Tim Love is former Vice-Chairman of Omnicom Group, a leading global advertising and marketing services company. He is a James Webb Young Fellow with a Masters in Communication from the University of Illinois, and has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a minor in Fine Arts from Miami University in Ohio.

He retired in 2013 as CEO of the Asia Pacific, India, Middle East and Africa regions. During his 42-year career in the advertising industry Tim earned his brand-building credentials on some of the world’s largest and most successful brands, including P&G, PepsiCo and Johnson & Johnson.

Following his retirement, Tim taught an MBA elective on “Global Branding and Communication” at Oxford’s Said School of Business. In addition to Oxford, he has lectured at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, Harvard, Yale School of Management, Columbia University, the University of Illinois, Miami University in Ohio, Northeastern, Savannah College of Art and Design, Mudra Institute of Communications in India and Ave Maria University.

Until 2017 he was on the faculty of the US Marketing Communications College, a pro-bono initiative at the Foreign Service Institute of the US State Department. He is currently Chairman of the Board of Advisors of BoomAgers, a marketing communications agency focused on the +50 year-old generation. He is also an advisor to Amsety, makers of the first nutrition bar that supports liver health.
His 2016 book “The Book That Gets Better With Age” has won six literary awards in the category of “health & aging” and is available on Amazon.com.

Arranged by John Bassler

Bryan Hooper’s notes on the talk:

Tim Love shared with us his views developed over a long career in the advertising industry about the ways we are being brainwashed into polarized beliefs that endanger America. He noted initially that the invention of the Gutenberg printing press resulted in opening information to the masses through the dissemination of printed, rather than hand-written manuscripts, leading to a movement that challenged the authority of the Catholic church and led to the Reformation. Tim averred that we are experiencing a modern-day Reformation of beliefs. Following the development of radio as an effective media for transmitting information ranging from news to advertising to propaganda, we have progressed through television and on to social media that enable individuals to create content and pass it along to others. This has further shifted the power of information from authorities to the individuals with whom the new media connects. Additionally, the evolution of artificial intelligence has enabled internet communications platforms to be more responsive to an individual’s previous thought behavior. This in turn has allowed advertising and platforms to provide greater concentrations of information targeted to our prior habits in using the internet, and the subject matter we typically engage in.

However, this technological advancement has also resulted in the establishment of fake news sites which are flourishing in America’s information ecosystem, spreading hard-to-detect false information and stories on the most used platforms. Tim stated that people tend to restrict themselves to trusted, favorite sources to confirm their prior beliefs. In the process, they open themselves to more exposure to colossal false narratives, and repetition leads to acceptance of the falsehoods being asserted. For instance, Pew Research found that 79% of Fox News viewers were said to believe that media exaggerated Covid-19 as a serious health threat – despite the fact that over half a million people in the US have died from it.

His solution is, first, that individuals should take responsibility and check their facts more frequently than currently occurs. Next, he urges that the media industry, their advertisers and the legislators should agree on means to self-regulate content to avoid further escalation of the problem.

Tim’s white paper on the subject is to be found at: Discovering Truth Paper 5_12, and the link to his podcast is: http://www.timlovesworld.com/podcast.html. The link to the video of his talk is: https://youtu.be/2aAxFrw-spw.