The economy may have been tough on advertisers last year, but public opinion wasn’t. According to an Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by the Institute of Communication Agencies, 69% of Canadians say ads play an important role in consumer spending. Most also believe that advertising promotes the green movement, elicits national pride and keeps drunk drivers off the road.

This is the first survey of its kind for the ICA, says Claude Carrier, Advertising Week chair and VP at Bos Toronto, and is meant to reaffirm the importance of the industry and help attract new talent to the business. He believes the overwhelming support for advertising comes from a newfound understanding of the role it plays in fostering a healthy economy.

‘In the last year people have gone through a recession, and everybody’s saying, ‘We have to get the economy going because we all want to have a better life,” he says.

Another reason for the positive attitude is the ability for consumers to communicate with advertisers.

‘If a company has a misstep in advertising, they get nailed overnight. You get fast and immediate input from all the audiences,’ he says. ‘TV and web are the most prone to that now — TV because of its reach and web because of YouTube,’ he says.

From Media in Canada