A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece making not-very-complimentary remarks about the big banks’ advertising. To my surprise, readers’ comments were equally uncomplimentary – about my piece.

One or two accused me of using the piece to tout for new business for my agency. Unfortunately, criticising people’s existing advertising campaigns is the worst possible way to do this: it just makes them angry and defensive. If I wanted to tout for new business, I can think of several thousand better ways to go about it.

The others, to paraphrase them, said they were entirely impervious to all advertising, had never in any way been influenced by it and couldn’t care less what the banks or anyone else do with it.

People say this all the time – it is, for example, a routine part of any advertising-related focus groups. Of course it’s completely and obviously untrue. 

Have these people never referred to an advertisement to find out what’s on at the cinema?  Have they never bought a cheap flight, or gone to a shop while a sale’s on, as a result of seeing an ad? Have they never called an estate agent after seeing a property ad? Have they never been attracted to a savings account by an ad featuring an interest rate?

I suppose it’s possible that for some strange reason, a few people may choose not to be informed or guided in any way by advertising. But such people are very, very few and far between.

So why do so many people – including those commenting so vehemently on last week’s piece – deny that advertising ever influences them?

I think the reason is that at some stage in their lives, they’ve come to think of advertising as an evil hypnotic power, forcing weak and spineless people to buy things they don’t really want and do things they wouldn’t normally do. In saying they’re immune to it, they’re actually congratulating themselves on their strength of character: none of your jingles and slogans will send me off to the shops like some sort of feeble-minded zombie.