Claire Beale on Advertising

Things are getting serious. You can tell by the advertising. Banks are no longer smiling. It's bye-bye to the singing, dancing and corny jokes. Credit is crunching and ads about money are getting serious.

True, financial service advertising has rarely tickled the ribs, but it has tried. Managing money is such a soporific subject that banks have tried to warm us up with humour, a bit of entertainment, showtime. Think Halifax Howard.

And it's worked. Being funny has made the whole subject of our finances more emotive and banks more likeable. We've had Nationwide's porkily bombastic bank manager (played for laughs by comedian Mark Benton), we've had Barclaycard's hapless lads abroad played by Green Wing stars Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt, we've had Barclays's comically pathetic bank managers dreaming up ever more ridiculous ways to attract customers, and Halifax's camp musical extravaganzas.

But humour and showmanship aren't working quite so well when we're feeling cash-strapped and crunched. So Halifax is reviewing its ad strategy and its ad agency, Nationwide is dropping its endline "proud to be different" and having a rethink, and Barclaycard is ditching the laughs after a long and acclaimed history (remember Rowan Atkinson's wonderful ads for the brand?). The final ad in Barclaycard's latest series, featuring Mangan and Rhind-Tutt in their road-trip across America, launched last Friday.

The truth is that the familiar device of the incompetent, insensitive banking executive who doesn't really give a damn about customer service becomes intensely inappropriate in times of economic misery. And it's far too flippant to use comedy to knock the competition, it undermines the whole industry.

When confidence and trust in banks is ebbing, it's time for financial services to market a more responsible, understanding, caring brand image. Reassurance, security, safety are hard commercial messages to deliver through a funny script. It's time for a bit more sobriety, fewer belly laughs.

Expect more nurturing imagery from the banking sector, quieter, calmer ads with simple and clear information. But expect to see fewer of them. Most banks are likely to accompany a new, more soberly reassuring strategy with a cut in their advertising budgets. So that's fewer funny ads and less income for adland. Serious indeed.

Never let it be said I'm not a determined defender of advertising freedoms. I've argued here many times for a self-regulated advertising market. It's vital that advertising is protected from the interventionist whims of vote-hungry politicians or single-issue pressure groups.

So any suggestion of further restrictions is incendiary. But I must admit to a stab of surprise when news emerged of a plot to ban all TV booze ads before 6pm.

My surprise was not that such restrictions were demanded, but that they had not been asked for before. In the current climate of binge drinking and "not in front of the children" thinking, it's really quite amazing that the alcohol manufacturers have been advertising on daytime TV for so long without pressure groups crying foul.

Does this mean a 6pm watershed on alcohol advertising is overdue? I don't think so. For one thing it's the booze advertisers who effectively fund all the great sports coverage on commercial television. And they don't just advertise on TV of course. There are sports sponsorships and perimeter advertising around grounds that also win alcohol brands plenty of TV exposure outside the ad breaks. So any rules curbing just TV advertising would be ridiculously one dimensional. To try to remove all commercial messages from our TV screens pre-6pm, would be fatal to many sports. And of course the idea that all children slip quietly off to bed at 6pm – and therefore booze advertising is safe after that time – is ludicrous, to say the least.

The whole debate is deeply flawed. But then so is the junk food ad debate, and look where that's got us.

Last week it emerged that the government is considering banning tobacco companies from using brands and logos on cigarette packs. There was even debate again about whether cigarettes should be on display at all in retail outlets.

Dawn Primarolo says: "If banning brightly coloured packets, removing cigarettes from display and removing the cheap option of a pack of 10 helps save lives, that is what we should do."

Well, she's right of course. But the emphasis must surely sit extremely heavily on her choice of the word "if".

I wonder how carefully Downing Street is planning to measure the degree to which colourful packaging or interesting logos affect purchase patterns, not just brand choice but the decision whether or not to buy a product.

These are the sort of questions marketers exist to pore over, but I'm sceptical that the Government will really pay them due attention before ruling on the issue.

The Department of Health is now undertaking a public consultation, but they'd do well to also consider the impact of the smoking ban in restaurants and bars. Now that smokers are forced to get their fix on the streets, children are more exposed than ever to images of adults having a good time with a fag.

Surely seeing a group of attractive young people smoking and laughing outside a trendy bar is far more likely to attract youngsters than the sight of nicely designed cigarette packaging or a well honed logo.

Patricia Mann died two years ago but she touched the lives of some of adland's most influential and determined people. They set up a fund, The Mann Award for Women, as a lasting tribute to the woman (a former vice-president of JWT) and her work.

The fund invited advertising women to apply for a bursary to help finance their career development. Last week three of the industry's finest females each received £10,000 towards further training. The awards were handed out at the IPA headquarters in London's Belgravia and it was a genuinely moving event, not only for the tribute it paid to a great woman but for the gratitude of the three very talented women who will now benefit from her legacy.

The winners were Alison Chadwick, people director at Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Mythili Chandrasekar, the executive planning director of JWT in India, and Lee Wright, the managing director of Dare. All three will no doubt pass on the wisdom and learning they will now accrue to other people in the industry and the Mann legacy will be multiplied.

The challenge now is to top up the Mann fund so that it can become an annual event. All ideas welcome.

Claire Beale is editor of Campaign