Steve Harrison
Advertising, politics and the damage done by Social Purpose
Summary
For over a decade the industry has been dominated by Left-leaning activists and careerists who have set the agenda, framed the arguments and ensured everything is seen through their Progressive Gaze.
The impact has been disastrous. And the greatest damage has come from the obsession with Social Purpose.
Around 2012, the industry lost interest in stoking capitalism’s engines of growth and consumerism. Suddenly we had a new raison d’etre: we were saving the world.
With it came a new definition of creative excellence.
No longer were the judges at D&AD and Cannes interested in the brilliance of the idea and craft. The emphasis was now upon work that reflected the Progressive values of the people who ran those organisations.
And it seemed that everybody had shared that blinkered view: clients like Unilever and P&G, WPP, Omnicom and the other big holding companies and, of course, the trend-following left-leaning trade press. Indeed, as UK’s Campaign magazine explained: “There’s no merit in profit without purpose”.
At the 2020 peak of this collective madness, only a handful of people dared question the groupthink. But then, suddenly, commercial reality reasserted itself.
Biography
Steve Harrison was the European Creative Director at OgilvyOne and the Global Creative Director at Wunderman either side of founding his own agency, HTW.
In his 6 years there, he won more Cannes Lions in his discipline than any other creative director in the world. And he did it for such blue chip businesses as Vodafone, IBM, Xerox (yes, Xerox!), Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, Star Alliance, M&G Investments and Microsoft.
On quitting agency life, he wrote "How to do better creative work", which became the most expensive advertising book of all time when it traded on amazon.com at over £3,000 a copy. He was also featured in The D&AD Copy Book which celebrates the work of the world's top 50 copywriters of the past 50 years. He then explained how to do it in "How to write better copy".
His writings continued with two celebrations of the pioneering American copywriter, Howard Gossage.
But, most importantly, he has also produced two highly controversial books: Can't Sell, Won't Sell - Why Adland Stopped Selling and Started Saving the World" (2020) and Adland's Progressive Gaze - How the Advertising Industry Lost Sight of the People and Things that Matter Most (2026).
Both are very critical of the Left-leaning politicisation of the Advertising industry and its devastating effect upon our strategic advice, our creative work, our relationships with our clients, our internal morale and our relevance to the broader buying public.
Dave Trott says, they provide "a very thorough analysis of how we got into the mess we're in."
While Bob Hofmann writes, "They're "gonna piss off a lot of very self-important people, But, for my money, that's the only proper reason for writing a book. Congrats!"
Chances are, Steve will be pissing off a few more self-important people at BAM this December