In this editorial for WPCC’s special issue on ‘Advertising for the Human Good’ editor Carl Jones outlines a few milestones demonstrating advertising’s potential via mass media for motivating progressive behaviours in the public. Matching cor-porate social responsibility ideals and reflecting the social concerns of millennial consumers and audiences is becoming increasingly important for brands and even governments.

Whilst existing publications in academic and professional literature raise concerns over the links between capitalist consumerism and advertising, articles in this issue highlight different examples of practice or approach that have the poten-tial to motivate progressive behaviours in various cultures. These include ambient advertising, neuroscience, brands’ cause donations, decolonisation and social mod-elling on the one hand, and anti-racism, recycling, sustainable tourism and choice of advertising talent, on the other.

This editorial observes how the evolved practice of advertising can work within different ideologies, with the objective of generating advertising for the human good but also how change may need to come from within advertising and society generally as attitudes change over time.