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How much attention has $529 billion of advertising bought? Most people encounter several thousand advertisements daily now … Thor May
Preface: This is a discussion paper, not a researched academic document. The reading list at the end is mostly a collection of contemporary links from the Internet and pretty accidental, not edited for quality. Where a topic is of broad general interest comes up with friends, I have adopted the practice of posting discussion starters like the present one on Academia.edu in the hope that others might also find them worth thinking about.
1. Advertising and its elusive parent,
Marketing
An advertisement makes known that a product or
service is available, usually at a certain price (but sometimes free). People
may seek out advertisements to discover what the market has to offer by way
of products or services they desire. Advertising can thus provide a very
useful, or even essential service by linking those with a need to those with
something to offer. When there is more on offer than people feel or
imagine they need, then some of those wishing to sell are going to lose. Sellers
are thus motivated to either present their product in a form more attractive
than those of competitors, or to manipulate buyers into believing that they
have a new “need”. In either case, the process of pushing indifferent or
previously unwanted products onto buyers can be called marketing. Marketing
by way of advertising is a huge enterprise with a worldwide budget in 2015 of
$529 billion, according to Wikipedia 2015. However, to keep this money in
perspective: The
share of advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large
changes in media since 1925. In 1925, the main advertising media in America
were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters.
Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998,
television and radio had become major advertising media. Nonetheless,
advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower – about 2.4
percent [Wikipedia 2015] Of course, GDPs themselves have grown enormously since 1925, and the sorts of activities the term "GDP" encompasses has diversified hugely, so comparisons are difficult. Marketing effects now also take many indirect forms which will not be quantified officially, and sometimes may not have been envisaged by the seller. Take for example, this remark from a friend:
The Internet has indeed changed the paradigms of marketing and advertising in many unexpected ways. There is often a dialectic between marketers and customers, and among customers, which would have been unthinkable in 1925, save in face to face retailing encounters. The market for goods and services has fragmented in the dimensions of both demand and supply. On the Internet interest groups of remotely located individuals coalesce rapidly in forums and social activity groups. Each of these groups constitute a nascent niche market which might persist, or be gone tomorrow. On the supply side, if I want for example, an after-market car part, I might go to eBay.com and find fifty retailers selling the same thing, some major corporations, others back-yard drop shippers making a few dollars on the side. Their assembly onto an eBay web page in itself constitutes a type of spontaneous advertising determined by my Internet search term. 2. Truth in marketing
The initial phase of
marketing is the process of persuading large numbers of people that they have
an urgent problem which perhaps they never knew they had, then offering them
a solution uniquely available from the advertiser for a price. The mental universe cultivated by marketers is
thus rather different from the mindset which leads to invention. The inventor
becomes alert to the technical limitations of a culture, lifestyle or
activity and sets out to find a solution to each issue through an act of
unique creation. A marketer creates nothing except a persuasive argument
that an existing solution is desirable and worth spending money on. The
inventor cares for the elegance and efficiency of his creation. The
marketer’s attachment to a product is purely promiscuous and dependent upon
where profit lies. Advertising of one kind or another has probably
existed since the dawn of civilization. In many environments it may have been
fairly insignificant, but from the time that mothers wanted to marry their
daughter into a desirable family, or farmers wanted to sell a cow, some means
would have been found to promote the desired transaction.
Marketing as a
deliberate, sustained and organized process of marshalling populations into a
cycle of consumption spending and debt seems to have only really evolved as
the economic engine of economies since the industrial revolution. The
intensity and sophistication of marketing has become so intrusive that it
sometimes threatens the integrity of communities. If the minds of more
credulous consumers are entirely occupied with the messages of commercial
marketing, then they lose much of their capacity for independent judgement
and become easily manipulated.
Whereas advertising the simple availability of a product may deal with an unvarnished truth, marketing an unnecessary product immediately tempts the marketeer to use tools of exaggeration, illusion, sensual association and the manipulation of a potential buyer’s hopes and insecurities. That is, marketing by its nature is drawn to the borderline of untruth. It is therefore predictable that people a society who are saturated in the daily half truths of an advertising tsunami will eventually give up the struggle to separate fact from fiction. It becomes more comfortable to accept instant gratification wrapped in the bright colours of advertising heaven than to spoil the party with hard questions. 3. Would a world without marketing lead to a
better class of human being? These notes have already suggested that a world
without advertising of any kind is scarcely credible. A world without
marketing is a somewhat different concept since marketing implies promoting
products and services beyond merely notifying the public that they are
available. The total marketing cycle for a product, whether it be a
refrigerator or a political candidate, will often give attention to features
like quality and reliability since customer loyalty is important. The outcome
of such a process can be very positive insofar as it genuinely raises the
quality of what is available in the marketplace. For example there is a very
good argument that the competitive marketing in consumer capitalist economies
has indeed led to greatly improved products and hence an improved overall
quality of life, as compared to the drab and incompetent environments found
in earlier communist dictatorships which discounted the role of marketing
altogether. A less desirable aspect of marketing is
the attention it demands from time poor likely customers who should have
better things to think about. Marketing can be minimal or it can be a full
frontal media assault on potential customers to seduce them into a course of
action. In other words, judgements about both advertising and marketing are
not about all or nothing environments. It takes all kinds of people to make
the world go around. Some are happy to live as hermits on a mountain top.
Others feel naked or afraid if their houses are not permanently enveloped in
an electronic soup of loud commercial radio and television marketing.
The past, golden age or not, is past. What
about the future? In our normal opinions and calculations about human nature
we take it as axiomatic that “people don’t really change”. For those who wish
to manipulate others for profit, power, lust or whatever, it simplifies
matters to have a static mental model of the human circus and plan
accordingly. According to our personal powers of psychological insight and
empathy, these mental models can lead us to advantage or grief. For the
marketer, such insight is critical to profit. Nobody has yet invented a pill to cure
stupidity, and customer stupidity is the greatest of all gifts to marketing.
On any given matter, perhaps half of any population seem pliable idiots to
those who wish to direct them in a different direction. The challenge is that
different people at different times on different matters make up that
valuable population of idiots. On a grand scale, expanding the population of
idiocy might seem a boon to consumer marketing. Subjectively, some of us do
have a sense from time to time that there is a grand conspiracy to dumb down
the population of this country or that, mostly by politicians who think that
dumb voters are easier to manipulate, but also by “the big end of town”, the
plutocrats, oligarchs and rent-seekers who see “the masses” as both a fickle
source of income and something to be feared. There is another view of future populations
which might not be so sympathetic to manipulative marketing. Humans are
evolving. Like the hands on an analogue clock, this is hard to see on casual
inspection, but the effect over time may well be seismic (e.g. see Miles 2015
in the reading list below). Your average dictator or vacuum cleaner
salesman is going to give short shrift to this kind of speculation.
Nevertheless, just as marketing itself has played a large part in
transforming the kind of world we live in within the brief span of a few
generations, the rapid evolution and alteration of humans themselves could
have a large effect in the near future on forms of marketing. To take a crude
example, implanted sensor technology is in its infancy, but being intensively
researched. At this moment on my wrist I have a thing called a Fitbit Charge
HR which tracks several elements of my physical state in the cloud. It is
telling me that my heart rate now is 59 BPM, and that I have taken 5493 steps
so far today (it’s time to go out for another run..). In a few short years,
sensors will be keeping an objective record of many facets of my internal
chemistry, from food processing to energy levels, to mood, to concentration,
and so on. This knowledge is already available to me in a vague, subjective
way. When it is objectively available to me and other parties, the whole
condition of living will be altered in fundamental ways. When you, the marketer, tell me to put some
sweet gunk in my mouth, sensors will track the chemical outcomes which will
go directly to a data bank somewhere … and, hey, you will be accountable.
This is something like a metaphor for the Volkswagen automotive company which
having encrusted its diesel engines with sensors, tried to game the emissions
records for a decade but now (2015) faces maybe $80 billion in fines and other
losses due to incriminating data. 4. Are we programmed from childhood to accept
or reject marketing? One thing we do know is that the enculturation of children into a certain level of consumerist (i.e. market
Thus, given these examples of low receptivity
to marketing in some cultural groups and individuals, it is legitimate to ask
whether marketing sensitivity can be calibrated in the process of child
upbringing in principle, whether anything can be done about it as a practical
goal, and if so, what might be the optimum level of consumerist habits to aim
for. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for a consensus of view on this
though!). 5. When does a party political agenda become
political marketing? In a representative democracy, we are entitled
to ask what our representatives are aiming to achieve, and their proposed
methods of getting there. However, the reality is that the vast majority of
people care only about very narrow personal interests, have a very poor
knowledge of public affairs, and almost no idea of effective processes of
public administration. They will be indignant if these shortcomings are put
to them, but immediately fall back on vague general opinion rather than facts
if tested in any way. For those in government, mass public ignorance
is both an opportunity to pursue hidden agendas, and an exasperating
limitation on informed public discourse. The politician’s contempt for
uninformed public opinion can be fatal to political ambition, so political
advertising treads a narrow and shifting path in a field where the
distinction between public service and public deception is often unclear. All governments now spend large amounts of
public money on so-called public relations and information departments.
Ideally, this sort of thing should be advertising in the simplest sense of
making known a service in the most neutral way possible. Unfortunately, the
political world doesn’t work that way. A certain amount of this information output can
be genuinely useful and necessary – bus timetables, health information, maybe
laws pertaining to setting up a small business. Some of the information can
be bland and meaningless, such as departmental mission statements. For the
very opposite of advertising, Freedom of Information Laws are needed when
public officials resist public disclosure. FOI laws are universally hated by
public officials and curtailed by governments whenever possible under
pretexts of security.
Just as poor marketing can lead to the demise
of a business, poor
6. Money,
marketing and other social binders When I taught in Papua New Guinea in the 1980s, highland
tribes were still going to war on an annual basis. They were “little wars” the kind where you have a ritual fight with neighbouring tribes and go home
for lunch. With stone age weapons, not to many people got hurt (though
nowadays heavy weapons are smuggled from Indonesia across the Irian Jaya
border). What was the point of these wars? In important ways they were identity wars, of defining a home
group against outsiders, and establishing the status of home group members.
As my university students would explain to me when they turned up to class
with broken arms and bandaged heads, “If I don’t fight for the tribe, no
woman will marry me and I will lose all my land rights”. Well, if you think about it, maybe not so much has changed in
the underlying psychology of citizens in so-called advanced economies from
the more elemental organization of tribal societies. The mechanisms for
establishing order and identity however have multiplied. Take money. Money is not merely a medium of exchange and
store of value. Money is a proxy for defining insiders from outsiders, and
ordering the status of insiders. The prospect of money or its loss settles
disputes and enforces tolerance where no other natural affinity exists. It is
interesting that Abrahamic religions gave little rhetorical credit to this
beneficial function of money (though the enthusiasts for all kinds of
religions have frequently succumbed to opportunities for wealth ). The
medieval biblical cliché in feudal Europe was that “money is the root of all
evil” while God, in competition, was the source of all virtue. This was
wonderful for keeping the peasants in their place. Now most of us live in a
variety intersecting and fast moving orbits (roles) which could scarcely
exist without the mediation of money. The mother at the school fete may be a businesswoman
wearing another hat, a shopper, the wife of an executive, an environmental
activist, the member of a gym group … and so on. She will encounter all kinds
of people whom she might or might not like, might or might not trust, but be
able transact exchanges with them on a basis of mutual advantage, typically
mediated by money. Without the money, little of this would happen. Money is
an essential catalyst for both good and evil. Yet money alone is not
sufficient for our new, complex ecology of survival. The other indispensable
ingredient is information. 7. Marketing as a
dynamic force behind information spread It is through information that we know someone has
something to sell or to share, and that other people want to buy, or be
associated with a transaction (social or commercial). Information is the transmission vehicle, usually coded in language, images
or sound, between our mind, our inner
world, and the world of other people and objects. There is a problem with this. Our individual
capacity to absorb information and do something about it is limited. In self
defence, we set up barriers to censor incoming information. The more complex
our external environment becomes, the more complicated are the barriers we
establish to filter information and disregard perceived unnecessary
information. Every teacher, for example, is familiar with the personal
barriers which students consciously or unconsciously erect against being
influenced by new information. Enter marketing, which at street level typically
takes the form of advertising. If the description just given is realistic, advertising seems to be an essential component of the civilization we take part in. Advertising is the professional push, the dynamic external force, used to access our awareness, then encourage our participation in economic, political and social activity. A formal description could be that:
Marketing, mostly in the form of advertising, channels
the attention and actions of tens of millions of people into common
participation. Where that mass participation involves spending money, then
industries with successful marketing campaigns are the ones which survive in
the marketplace, and in doing so shape the kind of society in which we live.
None of this is to say that the industries (or politicians) who prevail in
the contest of marketing actually have the best products, or even have
socially beneficial products. The opposite may be true. That is, the
marketplace is apparently quite amoral. 8. Can marketing,
especially advertising, have a moral dimension? We have just observed that morality need play no part in
successfully marketing many kinds of information and hence selling many kinds
of products. Both the good guys and the bad guys have always been aware of
this. However, they have also known that once a worldview, or even a brand
name, has been successfully promoted, then it acquires a “stickiness”. Wasn’t
it Cardinal Wolsey (1473-1530), England’s most ruthless and successful court
intriguer of his age, who observed “..be
very, very careful what you put into those heads, because once it is in
there, you will never ever get it out again..”. Dictators, like England’s
Henry VIII of Wolsey’s time, may have a fairly free choice about what they “put
into those heads” on any given day. The smartest of them also understand though
that selling the wrong products or policies in unethical ways may well come
back to give them grief in the future. There is a good argument that social morality in the long
term is a set of behaviours which make it possible for the largest number of
people to live together productively in relative harmony. If this is true, then
the violation of such a morality (whatever its expression) in the long term
at least should lead to social and political breakdown. Certainly history is
replete with tales of immoral and amoral kings/dictators/governments coming
to bad ends (not that everyone believes such tales). For the reasons just
outlined, both companies and governments usually try to frame whatever they
are trying to promote I terms of some ethical standard. Even the ideologies
of Hitler’s 3rd Reich, or Stalin’s version of Communism, or Mao
Zedong’s version of Communism, first tried to frame definitions of what was “good”
and “bad”, then promote policies by those metrics. That tens of millions of
people died unnatural deaths as a consequence of these promotions does not
alter the general paradigm used to persuade large numbers of people to act in
a certain way. Representative
governments, such as those found in so-called Western democracies, are not primarily
about giving populations a choice among candidates promising this or that
(both the voters and the candidates are frequently poorly informed). Rather
free elections give these populations a chance to pass judgement upon what
has been sold to them by incumbent governments. This is rather like a
customer evaluating an insurance policy or a refrigerator he bought three
years ago and deciding whether to become a repeat customer. In both cases,
some standard of honesty in marketing is likely to be beneficial to the
seller, whether a politician or a businessman. At the commercial level, it is
a feature of advanced economies that their governments usually have detailed
regulations and guidelines for the ethical conduct of business, such as
Australia’s ACC “Advertising and Selling Guide”, which is backed by
enforceable regulations. Even if reality never quite meets the stated
intentions of such guidance, it’s very existence sets a standard which is in
the best long term interests of both sellers and buyers. 9. How much advertising is too much advertising? This paper has mostly argued
that marketing, and advertising in particular, has a beneficial role to play
in making possible and shaping the kind of society we live in. Lots of us
might feel though that several thousand advertisements every day, in many
guises, is too much of a good thing. There comes a breakpoint for managing
the spam emails, ignoring the bill boards, tuning out from the honeyed voice
of a TV saleslady … a point where our own energy to resist is being hijacked
in unproductive ways. Some of us switch off reflexively from anything that
looks like an advertisement, even if it may have been of some value to us.
Under such conditions, the whole enterprise of advertising becomes a process
of diminishing returns for both the advertisers and the targeted customers. Can the gross quantity
of information-cum-advertising impinging upon our lives be regulated in some
way? The possibility of such regulation seems unlikely at a mass societal
level, short of the kind of lockdown that occurred in 20th Century
experiments with Communism. Even in those cases, commercial advertising was
replaced with political advertising of the most intrusive kind, propaganda,
which in the end probably did more than anything else to turn whole
populations off the notion of totalitarian states. More and more modern
states are defined less by homogeneity than by a collage of communities
sharing common spaces. The values, beliefs and preferences of these
communities (which may intersect even within single families) vary
dramatically. These differences extend to the kind and volume of advertising
they find acceptable. As mentioned earlier, there are large groupings, such
as East and West Germany, which do show big overall differences in
susceptibility to marketing, but for any particular company hoping to sell a
product, their market research will show up a myriad of subcultures within,
say, both East and West Germany. 10. Conclusions Some conclusions from
this brief review seem to be : a) that a world without
marketing, and hence advertising would be a world that we would not recognize
and probably would not want; b) broad controls for
fairness in marketing can be imposed by a referee between buyers and sellers,
but compliance will always be fuzzy around the edges; c) mass marketing,
hence mass advertising, is likely to alienate significant numbers of people
who are hostile or indifferent to the message. This becomes particularly
noticeable with mass political advertising; d) as preferences
become more sophisticated, niche marketing and hence niche advertising looks
to be the most rewarding option for those with something to sell. However
niche marketing itself requires sophisticated research, and always carries
the risk of further alienating those inherently opposed to a particular
product (e.g. think Oil Majors Vs Environmentalists); e) As the sheer volume
of marketing directed at individuals dials up, in the end it is only those
individuals who can monitor or exclude the kind of advertising they dislike.
This puts the less competent members of any society at an immediate
disadvantage, but there are limits to how far they can be protected. __________________________________________________________ Reading List* (other suggestions welcome)
Australian
Government (2015) "Advertising and Selling Guide". ACC (Australian
Competition and Consumer Commission) online @ http://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/722_Advertising%20and%20selling_FA_2015.pdf Is Marketing Even Necessary in Online Banking?” Monetate website, online @ http://www.monetate.com/blog/is-marketing-even-necessary-in-online-banking/ Cain,
Alexandra (February 20, 2015) "The problem with ad agencies".
Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/small-business/trends/the-big-idea/the-problem-with-ad-agencies-20150220-13fpwc.html
Connolly, Kate (3 October 2015)
“German reunification 25 years
on: how different are east and west really? After two
and a half decades of growing back together, huge gaps remain between the two
former halves”. [A really interesting account of how the brains of
otherwise similar populations can resist re-programming to a different
economic model, including the acceptance of marketing. Read the comments
too]. The Guardian online @ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/german-reunification-25-years-on-how-different-are-east-and-west-really Cotton,
Stan (3 June 2003) “Life without advertising”. [witty piece] Boca Raton News
(imaged newspaper) online @ https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1291&dat=20030603&id=lM8PAAAAIBAJ&sjid= Courtenay, Adam (February 11, 2014) "Yes, Big Brother is watching". Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/small-business/franchising/yes-big-brother-is-watching-20140207-325ln.html#ixzz2syDqhHfa
Fenton, Jacob (Dec. 18, 2013) "Political advertisers and TV stations ignore disclosure rules". Sunlight Foundation (US), online @ http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/12/18/political-advertisers-and-tv-stations-ignore-disclosure-rules/
Francis, Hanah (January 28, 2015) "Meet Criteo, the company behind some of the ads that stalk you online?". Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/meet-criteo-the-company-behind-some-of-the-ads-that-stalk-you-online-20150128-12w20e.html
Graff, Andrew (11/04/2014) "Inventiveness Is the New Creativity". Huffington Post online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-graff/inventiveness-is-the-new-innovation_b_5120893.html?ir=Australia
Hacker News (2015) “Ask HN: Is marketing really necessary?” [recommended: sensible comments] Hacker News forum, online @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9361246
Kelly, Nichole (August 12, 2014) “Can marketers tell the difference between lies and truth? Or are we so trained in lying that we don’t even see it?” https://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/digital-marketing/can-marketers-tell-the-difference-between-lies-and-truth/
Ma,Alexandra (2 October 2015) "China Just Opened A Communist Party Theme Park - It aims to highlight important facets of Communist Party history and outstanding Communist deeds". [political marketing, Chinese style] The Huffington Post online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/china-communist-party-theme-park_560d4103e4b0dd85030aeae5?utm_hp_ref=world§ion=australia&adsSiteOverride=au
May, Thor (1998) ""Finding Truth: The Human Mind as an Error-Checking Mechanism". Academia.edu online @ http://www.academia.edu/2291932/Finding_Truth_The_Human_Mind_as_an_Error-Checking_Mechanism [PDF] or http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/errorcheck.html [HTML]
Mason, Max (June 15 2016) "Advertising boosts Australian economy by $40b, Deloitte Access Economics says ". Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/the-economy/advertising-boosts-australian-economy-by-40b-deloitte-access-economics-says-20160614-gpj6y1.html
Miles, Kathleen (1 October 2015) "Ray Kurzweil: Nanobots In Our Brains Will Make Us 'Godlike'. Once we're cyborgs, he says, we'll be funnier, sexier and more loving". [.. how will marketing change when we shortly become different creatures?] Huffington Post online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/ray-kurzweil-nanobots-brain-godlike_560555a0e4b0af3706dbe1e2?utm_hp_ref=world§ion=australia&adsSiteOverride=au
Mitchell, Harold (September 19, 2015) "Advertising drives the nation's true sport ". Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/advertising-drives-the-nations-true-sport-20150918-gjpj37.html
Naughton, John (27 September 2015) "The rise of ad-blocking could herald the end of the free internet". The Guardian online @ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/27/ad-blocking-herald-end-of-free-internet-ios9-apple
Power Cube (2015) “Gramsci and Hegemony”. Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK website online @ http://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/gramsci-and-hegemony/
Remeikis, Amy (April 30, 2015) "LNP's Strong Choices cost more than $70 million". Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/lnps-strong-choices-cost-more-than-70-million-20150430-1mwrlf.html#ixzz3nZwJ93Cd Sandeen, Peter (n.d.) “7 Common Marketing Lies and
How to Spot Lying Marketers”. Peter Sandeen marketing blog, online @ http://www.petersandeen.com/marketing-lies/
Sydney
Morning Herald (January 3, 1900). Cigar advertisement. Google newspaper
archive online @ https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=lL5f5cZgq8MC&dat=19000103&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
Tomlinson,
Chris (October 8, 2015) "The truth about corporate ethics is still out
there". Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/markets/the-truth-about-corporate-ethics-is-still-out-there-20151008-gk40tf.html
Walker-Smith, Jay (19 March 2014) "How many ads do we see a day? Do you remember any?". UNO website (Sydney marketing agency), online @ http://unomarcomms.com/our-insights/glenn/how-many-ads-do-we-see-day-do-you-remember/
Weissmann, Jordan (Jun 19, 2014) "What's the real value of online ads? Maybe not much". New Zealand Herald online @ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11277407
Wikipedia (2015) “Advertising”. Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising
Wikipedia (2015) “Attack Ad”. Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_ad
Professional bio: Thor May has a core professional interest in cognitive linguistics, at which he has rarely succeeded in making a living. He has also, perhaps fatally in a career sense, cultivated an interest in how things work – people, brains, systems, countries, machines, whatever… In the world of daily employment he has mostly taught English as a foreign language, a stimulating activity though rarely regarded as a profession by the world at large. His PhD dissertation, Language Tangle, dealt with language teaching productivity. Thor has been teaching English to non-native speakers, training teachers and lecturing linguistics, since 1976. This work has taken him to seven countries in Oceania and East Asia, mostly with tertiary students, but with a couple of detours to teach secondary students and young children. He has trained teachers in Australia, Fiji and South Korea. In an earlier life, prior to becoming a teacher, he had a decade of finding his way out of working class origins, through unskilled jobs in Australia, New Zealand and finally England (after backpacking across Asia to England in 1972).
How much attention has $529 billion of advertising bought? ©Thor May September 2015
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