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Adland's Progressive Gaze: How UK Advertising Lost Sight of the People and Things That Matter Most
290 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 2, 2026
It’s not the winning. It’s the taking apart.
Steve Harrison certainly does this.
He analyses the current advertising industry and shows how it has become estranged from the people it is supposed to sell to, and from the commercial interests of the companies that hire agencies.
The book is a potted history of the advertising scene from around 2008 onwards and the changes that followed. Harrison traces what shifted after the financial crisis and shows how virtue signalling within the industry became professionalised. This is a formidable exposé of how commercial clarity has been replaced by internal consensus.
Some people in the business may think this book has Foucault to do with advertising. And their postmodern intellectual supporters might think that too. They would be wrong.
This book would make an excellent accompanying text to Geoffrey Miller’s Virtue Signaling (2019), Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind (2020), and Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds (2019). It is meticulously referenced, drawing on up-to-date social and political commentators such as Rob Henderson to illustrate its points.
In a world increasingly confused by progressive jargon, it takes a seasoned, award-winning copywriter to cut through the noise. The section on human resources is particularly sharp, exposing the self-sustaining bureaucratic mechanisms that drive its steady growth.
Harrison exposes the oppression olympics that pervade the top agencies. He is not afraid to wade in deep, offering a damning and uncomfortable account of the dystopian tactics used by progressive elites. These tactics sideline the silent majority of consumers and marginalise talented, working-class creatives who are often best positioned to deliver the strongest commercial work. Harrison dismantles groupthink and shows the damage it causes to commercial creativity.
Harrison describes a structure that now appears across other areas of business too. A small number of well-paid executives sit at the top. A large number of cheap junior staff sit below. Agencies encourage idealism in young recruits. They pay them poorly. They placate them with progressive corporate language. Then they underpay them for the privilege of entry. All the while, a sword of Damocles hangs overhead, ready to fall in the event of a microaggression or ideological misstep.
I do not work in advertising. After reading this book, I am not sure I would want to.
The book is very easy to read. It is underpinned by smooth wit and warmth. And it concludes with a call to action.
Adland, or Sadland?
Steve Harrison certainly does this.
He analyses the current advertising industry and shows how it has become estranged from the people it is supposed to sell to, and from the commercial interests of the companies that hire agencies.
The book is a potted history of the advertising scene from around 2008 onwards and the changes that followed. Harrison traces what shifted after the financial crisis and shows how virtue signalling within the industry became professionalised. This is a formidable exposé of how commercial clarity has been replaced by internal consensus.
Some people in the business may think this book has Foucault to do with advertising. And their postmodern intellectual supporters might think that too. They would be wrong.
This book would make an excellent accompanying text to Geoffrey Miller’s Virtue Signaling (2019), Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind (2020), and Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds (2019). It is meticulously referenced, drawing on up-to-date social and political commentators such as Rob Henderson to illustrate its points.
In a world increasingly confused by progressive jargon, it takes a seasoned, award-winning copywriter to cut through the noise. The section on human resources is particularly sharp, exposing the self-sustaining bureaucratic mechanisms that drive its steady growth.
Harrison exposes the oppression olympics that pervade the top agencies. He is not afraid to wade in deep, offering a damning and uncomfortable account of the dystopian tactics used by progressive elites. These tactics sideline the silent majority of consumers and marginalise talented, working-class creatives who are often best positioned to deliver the strongest commercial work. Harrison dismantles groupthink and shows the damage it causes to commercial creativity.
Harrison describes a structure that now appears across other areas of business too. A small number of well-paid executives sit at the top. A large number of cheap junior staff sit below. Agencies encourage idealism in young recruits. They pay them poorly. They placate them with progressive corporate language. Then they underpay them for the privilege of entry. All the while, a sword of Damocles hangs overhead, ready to fall in the event of a microaggression or ideological misstep.
I do not work in advertising. After reading this book, I am not sure I would want to.
The book is very easy to read. It is underpinned by smooth wit and warmth. And it concludes with a call to action.
Adland, or Sadland?
February 7, 2026
Steve dares to say what most of us are too afraid to admit about adland's fall from grace.
When I first read Can't Sell, Wont Sell about 5 years ago, it presented a view of the ad industry so strong I almost hid it under the mattress.
Safe to say he's done it again.
Adland’s Progressive Gaze is the cup of cold water the sleeping faces of advertising need, if they’re going to wake up and see where they are being kept.
When I first read Can't Sell, Wont Sell about 5 years ago, it presented a view of the ad industry so strong I almost hid it under the mattress.
Safe to say he's done it again.
Adland’s Progressive Gaze is the cup of cold water the sleeping faces of advertising need, if they’re going to wake up and see where they are being kept.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews