I should have titled this series, Why Advertising Is Failing. 

The final post in this series has to do with way the differences in the last post play out. Those who are low in tolerance for ambiguity, high in sensitivity to disgust, and tend to view the world as an unsafe place tend to be conservatives. They tend to dominate the general population.* 

Liberals are the opposite. If you’re reading this, you’re likely to be liberal because most advertising professionals are (this last sentence is a finding of the research quoted last week from England, but it feels true to me here in the U.S. as well). And liberals find it harder to appreciate others than the vice versa.*

Conservatives give even levels of importance to each of the moral foundations, while liberals skew dramatically to two of them. Take this test, and see if you can figure out which way liberals skew:

If you’re like most of the industry and are liberal, and your moral foundations skew this way, then you aren’t able to hear what people unlike you are saying. You just can’t. Even with the education I gave you in the last few blog posts, that’s probably not enough. You need help. You need an intervention! And I can help.

Until the industry as a whole has an intervention, advertising will continue to be disconnected from the rest of society, and, frankly, it just won’t work very well.

I’m doing an intervention next weekend in Indiana with a workshop called Persuade, Don’t Preach.  Contact me to find out how I can do one for you.

I should have titled this series, Why Advertising Is Failing. 

The final post in this series has to do with way the differences in the last post play out. Those who are low in tolerance for ambiguity, high in sensitivity to disgust, and tend to view the world as an unsafe place tend to be conservatives. They tend to dominate the general population.* 

Liberals are the opposite. If you’re reading this, you’re likely to be liberal because most advertising professionals are (this last sentence is a finding of the research quoted last week from England, but it feels true to me here in the U.S. as well). And liberals find it harder to appreciate others than the vice versa.*

Conservatives give even levels of importance to each of the moral foundations, while liberals skew dramatically to two of them. Take this test, and see if you can figure out which way liberals skew:

If you’re like most of the industry and are liberal, and your moral foundations skew this way, then you aren’t able to hear what people unlike you are saying. You just can’t. Even with the education I gave you in the last few blog posts, that’s probably not enough. You need help. You need an intervention! And I can help.

Until the industry as a whole has an intervention, advertising will continue to be disconnected from the rest of society, and, frankly, it just won’t work very well.

I’m doing an intervention next weekend in Indiana with a workshop called Persuade, Don’t Preach.  Contact me to find out how I can do one for you.

*Source:  Haidt, Righteous Mind.