Advocacy Advertising: A Novel Communications Approach to Building Effective Relations with External Constituencies

Abstract

Since the oil crisis of 1972–73 when the oil companies in America and the UK first introduced sustained advocacy advertising campaigns to explain to a hostile public the simultaneous rise in oil prices and company profits, advocacy advertising has come of age, used not only by large corporations but by trade unions, interest groups, religious organizations, government agencies and political candidates. Advocacy advertising enables the sponsor to put forward his point of view, in a controlled context, targeted at key audiences. However, without sufficient philosophical underpinning and commitment, such partisan, single-issue-orientated campaigns are all too often confined to what the sponsor wants the world to hear, rather than what the world wants the sponsor to talk about. On these grounds, such campaigns may ultimately prove counterproductive.