Watching commercials during the Super Bowl has become a
pastime in itself. Marketing can be really fun and splashy with the use of
humor as we laugh and recall our favorite ads. I have the Geico pothole still
marked as my favorites in my YouTube account, as well as the CarMax ad about
shipping cars to any location that parodies the company with turn of the
century ships and ends with the punchline… are you shipping me? Ads can be
really eye-catching and beautiful with the use of patterns and colors in print
campaigns especially for women’s fashion and products.
It can also be
frankly quite annoying. One small, tiny, insignificant click to check out a
pair of Kate Spade multi-colored glitter earrings and suddenly those earrings
will follow you all over the worldwide web, even when they are out of stock and
will probably never be restocked. Sometimes it seems like marketing can be
downright deceptive with the ploys of saying that if you do this then you can get
to that and somewhere between this and that I stopped listening, sometimes it
is just nonsense. I don’t want to play a game that the consumer cannot actually
win. It plays on sensuality and our desires and sometimes deludes us to believe
we are selecting good products through misinformation. So, is marketing evil?
Some forms of marketing border on unethical. Even with
ethical guidelines in place, I am not entirely sure it makes a difference. What
makes those who market special is that they understand consumer psychology and
they are as clever as they come. There is no loophole that has not been
explored. Take ambush marketing, for example. If a company is too small to enter
into a partnership with an event, such as sports games, they can purchase
premium seats and put people in specific company shirts so that every time the
camera is angled toward the coach there is instant exposure. Kodak actually
launched an aggressive ad campaign during the 1984 Olympics and it was easily
believed they were the sponsor, when in fact Fuji was the official sponsor.
There are now laws in place against Kodak’s marketing move, but the point is,
if there is a loophole it will be found (Ambush marketing, n.d.). There are
plenty of workarounds that still keep companies within the current legal
confines. Is it ethical? To answer that question, it would depend what it is, I
suppose. Is it legal… probably legal enough and sometimes that is the only
thing that counts to companies. El Sayed & El Ghazaly (n.d.) make a similar
argument in terms of the Egyptian channel Melody. The channel takes a
provocative angel to get noticed and those in that culture do not believe such
a stance is an appropriate way to reach others.
So how can companies balance the need to win with being
ethical? I can give merely my opinion. There are talented, well-studied groups
of people that go to work to try to answer this question every day. In
corporate America it is no secret that the power of the dollar is alive and
well and companies want to maximizing profitability, after all that is what
most (not all) companies are tasked to do. From a personal perspective, this is
even seeping into higher education. If companies make ethical products or
services that are truly beneficial to the consumers they seek to serve, this
can counterbalance some of the need for borderline behavior. When winning and
profit becomes more important than honesty and providing beneficial services,
there is a major problem and these issues typically fall within ethics. The
only way companies will stop seeking to push boundaries to the brink is for one
company to trounce the competition and do it completely above board. I believe
only then will there be a chance to see an overall change.
Until then, we will flashback to 1984, where big brother
knows what websites we visit and what products we have been courting. Ad
retargeting and real-time marketing track our habits for marketing purposes.
Out of sight, out of mind? No worries! You will be haunted from page to page.
This is another questionable practice in terms of ethics. When we are on the
internet do we have the expectation that we are afforded privacy? Is it okay to
tempt consumers into making purchases? What if the person that sees the
advertisement has a shopping addiction and is simply trying to look up a recipe
or a news article? This seems like a good idea, generally, for companies to
utilize. For example, if someone decides to go back to school and does some
casual searches to try to figure out a degree, a school, tuition pricing and is
less familiar with the school and then that person suddenly starts noticing
that school’s ads and perhaps does not realize they are being retargeted, the
school becomes more reputable seeming because there is more recognition. Oh!
This school is everywhere. It must be a good school. Oh! I have heard of this
school a lot lately. Sometimes it is the path of least resistance. This one is
right in front of me so I will choose it. Is marketing trying to take away our
free will and choice? I think so.
As a leader, there is a lot to consider in terms of managing
the ethical aspects of a company’s marketing efforts. For me personally, I tend
to gravitate toward more traditional methods. Spreading the word and having a
presence is different than some of the tricks and ploys used. They make me
uncomfortable and that is not the impression I want to imprint upon others.
Unless the goal is to be sleazy, there is no need to mislead, deceive, or take
advantage of others to make money. That will never be what I am about and I
could not be part of a company that was about that, either. It sickens me that
certain foods even try to deceive in order to move a unit. I find it unethical
when a drink or food makes claims they are infused with pomegranate or
blueberry… but there is no trace of either fruit, but are flavored with sugar
and artificial flavorings. It creates an implication that you will reap the
health benefits touted of those antioxidant rich foods, but unless you are a
super consumer that constantly fact checks and simply trust the marketing you
will be taken for a ride and your health may pay the price for it. If I have
one mission it will be good products/services, good practices. If that means
more hard work instead of letting unethical marketing does the work for me,
then so be it. Good practices must start somewhere and I volunteer as tribute.
References:
Ambush Marketing | What is Ambush Marketing? (n.d.).
Retrieved April 25, 2015, from
http://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/ambush-marketing.html
El Sayed, H., & El Ghazaly, I. (n.d.). Ethics-Based Marketing
: Ethical Articles. Retrieved April 24, 2015, from
http://www.ethicsbasedmarketing.net/2.html
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