The Scourge of Advertising - Revisited

Saleh Shaibany ("The Scourge of Advertising", December 17) says "If you think carefully, ads serve no purpose." The myth that advertising has no inherent value (and is even detrimental) is held by a large part society, including intelligent and thoughtful people.
At it's most basic, advertising exists to fill an information gap (who knew they wanted an iPhone before Apple showed us how cool they were)?
You may say that most advertising isn't informative - it's "annoying, misleading" as Mr Shaibany posits - and I would have to agree. I intensely dislike intrusive ads like auto-plays and irrelevant ads that are repeatedly targeted to me; hence Apple's recent move to enable ad-blocking on it's iPhones and tablets.
Ad recall globally is in terminal decline. It's a wake-up call for advertisers to be more relevant, and to tell richer stories that connect emotionally. In exchange for someone's consideration, advertising should give consumers something of value.
Marketers, of course, try to avoid making annoying, misleading or irrelevant ads, because a business trying to build a brand depends on consumer loyalty and repeat purchases to turn a profit.
Companies that invest in advertising are also more likely to produce higher quality products (why invest in building brand awareness for an inferior product?) So, it's safe to assume that a brand that's investing a lot in advertising, is a superior product.
I would agree that most of the work currently produced in Oman is bland.
But a TV ad for du (Emirates Telecom) won for Film Craft at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2015. Such recognition proves our region's ability to produce highly engaging work that is both culturally relevant and globally-minded. And du has had profitable revenue growth in 2015.
It won't be too long before we see award-winning work produced by an Omani creative director.
Finally, good advertising is justified because it actually does add intrinsic value to a product.
A good example is the famous Coke and Pepsi taste test. Pepsi did a blind taste test - the Pepsi Challenge - and discovered that more than half of the volunteer tasters preferred the taste of Pepsi over Coke. Coke responded by conducting research of its own involving brain scans letting test subjects know whether they were sampling Coke or Pepsi before they tasted it. Coke found that 75 per cent of the tasters claimed to prefer Coke - all those positive associations with the brand added value to the product.
So, advertising does serve a purpose, if you think carefully. - Exclusive to Times of Oman