This pretty much jams every conflicting emotion we’ve ever had into a single 3-minute clip.

Craig Ferguson delivers an amusing, well-written tirade with some important points. Yes: youth is unfairly celebrated. Yes: it’s because of consumerism. Yes: Madison Avenue was responsible for this perverse development – at least in part.

But cultures can change, can’t they? Aren’t we on the brink of a major shift? Isn’t there an increase happening in our mass consciousness level? Aren’t there fewer people celebrating the meaningless things in life, and more people seeking real connections?

If you have a conscience, chances are you wrestle with your own hypocrisy every day – whether you’re a lawyer, marketer, mechanic or bartender. We all strive to help others, but also to survive. To be honest with everyone, but also to self-promote. No successful American business exists outside of the capitalist system.

Despite everything, we are eternal optimists here at A&B. We believe:

• Marketing need not be the evil that fuels the ugly, self-destructive beast known as the American consumerist economy.
• Marketing, if properly executed, can help to encourage and promote new, more conscientious forms of doing business.
• These new forms of business can benefit more people, and harm fewer.
• If marketing could create a major culture shift in the 50s, it stands to reason it can do it again.

Maybe that’s a tall order. We’d have to start putting other things before our own profits, which we Americans have never been good at. But it doesn’t need to happen overnight. It may be difficult for us to adopt a “first do no harm” philosophy in advertising, but can’t we at least strive for a “first do as little harm as possible” scenario?

What do you think? Is it inevitable that society will go completely down the toilet (and did the marketing industry flush the lever back in 1952)? Or is conscience becoming cool enough now that marketing can take a leadership role in shifting society’s focus toward a new capitalism – one that isn’t so self-destructive?

Via Agency Spy.

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