Heidi Titchenal

I agree. Whatever the product or service, you'd better love it.

Jasper Sevilla

I would disagree. It would depend on the person.

Lazaros Dimitriadis

Disagree,
Advertising is all about satisfying the customer and your target group, so helping to improve or diversify is key. People hire people that speak their minds or they would use robots! Knowing when to speak your mind and when NOT is wisdom, there is a right time for everything.

Edward Hart

Disagree. There is no value whatsoever in merely saying what people want to hear. It isn't good for you or the client.

Susan Shwartz PhD

Depends on the sort of advertising your company wants and you write. I don't think I'd be happy in this environment. Are you?

Indira Chaudhry

You can…and cannot….depends on the camouflage of the product and the honesty of the ethics involved…

Bruno Roques

Hi Rahul,

You must believe in what you advertise, otherwise you will not be convincing.

Once done, you can speak your mind, it's just additional bonus to the initial & official campaign.

If you're not a believer, you should better move toward something that you trust more being great product or service (and don't speak your mind, for that you should give respect to those who have a different opinion, uneless nobody believe in the stuff, in which case, just drop it by paying minimum advertising effort and let it die naturally).

My 2 cents,
Bruno.
p.s. : inspiring link here below … More on product design than advertising, but by no mean poor design can be advertised properly ! “Never leave well enough alone”, by Raymond Loewy. Have fun reading and take care !
Links:
• http://books.google.fr/books?id=ZFdl0gC5P50C&pg...…

Jeff Masilun

Disagree… in Advertising you need to speak your mind. Please are paying you for you services, your professional and your knowledge.
Links:
• http://www.gomindstorm.com

Shankar Barua

Yup Rahul.

You have to speak the client's mind.

Keep well ~ Shankar

Shabeena Ahmed

Disagree, if you are talking to the client while brainstorming.
Agree if you've stated your point-of-view to the client, and he still insists the communication reads something else.

Dave Mason

If you or your advertising company is approached to develop ads for a product or service that you have moral or ethical problems with , you most certainly can say something. You have a moral obligation to do so.

You can also plan on not getting the job ( And the pay ).

The choice is yours.

Erica Friedman

In a sense, advertising is like acting. One has to find the key aspects of a product or service or whatever and communicate those qualities to the audience. The best actors become there characters, the best marketers love their products.

Cheers,

Erica Friedman

Thomas Sebastiani

You may always speak your mind, that is the idea this country was founded upon….the problem is, do you want to really deal with the consequences?

A.M.Mohamed Ibrahim

I disagree, if you are a creative then your ultimate job is to think creative with message theme and if you are account executive, you have to speak your mind to meet up with your dead lines and client requirements.

Eddie Leonard

An ad agency senior exec during a wrap party moment told me (representing the client side at the time), “we always have 3 sets of ideas ready…the first group is what the creative team wants to do….the second is what the client is likely to approve….and the third is what is the right thing to do for consumer acceptance….then the mind battle begins.”
Vanessa Johnson

It depends on whom you are speaking to.

If you're talking to your client it's likely they want your unabashed honesty (e.g. giving truthful answers to the questions of is this a good typeface for our logo? how does this copy read?).

If you're speaking to the target market – of course not. Your opinion of the product or service doesn't matter; the public perception of that opinion does matter. Your job is to convey the message, product, or service of your client to his or her target market in the most favorable of lights.

You don't typically advertise shortfalls or bugs in a word processing software. You don't advertise the fact that a pair of jeans is made so cheaply that the seams will tear after two wash cycles. You don't generally highlight that the “free trial” subscription for an online credit report lasts only 3 days and that a person's credit card will be charged 39.99 if they don't cancel within that specified period. Sure, all of this information is available, if the consumer looks hard enough, but it isn't something that a client would want you to advertise.

Instead, you get out the smiley-faced paintbrush, and portray the product or service in a way that is going to encourage a sale. Leave the moral dilemmas to the sales representatives who get the questions of “What do you think about X product? Would you buy it?”

I do agree with many who have stated its far easier to endorse a product that you support than a product that you know is shoddy. But I also think that working in an advertising capacity rather than as an actual sales representative alleviates some of that discomfort between overselling and underdelivering.

Razvan Stoica

Truth is overrated.
I'm speaking about truth in advertising of course, of course.

Sahar Andrade

Rahul:
I disagree
When it comes to promoting a product or service either by marketing campaigns or by advertising if I don’t put myself totally in that frame of mind that I like it or it is of great benefit or believe in it, whatever results will just be fake and will not catch the audience attention, as people can see through promotions that are not genuine productions and anything you do will not be genuine unless you actually believe it and your mind take sit in 100%
If I am doing advertising or marketing campaign for a product or services that I can't sell the idea or the plan to the product's/ services' owners it will never sell to the audience, I will have to go back to the drawing board and think about it differently
So unless I am speaking my mind I will not do it, clients hire me or my company because they know we drive results if they could have done it themselves they would have, so they come to me/ my company because they know we are professionals and we deliver
My 2 cents
Sahar Andrade

Wallace Jackson

Agree to Disagree, that is the inherent nature of this question. Walls.
Links:
• http://www.mindtaffy.com
• http://www.WOWsignage.com
• http://www.3D4PDF.com
Allard van Wielink

A mind is what you give, sold it, lost it!

Lucinda DeVries

Depends on who you are speaking to. You can disagree but watch who you tell your opinion to.