We would very rarely come up against censorship laws these days. There was a time when the censor would have objected to something like, for example, the Guinness ad where a woman is sitting on the rocks at the edge of the sea being fed oysters by her male companion - quite an explicit ad. But that day is gone.
If the censor had ever objected to an ad we were involved with, we would have objected on the grounds that it is offensive to have anyone dictating to us in relation to sexual morality. In the past, the censor was often out of synch with societal values. Advertising, on the other hand, talks to a society and mirrors its beliefs - it is not in our interest to offend people in any way. We would do a sort of mental check list of material in terms of the wider audience, to ensure it was not offensive. Censorship, as it is commonly understood would almost never apply to us. Our constraints are less a consequence of a legal framework, more pragmatic considerations. Sometimes we would produce a piece of work which has an element of controversy. If members of the public found it objectionable, they could make a complaint to the Advertising Standard Authority. The authority would contact us and we would have the right to respond.
The council of the advertising authority considers the complaint and the nature of the response. It then has the power to either uphold or decline the complaint. If the council upholds the complaint, it has the moral power, as opposed to the legal power, to have the ad withdrawn. This is part of the industry's self-regulating procedure - it's not the law. This kind of thing can happen from time to time and, if the complaint is upheld, we would withdraw the ad. In relation to censorship and the law, the focus has shifted from sexual morality to material which could be considered offensive to minority groups or racist. Things have changed hugely. I'd find it hard to imagine an issue over which we'd find ourselves subject to censorship at this stage.
Alongside the changes in moral values, there have been wider societal changes which have impacted on advertising content. Advertising agencies themselves are more sensitive to the values of their target groups these days. There's been a lot of what you might call "growing up". And target groups have changed considerably over the years. Women, for example, have a lot more economic power than they had before. You would be designing advertising to appeal to people, not to offend them. It isn't in our interest to be objectionable. Violence is something that you wouldn't see cropping up a lot in advertising. But again, that is a sort of pragmatic censorship. Clients rarely seek to use violence as the creative territory of a campaign - simply because violence turns people off.
A long time ago I had an ad withdrawn. That was the days when feminism was at its most extreme and impinging on advertising. But we've all moved on now and we're more relaxed.
In an advertising agency, there just isn't any such thing as a typical day. I could be at back-to-back meetings all day, or I could be off to a quick meeting in Brussels, or I might be off to Australia planning production. Then again, I might be at my desk all day staring at the tyranny of the blank page - I'm also involved in copy-writing.
The best part about this job is the variety. You never know what you'll be working on - there's a fresh intellectual challenge each day. The worst part is research companies. We do up a dummy, they test it out on people, and we invariably end up having to change or dumb-down something really brilliant.
In an interview with Jackie Bourke
