Once a year the Advertising Association asks UK advertising – its agencies, brand-owners and commercial media – to stop competing for just a single morning and work together to shape the role, rights and responsibilities of advertising.

From a standing start, LEAD has become a permanent fixture on the advertising calendar, bringing over 300 business leaders together to debate advertising’s challenges. In 2012, it was the launch pad for Deloitte’s ground-breaking Advertising Pays report, putting our collective impact on UK GDP at over £100 billion. And it has filled a clear gap in the market – plenty of events cater to those wanting to make better advertisements, only LEAD caters to those interested in making advertising better. Better understood, better valued, better recognised.

But with every industry gathering there’s a risk: that things get a bit too cosy; that we indulge in a little too much self-congratulation; that we skirt around the more difficult questions.

In 2015, we won’t allow that to happen. In fact, I believe the conversation will be the toughest yet. Here’s why.

Advertising has much to offer – those Deloitte figures are impressive and it helps make the stuff we buy better and very often cheaper. In the process, advertising funds the digital world, our creative industries, journalism and much more.

But we’re in the midst of a huge shift. Across technology, consumer expectations, economics, politics and business, the pace and scale of change is dramatic, and to secure those benefits and earn support, advertising – which has become so ubiquitous in our daily lives – must renegotiate its deal with the world out there.

The AA pushes a very simple message in support of advertising: encourage brands to invest; allow media to monetise new content and services; and help our agencies to build on the UK’s global leadership position. Do that and society benefits just as much as advertising, but along the way we face debates that are anything but simple.

What are the terms?

Let’s start (where else?) with digital. Ofcom data puts the UK on top of the global e-commerce league, with all the convenience and choice that brings to people’s lives.

At the heart of it all, from search to social and everything in between, is the advertising-funded internet. It’s a UK success story. New ideas start here. But being at the boundaries of what’s possible also puts UK advertising front and centre in difficult debates around data, transparency and fairness.

Then there’s the freedom to advertise. How should that work when products are linked to societal problems? We know that markets work better when advertising is allowed to stimulate competition and innovation, but when the products themselves are linked to obesity, public indebtedness, problems with gambling or alcoholism, inevitably the light shines on advertising too.

If those debates concern the what, we must also consider how £18 billion of commercial communications reflects, reinforces or creates social norms. From body image and self-esteem to representations of women, family and the UK’s diverse social make-up, advertising is never far from debates about the media and its impact on contemporary culture. Even capitalism itself is facing serious questions.

Consumerism has become a dirty word and advertising is a not-so-distant cousin.

We cannot simply ignore these debates.

Why? Because our chosen – and much valued – model of upholding ethics and standards in advertising is self-regulation. We ask the public and their politicians to ‘trust us to get it right’ but to earn that trust, we must be seen to be listening and where the evidence requires it, acting on concerns.

Working together

If you’re in advertising, you choose to be on the frontline, but being in the business of getting noticed puts our license to operate under constant scrutiny. And when everything is changing so fast, it is all the more difficult to manage.

If you’re reading this, chances are that along with 549,999 other people in the UK (those Deloitte figures again…) you owe your working life to advertising. And whether you’re advertiser, agency or media owner, advertising’s reputation – the deal we make with society and with those with the power to affect us – is something you should care about.

Your chance to influence that deal is at LEAD 2015.

Tim Lefroy is chief executive of the Advertising Association.

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