Editorial: Let's have more wit and less splatter

Advertising is the ogre of modern life according to those vocal activists who write books and carry placards against globalisation.

Advertising, in their view, is the dark art that convinces humankind to desire things it does not need, consume for the sake of it, waste resources, despoil the environment, exploit the Third World, sustain capitalism and create a society that puts materialism ahead of culture and community, ensuring nobody is content with their lot and everybody is unhappy in the long run.

Those who compile this indictment would ban advertising given the chance, but only commercial advertising - the kind that commonly tries to associate a brand with some pleasant image or enjoyable activity that might catch the attention of the voluntary consumers of goods and services.

They apparently have no objection to that other type of advertisement, the public service message designed to shock and cause revulsion.

A number of such productions have been sponsored lately by the ACC, evidently to mark its 30 birthday. Television viewers have been treated to people falling down stairs and off ladders, all the way to their landing, spreadeagled if not splattered.

Newspapers have carried full-page spreads of stitched heads and other gruesome sights. Sometimes they so test the boundaries of taste that they would risk rejection by the publication were they not issued in the name of public interest.

It is hard to know how effective these shock tactics have been. The messages no doubt horrify some people but they are probably the sort of people least likely to need the message.

The converse also holds. The young and careless are more likely to watch depictions of reckless driving with reactions ranging from morbid curiosity to wide-eyed enjoyment.

Not so long ago the Land Transport Safety Authority put on screen some make-believe footage of vehicles running intersections and knocking people down.

It was sickening to many but probably not to those who attend splatter movies for fun.

The LTSA has led the way in graphic depictions of blood and gore but seems to have turned away from the genre of late.

The authority's best messages are those that show the typical attitudes and behaviour that lead to road disaster, rather than dwelling on the carnage.

Its advertisements have been good at challenging destructive behaviour ("If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot") and they are trying now to glamorise sensible habits.

Let's hope the ACC follows suit. Reliance on shock value alone is a fearful treadmill; each advertising campaign must be more distasteful than the last if it is to have the desired impact on numbed public sensibilities.

There is a Catch 22 in offensive public service material that makes it difficult to press a complaint. A complaint about a public service advertisement is cited as evidence the message has succeeded in its intended purpose - to attracted attention and generate discussion.

A controversial commercial advertisement might offer the same justification, but quietly, to its client.

The public climate is so censorious these days that commercial material which challenges accepted sensibilities in the way that state agencies do tends to disappear at the first whiff of controversy.

Toyota's "bugger" was an exception but it survived on good humour.

Another challenging message which deserves to succeed on humour is the billboard newly erected by the Auckland business group Heart of the City in protest at the rates to be charged by the Auckland Regional Council on commercial properties.

"Shove your 50 per cent rates increase up your ARC," says the hoarding against a skyline of towers that represent the one-fingered salute.

Offensive? Hopefully to the council members in the building opposite. Tolerable? Certainly. If only all public notices were delivered with less laboured horror and more wit.