• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, January 3, 2019

As it does every year, in early December, Gallup randomly dialed 1,025 adults ages 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and asked them to “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields -- very high, high, average, low or very low?”

As per usual, advertising practitioners ranked fourth from the bottom -- just slightly ahead of telemarketers, car salespeople and the perpetually despised members of Congress. Since the chief executive was not a separate option, we’ll have to assume the basement-dwelling ranking of Congress is a proxy for the federal government in general (although The Hill tends to be poorly regarded no matter who is in the White House).

Nurses, doctors, pharmacists, high school teachers and the the police ranked highest in honesty and ethical standards, as they tend always to do -- although given the role that some pharmacists have played in the opioid crisis, and the tendency of cops to shoot anything that is black and moves, I would not have placed either so highly. Or if you have ever spent time in line at a CVS or a Walgreens waiting for a prescription, you would have grave doubts about the intellectual level of pharmacy workers in general. 

For the past few years, the ad professions have crept up the rankings ever so slightly, gaining a personage point or two annually. Yet there was no distinction made between, say, the CMO of a famous personal products company who rants endlessly about what a bunch of crooks ad guys are -- and the coders who install the ability of apps to secretly steal everything off your phone, including the plastic screen protector. 

So, if like me, you don’t give a crap about Ray Liotta’s struggles to stop smoking, you might tend to unfairly group ad spokespeople in with, say, the guy who tells Congress he had NO idea that his platform was selling user data to other companies, or the agency that green-lit Pepsi's Kendall Jenner protest ad. There is lots of disgust to go around.

Interestingly, stockbrokers and business executives rank only JUST above ad execs. So technically you are better off telling your kids you pump and dump penny stocks or closed your U.S. manufacturing plants because you can pay Mexicans 17 cents an hour — rather than fess up that you help serve the right ad, to the right person, at the right time.

One wonders if a different timing for the phone survey would help the ad business. What if the same questions were asked two days after the phantasmagoria of Super Bowl advertising? Or two days after the White House unveils a partnership with Truth Initiative and the Ad Council to fight the opioid epidemic -- with, ahem, ads?

Nobody seems to mind ads that encourage people not to drink and drive -- or back in the day, duck and cover (which could make a comeback given the course of U.S. foreign policy.) 

It would be helpful to know if the problem folks have with advertising  is pop-ups or Matthew McConaughey trying to sell cars. Surely no one questions the honesty or ethics of an end-aisle display that promote two-for-one. It HAS to be the nine ads in a row that have taken all pleasure out of network TV’s hour-long dramas.

One wonders whether Congressmen, telemarketers and car salespeople lose any sleep over being trusted even less than ad men. If they do, there are tons of ads recommending sleep aids -- courtesy of a higher-ranked profession.