social impact of their future careerApropos of his firsthand experience of the ad industry Kelso starts every chapter of the book with a personal anecdote My favorite recounts when a baby shower gift dramatized how brands from Cheerios to cars advertise to kids so they39ll nudgenag their parents39 purchasing habits Needless to say the book is accessible free of excessive jargon and decidedly not written from the perspective of a cranky career academicAnd while certainly written with undergrads in mind I believe The Social Impact of Advertising still offers useful tools for advertising and marketing practitioners striving to meet the moment For instance in a chapter on identity race and ethnicity Kelso argues that representation can be more carefully audited by taking into account quotinclusionquot who is present in the ad quotrolesquot what are those people doing and quotcontrolquot who gets to make creative decisions Through this approach it becomes clear that while blatantly racist depictions are now rare advertising as a whole continues to stereotype in more subtle ways such as overrepresenting Black men as athletes and underrepresenting Black women in professional rolesAnd Kelso39s chapter on ideology is especially effective and relevant given Gen Z39s preference for brands that couple a clear point of view on social issues with effective corporate social responsibility After pointing out ten of the most common ways that advertising creates meaning by establishing cultural norms for the quotgood lifequot such as you are how you look but never OK as you are complex problems can be easily solved by consuming products and everything keeps getting better and better he also reveals the quotexternalitiesquot that advertising tends to hide such as the psychological consequences of striving for physical perfection how endless consumption pollutes the environment and who actually makes the products and under what conditionsGoing back to school is certainly ontrend Many sought to boneup on what they may have missed in college by reading Ibram X Kendi39s How to be an AntiRacist and Robin DiAngelo39s White Fragility this summer And while those books offer good introductions to structural racism in the United States and what to do about it I39d recommend adding another text to your syllabusamp8212one that narrows in on a more specific setting the advertising industry while also taking a broader view of what social responsibility in one39s professional life might look likeWhile Kelso may have left advertising my wish for you during this holiday season of reflection and renewal would be to read his book and then resolve to stay do better and make 2021 a new year in more ways than oneAbout Tony KelsoTony Kelso PhD is a professor of media studies and chair of the Media ampamp Strategic Communication Department at Iona College Before earning his PhD he worked at Young ampamp Rubicam and J Walter Thompson Kelsoamp160takes an eclectic approach to scholarship publishing on advertising and religion advertising and society gendernonconforming children in the media politics and popular culture and subscription television He is the author of The Social Impact of Advertising Confessions of an ExAdvertising Man a coauthor ofamp160Encyclopedia of Politics the Media and Popular Culture and a coeditor of Mosh the Polls Youth Voters Popular Culture and Democratic EngagementClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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