Excerpts from John Singleton, “Cancer country continued,” Advertising News, April 28, 1972, pp. 4, 19.

At last the idiots have had their way. Cigarette packs are going to be plastered with warnings about the dreaded weed being poorly for your health. …

Yes, the poor dumb consumerists have missed the point yet again. The only good thing about smoking is its evil connotations. And anything that serves to increase the evil is good. Warnings are in fact dangerous to the health of the anti-smoking campaign. In the first twelve months after the same thing happened in the United States last year, Marlboro, the most masculine evil brand, jumped its sales 17 per cent. And the same thing will happen here in gum-tree Marlboro Country.

In other words, the move won’t hurt the cigarette industry one bit. It will just mean a new set of rules, common to all, within which competition will still be allowed. For a while at least. And cigarettes are, after all, not really that important in the total scheme of things.

But the democratic principle is at point, and worse, the democratic principle is being endangered.

Government, under the guise of consumerism, is about to embark on a senseless and inevitably disastrous rampage against advertising in the name of good.

Government has no such rights. It is the right of government to protect majority from the minority. And as such government has the right to protect us from the pollution of selfish industry. But no government has the right to protect man from himself, from his own self-pollution.

  1. Because it is an infringement of human rights.
  2. Because it can never work and is therefore a waste of money belonging to the very people the government seeks to protect.
  3. Because it sets one lot of men up as God-like judges of what is right and wrong for you and me.

I want no part of it, and if you have any balls at all, you shouldn’t want any part of it either.

But what will you do about it? Nothing. What will your company do about it? Nothing. What will your agency do? Nothing.

We will bow down and be spat on and told that we are muck-rakers and liars and con-men and we will turn the other cheek and cop the 17.65 commissions and run for our lives. But not for long. Because this is exactly what has happened in the United States right now, and as we continue to slavishly follow the US trends we can bet the same thing will happen here. Last year, Ad Daily reports, 42 per cent of all 4A’s agencies in the US did dough.

And if you don’t care what people do to you; if you don’t care that your good name is being vilified; if you don’t care how many freedoms you are robbed of, at least think of this: 42 per cent of all 4A’s agencies in the United States last year lost money because this industry is literally dying and will inevitably die unless we do something about it. Now.

Let’s look at the gutless, spineless, shameless attributes of the industry spokesmen in the United States, and let’s think how our leaders will compare under the same onslaught … And agencies … are all, publicly at least, marching hand-in-hand with consumerism. Because they believe it is right and good? Or because they are scared stiff of it and want to run away from it like a bad dream that will go away one day?

Here in Australia the situation can, and I believe will, also reach the same appalling depths. We have already seen Bill Farnsworth work to the old dictum of “if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.” And we have seen him actually fêted by our industry; even applauded. And we have seen all sorts of power communication media pay preliminary homage to Ralph Nader who lobs here soon to further his once-proud and now very dubious cause.

Certainly advertising has wrong which need to be righted. Certainly there are selling practices which need to be righted. Certainly there is some small segment of consumers who need some sort of “cooling-off” protection against pressure door-to-door selling.

But as always, as now, as tomorrow, the best protection will always come from the consumer herself. No one will ever stop people who wish to do wrong from doing wrong. Prohibition has been tried and found wanting. But what the consumerists are foisting upon the cigarette industry today is only the beginning of a new kind of prohibition which will prove equally pointless and equally riddled with corruption.

We must face up the fact that advertising men, like salesmen, will never be regarded by the general public with the same respect or admiration as the local doctor, chemist, or bank manager. The fact is that the consumer loves to buy but hates to admit that she has been sold. But this does not mean that the selling function is evil. It just means that human nature is what it is, has been, and always will be.

I just hope our industry here in Australia states its case more purposefully and intelligently than it has in the United States or I do not believe that selling/advertising as we know it will survive our generation.

I happen to think the selling industry is something worth fighting for. I think it is an essential ingredient of the democratic function.