Comic - this ado over Ads

The way the booming guns of business have been firing, there is apocalypse now. Big business came firing last week at what was portrayed as the great betrayal of the capitalist classes. If business can drum up trade and commerce the way business can ratchet up one great whoosh of a storm in a teacup - such as the storm last week over the advertising levy - we'd be a developed nation in two minutes.

But these mandarins of business are also masters of irony. They succeeded in showing what's definitely a shot in the arm for business, as an unmitigated tragedy that is awaiting the Sri Lankan entrepreneurial classes.

Lest it's forgotten in the volley of words that was let off by the skippers of advertising and the captains of commerce in their moment of truth (some spoke in the measured and apocalyptic tones of prophets) the advertising levy is NOT on local commercials or local print advertisements. Its aim is to offer a level playing field, by neutralising the advantage big multi-national business enjoys over the fledgling competition.

It's a move that local industry should be exultant over, instead of which we had the spectacle of armchair business gurus rolling up their sleeves to take over the phantom destroyer - the state's new levy on foreign television advertising.

Let's face it; this is probably rather reactionary on the part of the advertising industry. Advertising is poised to lose they say, but this also maybe a classic case of the industry not knowing what's best for it. The levy on foreign commercials will probably mean that the local advertising agencies would be given more advertising contracts by foreign companies.

Even if that's not the case local advertising is benefiting from the protectionism that is offered by the levy. Even if that was also not the case, the fact is that a levy on foreign advertisements only is not something that warrants a doomsday scenario, because this is a simple case of protectionism in one aspect of business and industry, and is not protectionism across the board. There are textile quotas that operate in America, and that's protectionism, and there is not an entity even in the most neo-liberal arrangement of modern trade and commerce that does not incorporate some aspect of protectionism in it's commercial culture.

One business fat cat characterised the recent advertising levy as 'an undermining of business', and he went on to say breathlessly that this is a no confidence vote on investment. This gentleman stood with the advertisers who are against the levy, but he is a client of the advertisers, and he represents big business. Business moguls are against the levy on advertising for reasons of unchecked avarice, but there is no reason that the advertising czars should jump the rocket, for the mere fact that big business wants to lead advertising by the nose. The latest word we have down the grapevine is that the advertising industry is confused, and does not know exactly by what measure the levy should be supported.

Some say the levy should be supported "but reasonably." What is the main grouse of the advertising industry against the levy? The short answer that comes glibly from the mouths of highly paid PR functionaries is "oh, but the government didn't do this properly by consulting the industry first."

Rich, that is, coming from an advertising industry that does not seem to consult itself first, to arrive at a reasonable consensus from among its membership before it collectively keels over in apoplexy crying about some imagined assault on the economy. This quixotic tilting at windmills is comic.