7.1 Ethics and advertising
Advertising is the most visible element of the marketing communication process. Hence debates about the ethics of marketing communications frequently focus on advertising.
Calfee and Ringold (1994) reported that six decades of survey data revealed time and again that about 70 per cent of consumers considered that advertising was frequently untruthful, tried to make people buy things they did not want and should be more rigorously regulated. It appears to be when advertising strives harder to persuade rather than inform that it runs into trouble. Two ethical concerns about advertising are deceptive/misleading advertising and disrespectful advertising.
Deceptive or misleading advertising
Deceptive or misleading advertising is dishonest, thus contravening the social value of honesty and the duty to disclose. Forms of potentially deceptive or misleading advertising include:
- untruthful advertising (i.e. making claims about a product that are untrue)
- puffery (i.e. exaggerated claims about a product that are difficult to assess objectively)
- artificial endorsements (i.e. deception in the use of endorsers or of endorsers themselves).
Disrespectful advertising
The following forms of advertising may be considered disrespectful and potentially harmful:
- negative advertising (i.e. attempts to discredit competitors rather than positively promote an organisation’s own offering. This is commonly seen in political marketing during election campaigns)
- intrusive advertising (i.e. many broadcast advertisements are considered intrusive, interrupting television and radio programming. Billboard advertisements may be seen as ‘aesthetic pollution’ (Murphy et al., 2005 p. 168)
- blatant sex appeals(i.e. objectifying women – and increasingly men – as a means to promote products or services).