A cynical and narcissistic advertising executive dies and finds that he is now in charge of Adland, an other-worldly body whose sole purpose is to prevent change by appearing to change everything.
Alex Fairfax is a cheat and a conman who rose to lead billion-dollar companies. There was nothing in his life beyond ambition. Now his pointless worldly life has been replaced by a pointless other-worldly life with the aim of keeping life pointless. Of all the pointless people who could have been chosen he has been deemed the most purposefully pointless. In the afterlife he has six key lieutenants in charge of driving change and ensuring no change, each with a building designed in their own image.
They are unwittingly controlled the Council, a group of wealthy white patriarchs who form an other-worldly Bilderberg group. Led by Cornelius Vanderbilt he is joined Lord Northcliffe, inventor of the British press, Randolph Hearst, Robert Maxwell, Jack Warner, Howard Hughes and now Rupert Murdoch replacing Roger Ailes who had been keeping his chair warm.
A tale of lost love, a child without a father and how we are all complicit in the dream world we live in, Adland explores how humans lost control to become a product mined by the advertising titans. Along the way we meet meerkats, hold seances, study Anton Mesmer, Rupert Murdoch joins the Hare Krishnas with his Holy Cow, the ‘Egyptian book of the Dead’ is turned into a game and we face resurrection.
Is it possible to change and what is the price to explode the myths we live every second of every day? Have we enabled the worst of society, will the singularity breed a religion of spiritual technologists, is society polarised forever, can democracy survive or is it possible to really change? Adland offers an extreme solution and the result is exposing fake news, creating global job security and world peace, a new honest Facebook, disassembling global banking, homes for everyone in the world, ending poverty in Africa and eradicating all disease ……. or will it just be the same as it’s always been?