10 years ago when I started my own agency, an account director mate left the industry to become a real-estate agent. I remember thinking it was the only place he could go that had a lower standard of trust than we advertising types. 

Last week he told me it was a great move financially, he reckons 99% of people in advertising are really smart, whereas he’s happy competing with the 99% of real estate agents he’s found to be really ordinary. If we are that smart, why can’t we lift our own profile, beyond the bottom of the heap for trusted professions?

Trust in advertising? This is not an oxymoron.

Unfortunately, the perception of our industry is on a par with used car salesmen, yet our legal obligations, indeed our personal liability, dictate our practices are squeaky-clean. 

In Australia, like most things, our industry is regulated and kept on the honest path by a series of laws and regulatory bodies. You wouldn’t know it. 

The 2011 senate inquiry into outdoor advertising standards found only 0.01% of ads were found to be bad, i.e. sexist, likely to offend or straight out untruthful. Yet when prompted on ABC radio, the senator leading the inquiry said that if we don’t clean up our act under self regulation, he’ll "pull out the big stick and regulate" us. 

Would you trust a politician to decide whether marketers are trustworthy? 

In Europe, clergy are experiencing a decline in confidence levels and politicians are in last place. Our peers don’t rate much better than we do here, with over half of Europeans surveyed* saying they don’t like journalists, marketing specialists or advertising experts.
*Source: GfK Trust Index in spring 2010 

I can understand why journalists are suddenly on the nose – the phone hacking scandal at Rupert's tabloid News of the World has in the words of one shareholders action group "laid bare a striking lack of stewardship and failure of independence." The board had been unable to set a "strong tone-at-the-top" about unethical business practices. 

Australians generally are a trusting lot. When it comes to believing what our fellow citizens say, Australia on a trust index score of 92 ranks ahead of the U.S. (78.8) and U.K (61), just behind New Zealand (102) and way behind China on 120.9. 

Source: ASEP/JDS data bank 2011

So where do Australia’s “ad people” sit on the trust index today?

Who we really trust is no real surprise:
1. Paramedics
2. Firefighters
3. Pilots
4. Rescue volunteers
5. Nurses

At the bottom of the pile are
41. Taxi drivers
42. Real estate agents
43. Car salesmen
44. Politicians
45. Tele-marketers

Source: Readers Digest Austrlalia’s most trusted professions poll 2011

Before you think ad madmen aren’t so bad after all, the only reason they’re not last on this list is because they aren’t included in the survey. Tele-marketers are the closest category, so let’s just accept advertising and marketing guys are way down there. How did we end up down at the bottom with pollies, and what do we need to do to elevate our role to a similar level of respect as other service providers like engineers, doctors and architects?

Advertising first took off in America in 1800s when snake oil makers discovered the return on investment of promoting something of little value with amazing claims in the press. In Australia last year the most damage to our credibility was the public complaints about the posters advertising Advanced Medical Institute’s cure for under performance in bed. It was bad enough they were bad ads, the real breach of trust was the pitch was a fraud. Most of those with a desire to last longer in bed were overcharged for a treatment that generally didn’t deliver on the promise.

As a professional I feel we would be better off refusing to work for these types of people. It didn’t harm Bill Bernbach’s career when he told prospects he wouldn’t accept their business if their product didn’t live up to his standards.

(Glenn Mabbott would like to declare his interest as a sitting member of The Communications Council’s Policy Committee, which aims to raise industry standards through the Accreditation Scheme. UNOmarcomms was one of the first independent agencies in Australia to gain accreditation.)