John Singleton, “If I were a client,” Advertising News, May 2, 1975, p. 4.

If I were a client today and was seeing my business screwed by inflation, I’d be asking myself about the validity of any advice I got by my lawyer or accountant or marketing consultant or advertising agency who did not understand the implications of inflation in my business.

I would ask myself what sort of advice they could possibly give me if they didn’t realise that inflation was causing more damage than could ever be repaired by the best legal, financial, marketing or advertising advice in the world.

I would wonder why my advertising agency, for example, kept coming up with great new ideas when they must realise that I am losing enough just making what I’ve got without any increased investment.

I’d wonder what sort of funny people my financial advisers were, talking about five-year plans when I knew that it was impossible to plan more than three months with any certainty because I had no idea what long-term policies were re my imports or my exports.

I wouldn’t even know how I could rationalise building a factory to cover even conservative growth plans because I wouldn’t know anything except that I definitely would not know what the factory was going to cost even at today’s rate of inflation.

And I definitely would not be the least bit sure I would have any say over my price if I did build the factory. How then could I plan to recover my costs?

And then when I talked to the people who contribute over my investment funds, being one of the private insurance companies, then I would find that now the Government plans to nationalise insurance through the AGIO.

A national Government insurance company was set up to compete unfairly with the private insurance companies because, by the very nature of all government departments, it does not have to make a profit.

This makes it impossible in the long-term for private insurance companies to compete. So why then is my free enterprise insurance company going to finance me with funds that it holds in trust when it knows its likelihood of surviving in its present form is in very real jeopardy?

In other words, if I am a client, I want someone to advise me, be it in law or finance, marketing or advertising, who understands my real problems.

And if I am a client and I am looking at advertising agencies and my business is being destroyed by Government-caused inflation, itself primarily caused by excess public spending, then how do I feel if I see my advertising agency explaining the Trade Practices Act in a comic strip that suggests all retailers are basically conmen and crooks?

How do I feel if I see my advertising agency announcing “free” Medicare when I know that nothing is for nothing? That the only way it can be paid for is by taxation, inflation, or both.

When I know Medicare is unnecessary anyway because the average family in total last year spent less than $90 on all private medical care and got most back in medical benefits anyway?

Especially when the average family spent three times this much on every car for insurance alone. (Not taking into account running costs.) How come they need the Government to look after $90 a year? Surely anyone with an ounce of sense will know the service will now be over-used and cost at least five times as much as it did through taxation or inflation or both?

And further, when the pensioners and under-privileged already have their own medical service paid for by the Government?

How can my agency possibly run this campaign which is sympathetic of the welfare state that endangers my business, my industry and, as a consequence, Australia?

How can my agency possibly consider competing for the Labor Party account to help promote this Socialist Party back into power?

And when I hear a very reliable source tell me that the Government is now contemplating spending $2 million to tell people that inflation is good for them, I wonder if my agency will also be interested in perpetrating and propagating this fraud?

If they are indeed interested, I must ask myself whether they know what they are doing or whether they don’t?

If I think they really know what they are doing, then my decision is clear.

And if they are naive enough not to realise what they are doing, then my decision is equally clear.

And that decision, very simply, is that, as a client, I cannot afford to work with an adviser which is simultaneously helping to destroy me.

But then, as the lawyers say, that is only my opinion.