People in advertising say different things regarding the purpose of advertising and I guess that what they say is not even that important as long as what they do makes their clients happy.

Still, I recently heard an idea coming from an advertising executive of a global communications agency according to which advertising is persuasion and not selling. For those of you who didn’t really catch the last few words, the guy said that advertising is not selling.

Of course, I am no one yet in the world of advertising, but that doesn’t mean I cannot question such a fundamental concept. Surely, advertising is persuasion. But what do you persuade people to do through advertising? You persuade them to like and eventually buy your product. I personally believe that persuasion, along with the informative aspect of advertising, is just a part of the main and utmost important purpose of advertising: to sell products, services, ideas and so on.

However, the ad exec argues that persuasion is the ultimate purpose of advertising and that advertising is not about selling. I would like to highlight the fact that I do not reject the idea that advertising is persuasion. I do, nonetheless, reject the idea that advertising is not selling. Picture this: you see a TV commercial for product Whatever. The ad tells you how great product Whatever is for you and you believe it. The ad therefore persuades you to believe that the product is great. This means that the purpose of advertising has already been achieved. But you’re still sitting on that sofa and Whatever’s sales don’t grow just because you liked the ad or because it persuaded you to have a positive attitude towards the product. In fact, the ad you just watched is probably part of a several million-pound campaign – paid for, of course, by the advertiser. Paying millions of pounds for someone sitting on a sofa to like the product is no good unless people stand up and go and buy that product.

Therefore, I believe that while persuasion should be acknowledged as a major purpose of advertising, dismissing the fact that advertising is about selling may be a brutal understatement. Not to mention a much too romantic approach to advertising. Alastair Crompton put it better: ‘Realize that your function [as an agency] is to get people to spend, and help your client to earn his living and keep his factories busy and his employees rich.’

Who do you agree with – Mr No One Yet or Mr Advertising Executive?