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ebruary 7, 2010, Super Bowl XLIV Sunday: 106.5 million people watched the average
minute of the game in which the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts. It
was “the most watched TV program ever.”1 That honor had long been held by the
final episode of M*A*S*H, watched by 106 million more than twenty-five years earlier.2 Not surprisingly CBS CEO Les Moonves was elated. “For anyone who wants to write
that broadcasting is dead, 106 million people watched this program,” he crowed. “You can’t
find that anywhere else.”3 Yet we are purportedly in the “post-television age.”4
At a moment in time when “the death of the thirty-second spot” is almost a foregone conclusion, some thirty-four brands, including the U.S. Census (amid some controversy), made the
decision that paying an average of $2.7 million for a thirty-second spot was a sound strategy.5
Brands purchased sixty-seven ads for a total of thirty-six minutes of advertising time. According to the executive vice president and director of strategic planning at McCann Erickson, the
Super Bowl is “less about the relevance of a message but more about the entertainment quotient. [Marketers] aren’t selling a product; they are creating brand buzz.”6 Another advertiser
agreed. “It’s never about the Super Bowl ad itself. It’s the best online buzz for the buck.”7
Live polling to determine the most popular commercial took place on a number of sites;
winners varied. Near the top of most lists, however, was a Snickers ad starring 88-year-old
actress Betty White and Abe Vigoda, an actor perhaps most well-known for his portrayal of
Sal Tessio in The Godfather. After White’s Super Bowl “performance,” some 500,000 Facebook
users petitioned Saturday Night Live requesting that White host the program; she did on May
8, 2010, garnering the highest overnight ratings the program had achieved in over a year.8 In
fall 2010, White become a costar in a situation comedy, Hot in Cleveland. Such is celebrity culture in the United States.
What about the effectiveness of those Super Bowl spots? Ad agency chief Linda Kaplan
Thayer noted that in the absence of real watercoolers around which to gather information
about “how they’d done,” advertisers go to their “digital watercoolers.”9 Prior to the game,
a writer in USA Today wrote:
This will be the Super Bowl where everyone measures everything to see if they got their
money’s worth. Advertisers will count tweets. They’ll count the number of folks who visit
their Facebook pages. They’ll count visits to the brand. . . . They’ll measure the “buzz” factor online—seeking a running tab on how often their company or their Super Bowl ad gets
mentioned.10
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In two separate surveys among Twitter users, Doritos, which had two ads, finished first.
Nielsen Buzz Metrics found one Doritos spot to be the “most buzzed about” during and after the
game. Reflecting on these winners, an Advertising Age writer began his column with a warning:
“Be afraid Madison Avenue. Be very afraid.” Why? Because both spots had been created by consumers in a Crash the Super Bowl contest sponsored by Frito Lay (PepsiCo). Something else to reflect upon: Advertising Age reported that the creative directors of the Super Bowl ads were
“overwhelmingly white.” Joelle De Jesus, creator of the winning Doritos spot, was the only minority creative director for any spots airing on the Bowl.11 And remember, he is a consumer.
And what if you happened to miss the broadcast? Don’t worry, the commercials are available
online, on your cell phone, or on other handheld mobile devices. And who knows—they may still
be counting visits.
Granted, the Super Bowl is not typical network fare; it is both a football and an advertising
extravaganza. But let’s think about this event and see what we can learn about advertising. First,
we recognize that advertising is an economic power in the United States and globally. Total advertising expenditures in the United States are expected to reach $133 billion in 2010.12 These expenditures alone stand as testimonial to the value of advertising as a strategic marketing tool.
Amid trade-press discussions about return on investment, metrics, tracking studies, and so
on, it is easy to lose track of advertising as anything other than a marketing tool. Yet, in a book about
the development of modern American advertising, Daniel Pope points out: “For advertising to play
a large part in market strategy, consumers had to be willing to accept this kind of self-interested persuasion as a tolerable substitute or complement to more objective product information.”13 That is,
in order for advertising to work as a business tool, it has to “fit” into the culture. It has to work as a
vehicle of social communication. One look at the Super Bowl—live polling of commercial popularity, pregame and postgame buzz about advertising, podcasts, consumer-generated advertising, and
of course, Super Bowl parties where people gather to watch the game and the advertising—and
there can be no question. Advertising is indeed a part of our culture, a part of our everyday lives.
Some contemporary scholars, while in no way suggesting that advertising fails to provide information or has no influence on consumer choices, invite us to examine what they view to be advertising’s more critical role, that of social communication. Rick Pollay speaks of what he calls the
unintended social consequences of advertising, the “social by-products of exhortations to ‘buy
products.’”14 Canadian scholars Leiss, Kline, Jhally, and Botterill suggest:
Advertising is not just a business expenditure undertaken in the hope of moving some merchandise off the store shelves, but it is rather an integral part of modern cultures. The least important
aspect of advertising’s significance for modern society is its role in influencing specific consumer
choices—whether wise or unwise—about purchasing products. . . . advertising’s transmittal of
details about product characteristics is a trivial sidelight.15
Building on these scholars’ observations, we glimpse fertile ground for ethical debate. It is from
this perspective of advertising as a vehicle of social communication that most critical questioning
occurs.
Historically, the dialogue underlying advertising controversies has been stated overly simplistically in terms of the mirror/shaper debate. Advertisers and their advocates view advertising
as a mirror, passively reflecting society. By contrast, critics are likely to view advertising somewhat
less benignly as a shaper—a powerful, selective reinforcer of social values. “So,” you might ask,
“which is it?” After an intensive study of the social content of advertising in the 1920s and 1930s
seeking the answer to that question, historian Roland Marchand concluded:
I regret to say that I have not resolved these dilemmas. I cannot prove conclusively that the American people absorbed the values and ideas of the ads, nor that consumers wielded the power to
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ensure that the ads would mirror their lives. In fact, as advertisers quickly perceived, people did
not usually want ads to reflect themselves, their immediate social relationships, or their broader
society exactly. They wanted not a true mirror but a Zerrspiegel, a distorting mirror that would enhance certain images. Even the term Zerrspiegel, denoting a fun-house mirror, fails to suggest fully
the scope of advertising distortions of reality. Such a mirror distorts the shapes of the objects it
reflects, but it nevertheless provides some image of everything within its field of vision. Advertising’s mirror not only distorted, it also selected. Some social realities hardly appeared at all.16
Perhaps then it is best said that advertising both defines and is defined by culture.
As we approach the topic of ethical decision making, it is valuable to pause and reflect on the
ideological web in which the institution of advertising—its processes, practices, practitioners, creations, and audiences—is grounded. Chief among the components of this web are these realities:
• We live in a democratic political system. Citizens participating in public life elect their government officials. As citizens we possess basic human rights and freedoms, among them,
those provided in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Media scholar James W.
Carey articulated those rights this way:
[The First Amendment] says that the government can’t tell you how to worship. It says that if you
have something to say you can say it. If you want to, you can write it down and publish it. If you
want to talk about it with others, you can assemble. And if you have a grievance, you can let your
government know about it, and nobody can stop you.17
As citizens, we must exercise those rights peaceably and with respect for the law. Democracy,
then, is frequently described in terms of freedom, fairness, and choice.
• We live in a capitalist economic system in which there is no imposed central plan. Instead,
individuals and firms decide what to do based on their own best interests. Profit is the difference between what a product costs to provide and what the producer gets back in return,
and it is this return that drives the system forward. Thus, when we say “that corporation is
only in it for the money,” we do well to recognize the principles of our economic system.
• We live in a consumer culture, a culture preoccupied with things and with the act of acquiring those things. Consumption is both a concrete institution (we have an infinite number
of tools to make it easier for us to buy and reward us for buying) and a guiding myth.18 In
an article titled “Why the U.S. Will Always Be Rich,” columnist David Brooks described consumer culture this way: “The most obvious feature of the land of abundance is that people
work feverishly hard and cram their lives insane fully. That’s because there are candies all
around, looking up and pleading to you ‘taste me, taste me, taste me.’ People in this realm
live in a perpetual aspirational state.”19
• We live in a media culture. It is becoming increasingly difficult and perhaps impossible to separate media and culture in any meaningful way. One blogger recently described media culture by
noting that: “Mass media has done such a good job at embedding their copyright into culture that
it has become culture itself. . . . Conversations swirl around TV characters, brands, and movie
quotes.20 In Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory, Suzanna Walters concurs:
In any case, it is surely no longer possible to understand the media as somehow “outside” society or an adjunct to “larger” social concerns. One could argue that the media have so inserted
themselves into the everyday life of most Americans (indeed, most people) that they have come
to construct our sense of what it means to live in the (post)-modern world.21
• Our media culture is image based. Individuals actively, perhaps sometimes unconsciously,
work to construct identities that are both fluid and multiple and frequently grounded in
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consumption. Images are powerful and ideological because they speak in a different grammar.
Media scholar Neil Postman noted that when we deal in images, we move “out of the realm
of logic and into the realm of aesthetics.”22 That is, we either like an image or we don’t; truth
and falsity no longer apply. Take, for instance, an image of a young man spraying a particular
cologne, then smiling with self-satisfaction as scantily clad women—seemingly hundreds of
scantily clad women—run to get close to him. If the image were to be articulated in words
(as I have just done)—put on this body spray and young women will stampede to get near
you—we would laugh; yet, when we see an image suggesting exactly that, we often accept it
uncritically.
• Technology strengthens and amplifies these ideological threads. What this has meant for
advertising is an accelerated expansion of media, cluttered media, and indeed, a media culture cluttered with commercial messages. As Ruskin and Schor note, “commercial culture
has oozed into nearly every nook and cranny of life.”23 It means fragmented and multitasking audiences, increasingly said to be taking control of their media exposure, making it
increasingly difficult for advertisers to get attention for their messages. Audiences now
more than ever indicate their desire to escape from advertising, and they turn to technology
for the ability of do so. At the same time, however, they are interacting with a wonderworld
of interactive activities on corporate websites, creating ads independently or at the invitation of marketers, “friending” brands on social networking sites, and tweeting their approval or disapproval with lightning-like speed from wherever they might be to others,
wherever they might be.
Adding to this already complex mixture, marketers, recognizing that their “targets” view
sources of communication as indistinguishable, have adopted a strategy of integration in an attempt to guarantee that advertising messages in fact are indistinguishable from other messages.
Add the social media (i.e., blogs, social networks, buzz) and the result is 360° marketing, where
consumers talk about a brand outside as well as inside the brand’s boundaries. In this context, the
definition of advertising is fluid. Just as we might ask, “Is TV still TV when you view it on your
cell phone?,” so might we ask, “Is advertising still advertising when you produce the TV program?”
“Is product placement advertising, public relations, or entertainment?”
The chapters in this section ask you to confront a number of ethical dimensions that you may
not have considered. Some invite you to look at institutional values and practices; others take a
more practical focus. In Chapter 6 we consider two related dynamics inherent in our work and in
our culture: the increasing infringement of advertising/promotional speech into public and private spaces, and the commodification of aspects of culture never intended to be marketed as commodities. We ask in Chapter 7: What complexities arise when advertising talks not in words but in
images? In Chapter 8 we examine the implications of a media system that is supported by advertising, motivated by profit, and increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations.
And in Chapter 9, we look at the values and principles that guide our profession. The ethical
dilemmas are complex, intriguing, dynamic, and well worth reflection.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After completing Part 2, you should be able to meet these objectives:
• Recognize the increasing interjection of advertising/promotional speech into public and private spaces
• Recognize the insertion of a commercial logic into aspects of culture never intended to be
traded as marketable commodities
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• Understand the implications and impact of an advertising and media culture increasingly
dominated by images rather than words, and the ethical issues arising in that image-based
context
• Identify the implications of a media system that is supported by advertising, motivated by
profit, and becoming ever more consolidated in a few corporations, as well as the ethical
questions that arise within that system in a democratic society
• Critically examine the values and principles that guide the advertising profession and consider avenues of invention when/if necessary
NOTES
1. http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/generalities/super_bowl_xliv_most_watched_tv_program_ever_
151441.asp.
2. http://adage.com/superbowl08/article?article_id=124852.
3. http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/generalities/super_bowl_xliv_most_watched_tv_program_
ever_151441.asp.
4. Frank Cappo, The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
5. The “statistical” information regarding Super Bowl advertisers was gathered from a variety of Advertising
Age and Internet sites.
6. http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=20080201&Kategori=REG&Lopenr=
740338958&Ref=AR.
7. http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2010-02-04-super-bowl-hype_N.htm.
8. http://mashable.com/2010/05/09/betty-white-saturday-night-live/.
9. http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2010-02-04-super-bowl-hype_N.htm.
10. Ibid.
11. http://adage.com/article?article_id=143711; http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?
page=lapchick/100505.
12. http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=140939.
13. Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
14. Richard W. Pollay, “The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising,”
Journal of Marketing 50 (April 1986): 19.
15. William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhally, Jacqueline Botterill, Social Communication in Advertising:
Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace (New York: Routledge, 2005), 5, 18.
16. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1985), xvii.
17. James W. Carey, quoted in Roy Peter Clark, “James Carey: A Model for Journalists and Scholars Alike,”
Poynter Online, May 24, 2006, http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=101795.
18. Lawrence B. Glickman, “Born to Shop? Consumer History and American History” in Consumer Society in
American History: A Reader (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 1–14.
19. www.nytimes.com/2002/06/09/magazine/why-the-us-will-always-be-rich-html.
20. www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/09/29/when_media_beco.html.
21. Suzanna Walters, Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory, (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1995), 21–22.
22. The Public Mind: Consuming Images, PBS documentary with Bill Moyers, 1989.
23. Gary Ruskin and Juliet School, “Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized
Culture,” The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader, in eds. Joseph Turow and Matthew P. McAllister
(New York: Routledge, 2009), 410.
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C H A P T E R
6
The Commercialization
of Everyday Life
Promotional communication permeates and blends with our cultural environment, punctuating our
television watching, saturating our magazines and newspapers, and popping up in our Internet surfing, movies, and video games. In short, advertising has become an accepted part of everyday life. . . .
[A]t the individual level the discourse through and about objects sidles up to us everywhere, beckoning,
teasing, haranguing, instructing, cajoling, and informing our daily interactions with each other in most
settings. . . . The symbolic attributes of goods, as well as the characters, situations, imagery, and jokes
of advertising discourse, are now fully integrated into our cultural repertoire.1
A
dvertising is a major player in the global economy. It is estimated that global advertising expenditures in 2009 were approximately $460 billion; $125.3 billion was
spent in the United States.2 An indispensable business tool, advertising, at the
same time, is an integral part of our media culture. It is the commercial foundation
that supports most media, and a considerable portion of media content is advertising.
Today, the number of media is exploding. Technological innovation accelerates the development of new media—digital, interactive, mobile; new media “vehicles”—social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; and the transformation of “traditional”
media. (One might legitimately ask how long new is an appropriate descriptor—a year? six
months?) We create, send, receive, and store audiovisual data at home and away, almost
wherever we might be.
Such capabilities are fundamentally altering the very rules of engagement with what
might euphemistically be called “our world” (for indeed, boundaries of all kinds seem to
blur or disappear with amazing rapidity). A recent article in The New York Times on “information addiction” suggests that “juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave,” limiting the ability to focus.3 Two hundred
University of Maryland undergraduates were asked to forego media for twenty-four hours.
Of the experience, one respondent noted: “It is almost second nature to check my Facebook
or e-mail; it was very hard for my mind to tell my body not to go on the Internet.”4 Much to
the delight of marketers (and others), technology makes it possible to track, sort, and store our
online activity as “we click without a thought that a third party knows what we’re clicking
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on.”5 “Are 5,001 Facebook Friends One Too Many?” read a recent headline to a story about the
Facebook-imposed friend limit of 5,000.6 Brands too have Facebook fans. At the top in number of
Facebook fans is Facebook itself with 9 million. Starbucks, Coca-Cola, YouTube, and Disney round
out the top five.7 Interested in brand fandom? The information is just a click away at fanpagelist.
com.
In this increasingly “cluttered” media environment, we also find those media to be increasingly cluttered with advertising messages. The September 2007 fashion issue of Vogue
weighed over five pounds and had 840 pages; 727 of those pages were advertising.8 This issue
became the subject of a feature-length film, The September Issue, which followed the editor-inchief, Anna Wintour, during the eight months of preparation required for publication of this
issue.
The average nonprogram time during primetime on network television is fourteen minutes. Coupled with eight and a half minutes of in-show brand appearances (i.e., product placements), roughly 40 percent of the average hour is marketing content.9 And what of product
placement? Though evident as far back as the days of silent movies, the strategy was reinvigorated by the introduction of DVRs and advertiser fear that consumers could and would avoid
commercials. Once simply the trading or buying of product position within media content, the
strategy has evolved into product integration in which brands are woven into the program,
often as early in the process as script development.10 And lest we think the public isn’t interested in what advertisers do, look to popular culture; there you find the Peabody-award–winning Mad Men, which has won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama-Series for three consecutive
years.
A study examining how Americans incorporate media into the fabric of everyday life
found that we are adept at multitasking (though the effectiveness of this is increasingly called
into question) and immersed in a profusion of media: “we spend the equivalent of 94 percent
of our waking day with media . . . more time with media than with any other waking activity.”11
In this chaos, depending on the people you talk to and how they define advertising, each of us
is exposed to anywhere from 4,000 to 20,000 messages a day.12 Simply getting consumers’ attention is both difficult and urgent. Advertisers attempt to “cut through the clutter” by creating more ads. A writer in Advertising Age commented on this irony, noting that, “like a fly
repeatedly bouncing off a closed window . . . [the industry] shotgun blasts commercial messages into sexy new places as quickly as it can identify them . . . ” The result of clutter, then, is
simply more clutter.13
Advertisers use buzz and word-of-mouth marketing, seeking “trendsetters . . . and subtly
pushing them into talking about their brand to their friends and admirers.”14 One such marketing
firm is the Girls Intelligence Agency (GIA). According to the company’s website, GIA has some
40,000 “secret agents” aged eight to twenty-nine all over the United States and “uses a variety of
means—from texting to sleepovers—to tap into the business of girls.”15 Guerrilla marketing techniques use “unusual and unpredictable tactics”—elevator button advertising, ad walkers, jeans
hanging from parking meters and power lines—to get maximum attention using minimal resources. Media and audiences are fragmented more than ever, although technology makes niche
targeting and behavioral targeting possible, a media culture cluttered with commercial messages
almost guarantees exposure to unintended audiences. Then too, we receive “recommendations”
(“as someone who bought _____, we thought you might like _____”) from online retailers without
thinking about how those recommendations came to be.
The blurring of editorial, entertainment, and advertising content contributes to an increasingly commercialized landscape. One certainly can argue that in the context of integrated marketing
communication, advertising, public relations, and promotional messages are by design virtually
indistinguishable in persuasive intent, if not in form. Critics point to such phenomena as Tropicana
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Field (home of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays), The M&M’s Brand Counting Book (“Pour out the candies.
Get Ready. Get Set. This counting book is the tastiest yet.”),16 and corporate sponsorships of charity events as evidence of a creeping infringement of commercial logic into the public and private
arenas.
All this occurs at the same time that consumers express discomfort, dismay, and occasionally
something bordering on outrage with hypercommercialization. It is something of a paradox that
even as 70 percent of Americans say they would be interested in products that would help them
avoid advertising, marketers are finding increasing success in engaging consumers through websites that provide interactive opportunities and promotions in which consumers are asked to create ads for brands.17 What has come to be called consumer-generated advertising (CGA) first
garnered attention in the 2007 Super Bowl when the NFL, Frito Lay, and GM conducted promotions inviting consumers to create ads; selected ads were run during the Bowl telecast. Today, CGA
is viewed not as a promotion but as a widely used strategy to create brand engagement and interaction even as it gathers data from those who participate.18
Such is our media culture.
Another dimension of our commercialized landscape, more subtle perhaps and for that very
reason, some critics argue, more insidious, is the commodification of everyday life. In a 1989 PBS
documentary, Consuming Images, Bill Moyers argued that “advertising” has become the primary
mode of public address.19 That is to say, a commercial logic is increasingly finding its way into institutions, ideas, and processes never intended to be traded as marketable commodities. Quite simply, we think about more and more things as if they were products.
It is not unusual for infertile couples to “advertise” in college newspapers for egg donors,
sometimes offering to pay top price for a donor with the desired qualities. In one ad in The New
York Times, a company advertised that its “diverse donor pool includes doctoral donors with advanced degrees and numerous other donors with special accomplishments and talents.”20 Educational institutions routinely “package” their courses into specialized curricula—for example,
advanced-degree executive programs on a satellite campus—as deliverable commodities that
can be exchanged for a profit on the market.21 Today, political candidates—not unlike toothpastes, cereals, and automobiles—market themselves as brands.22 President (then Senator)
Barack Obama topped Apple and Zappos.com to become Advertisng Age’s Marketer of the Year
in 2007.23
In “Reality TV as Advertainment,” Deery writes that reality programming, now seemingly a
staple of television and cable, breaks down the distinction between what is public and viewable
and what is private and closed to outside viewing. Privacy, and indeed, an individual’s “reality,”
is turned into a commodity; this is accomplished by and for money.24 Some have argued that even
anticorporate activism and resistance to commodification has itself become a commodity, something you can “buy into” to distinguish yourself from others.25
The interjection of a decidedly corporate ethos into our everyday lives has come about casually, yet consistently, overwhelming the public sphere in sometimes obvious and sometimes not so
readily obvious ways. The commercial imperative has come to seem natural and even expected.
As a result, it has remained largely unexamined and unquestioned. Educator and media critic Sut
Jhally notes:
Americans have a very strange notion of freedom. Americans seem to think that if you’re free
from government, you’re free, which overlooks the fact that there can be other opponents of freedom. Like corporations who have immense power within our cultural space and that censor
other voices. I think we have to now think about not only what the government shouldn’t do but
about what any other large-scale organization should not be allowed to do, which is monopolize
means of communication, means of cultural production, which is what corporations do at the
present time.26
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The four cases in this chapter focus on various dimensions of commercialization in our modern media culture. The first case, “Is That an Ad? Are You Sure?” explores the ethical dimensions
of how marketing messages are presented and where they are presented. Controversies that arise
when the logic of the marketplace enters into the time-honored doctor–patient relationship are the
focus of “DTC Advertising: Prescription Drugs as Consumer Products.” In “Shopping to Save the
World,” we probe the complex ethical dimensions of cause-related marketing—corporate logic entering the arena of social welfare in the guise of corporate social responsibility. Finally, “How Did
You Know That? Ethics of Behavioral Targeting” explores both the concept and the reality of that
phenomenon and suggests that the ethical dimensions—questions of rights, responsibilities, obligations, and consequences—have rarely been considered and perhaps have not yet been identified.
Ultimately the case asks: what ethical dimensions are involved, or are likely to emerge, as behavioral targeting becomes integrated into business and into culture?
23 IS THAT AN AD? ARE YOU SURE?
At the end of the day, we need to have spreadsheets and impressions and photos documenting
the [guerrilla marketing] event. Clients like GE and Citibank aren’t looking for middle of the night
guys in ski masks when budgets are hitting six and seven figures. It is a discipline like any other.27
There was a time when we recognized advertising when we saw it—in the pages of magazines and
newspapers, a familiar presence as we watched television or listened to favorite radio station, and
recently, even as we glanced at the “third screen” on a cell phone or BlackBerry. Today, amid cluttered media in a world cluttered with media, marketers, out of necessity, are creating ever-moreinventive ways to get our attention. Guerrilla marketing (sometimes in its varied permutations
identified as viral, stealth, buzz, NBDB—never been done before—advertising, ambient, or “nontraditional” marketing) is designed to get consumers “seeing things that they aren’t used to seeing, creating something that lives in the context of what they do but that is out of context with
what they are used to.”28 Guerrilla marketing, today a recognized part of the marketing mix, might
be cleverly disguised, or something in-your-face, but it is always in aggressive pursuit of sales. Books
and websites offer cases, marketing coaches, and guerrilla marketing toolkits (see, for example,
gmarketing.com). Relatively small, local advertisers seeking to promote products and services on a
minimal budget are advised to undertake relatively innocuous activities: sponsor a Little League
team, join a civic club, or offer services as a public speaker.29 Not all guerrilla efforts, however, are
so conventional. Let’s look at a sampling of efforts.
Unconventional Messages in Unconventional Places
• The UNICEF Tap Project was a gold winner of the Hispanic Creative Advertising Awards. This
project sought to raise awareness and money to combat the lack of clean drinking water in
much of the world. UNICEF bottled dirty water and packaged it like mineral water. It came in
a choice of flavors: typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and hepatitis. The water was sold on the
streets of New York City. No one drank it of course, but many got the message—for $1, a
child can drink clean water for 40 days—and fed donations into a vending machine.
• Heineken sought to position itself as environmentally friendly. It made reusable shopping bags
from the company’s own billboards, 100 bags from each board. These “Heineken Green
Bags” were sold in upscale boutiques and carried by models during fashion shows.
• In Toronto, the Daily Bread Food Bank kicked off its fall food drive by placing empty refrigerators (doors could open, but for safety couldn’t latch shut) at five locations in the financial
district to serve as a stark reminder that many can’t afford to stock home groceries.30
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Marketers like the “stickiness” of guerrilla efforts, that is, “an environment in which a wellembedded ad can resonate with members on a personal level by infiltrating everyday interactions.
It ‘sticks’ by not appearing to be an ad, in effect slipping under consumers’ well-tuned ad radar.”31
Taking Guerrilla a Bit Farther
• Sony Ericsson’s “Fake Tourist” effort for its camera phone in 2002 remains one of the bestknown guerrilla efforts. Sixty actors wandered the streets of Seattle and New York City with
camera phones asking others to take pictures of them using those phones. This effort aroused
considerable debate about forthrightness in nontraditional marketing.32 Rob Walker wrote
somewhat cynically, “and thus, an act of civility was converted into a branding event.”33
• Ikea set out to prove the quality and durability of its products which were often perceived to
be “cheap” and disposable. For two weeks, four Parisian subway stations were fully furnished
with couches and lamps to introduce Ikea’s new furniture collection.
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Competition Bureau of Canada created a website for a fat blocker: Eggplant Extract Fat Foe. “Lose up to ten pounds a week with no sweat,
no starvation.” The site looked legitimate, even as it promised, you could “eat . . . gooey
chocolate desserts . . . and watch the pounds melt away.” When users responded, they were
sent to another page, which explained that the ad had been a fake and went on to warn
about diet ripoffs.34
Too Sticky? Some Efforts Do More Harm Than Good
• John Mackey, cofounder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, posted messages under a false identity on Yahoo Finance stock forums for eight years. Using the pseudonym Rahodeb, an anagram
of his wife’s name, Deborah, Mackey “routinely cheered Whole Foods’ financial results, trumpeted his personal gains on the stock, and bashed Wild Oats,” which Whole Foods was trying
to acquire. At one point, Rahodeb noted that “Oats has no value and no future.” The postings
came to light in documents filed with the FTC, which sought to block the acquisition.35
• In 2002, Acclaim Entertainment offered to ring in the introduction of its new racing-themed
video game, Burnout 2: Point of Impact, by paying for all speeding tickets in Great Britain on
the day of its release. Naturally, the Department of Transportation opposed the tactic with the
argument that Acclaim was encouraging citizens to break the law.36
• No discussion of guerrilla marketing gone wrong could possibly be complete without the “2007
bomb scare.” In March 2007, guerrilla marketing company Interference placed magnetic
signs (with electronic devices) promoting Aqua Teen Hunger Force—a production of Cartoon
Network, Turner Broadcasting System—in ten cities, including Boston. Citizens of that city
mistook the signs for terrorist devices. The devices triggered repeated bomb scares around the
city and prompted closure of bridges and a portion of the Charles River. Turner Broadcasting
compensated Boston-area authorities $2 million to compensate for the marketing stunt.37 ◆
Guerrilla marketing tactics are an intriguing ethical area. At one end, we see private enterprise at its most inventive, working, sometimes ingeniously, to reach potential customers and sell
them something. At the other end, we have practices that some have labeled deceptive, intrusive,
and offensive. At times, relatively small firms attempt to joust with the “gorilla” marketers (i.e.,
large firms) in the great spirit of commercial self-interest, yet Turner Broadcasting and Sony—
certainly “gorillas” by any standards—are apparently guerrilla marketers as well. And in today’s
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digital world, video of a guerrilla event can go straight to YouTube and around the globe in a
matter of minutes, for better or worse.
One can, of course, contend that if these practices truly offend individuals, the marketers
will be punished by failing to achieve their sales goals. But guerrilla marketing Web pages and
newsletters abound with success stories. Even if Sony’s ploys made some uncomfortable, sales
of the telephone/camera in the promotional cities were 54 percent higher than anywhere else. In
any number of cases, the signals that sellers are receiving from the feedback mechanism of the
market (sales) is that they must be doing something right, resting on familiar—and comforting—
utilitarian soil.
But sometimes the number of votes in the economic marketplace doesn’t tell the whole story.
Let’s look at the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident. Certainly no one would recommend or applaud
anything approaching this debacle. Indeed, it served as a cautionary tale for many marketers
inclined to push the envelope.
Hanging electronic devices under bridges is simply not something you do in a post-9/11
world. Still, in the competitive marketing world, a columnist in the Boston Globe pointed out the
irony of the situation—what appeared initially to have been a Turner debacle actually became a
success of some magnitude—noting that “Suddenly a no name cartoon about a talking box of
French fries is the talk of the town from coast to coast”38 Indeed, the Cartoon Network did enjoy a
considerable surge in ratings.
Acting in its own interest and that of its client, it appears that public interest never
entered into the Interference decision-making process. Instead, Interference used the opportunity to celebrate the creativity that is a hallmark of those who succeed in the advertising profession. The device apparently had been easily identified by those “in the target market,” who
critiqued the city, firefighters, and police for “overreacting” and found humor in the fact that
nightly newscasters spent more time explaining Adult Swim than they did reporting on the
event itself.39
The company’s indiscriminate use of public bridges and overpasses as a “medium” certainly
raises questions of social responsibility. Overlook for now the thoughtless creation of the device,
the danger to public safety that ensued, and the exertion of time and effort by city officials and
first-responders (would that we could overlook that) and ask this question: Was the “greatest good
for the greatest number” achieved when thousands had virtually no choice but to see a message
that may or may not have been of interest to them and that very likely wasn’t intended to be targeted to or understood by the majority of them in the first place?
The potential strategies and tactics for guerrilla marketing, as we have seen in the example
discussed here, are bounded only by marketing imagination. And certainly, at least on the surface,
many efforts seem harmless, even socially responsible—who can argue with sponsoring a Little
League team? But even at the most benign level, we encounter the classic question of means and
ends, where it could be contended that the only reason to (say) join a civic club, give public
speeches, or sponsor a Little League team is ultimately to reap marketing outcomes. This reasoning, of course, resonates with one of the essential themes of the market system—private gains
ultimately will result in public good.
At the other end of the continuum, we find a Whole Foods CEO posting criticism of a competitor under a false identity, Acclaim Entertainment’s offer to subsidize speeding tickets, and of
course, Turner Broadcasting’s electronic signs. In these instances, even the most forgiving might
say, “This goes too far!”
Where, then, is the ethical counterground? The introduction of laws or regulations would enforce a Kantian absolutism but clearly would thwart legitimate business strategies and tactics in
pursuit of the hallowed marketing driver of self-interest and the profit motive. Social responsibility? Perhaps, combined with a search for Aristotle’s middle ground to avoid excesses.
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One thing is certain. In our increasingly commercially driven culture, we will see more and
more efforts to sell to us, not only through traditional advertising but also through more creative
tactics. To what end? Communication scholar Stuart Ewen warns:
The main thing these [guerrilla tactics] “add” to our lives is an intensified sense of distrust of and
alienation from others. This grows out of the suspicion that any human interaction, any product
used or opinion expressed may be a commercially staged event designed to get us to buy, think,
or behave in certain ways.40
Guerrilla marketing seems, on reflection, well named. The traditional definition of the adjective involves tactics of “sudden acts of harassment,” the military version made infamous in Vietnam and, now, in occupied Iraq. The commercial version is benign by comparison of course, but
challenges the working relationship between a company with something to sell and an individual
who may—or may not—be interested, even as it adds yet another degree of commercialism to an
already highly commercialized culture.
24 DTC ADVERTISING: PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AS
CONSUMER PRODUCTS?
All we have to do is look back at the Vioxx situation to learn the dangers of direct-to-consumer
[pharmaceutical] ads.41
Dear Member of Congress: Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs should be prohibited. The ads are not educational, and do not promote public health. They increase the cost of
drugs and the number of unnecessary prescriptions, which is expensive to taxpayers, and can be
harmful or deadly to patients.42
We are concerned that [DTC] restrictions could have the perverse and unintended effect of chilling the communication of truthful, accurate and useful information about the benefits and risks
of available drug products to health-care practitioners and patients, which would be contrary to
the public health.43
These comments, from a U.S. senator in favor of a suspension of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, a consumer advocacy group, and an officer of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, respectively, illustrate the wide range of opinions on DTC pharmaceutical
advertising. Indeed, DTC advertising has been beset by controversy since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted the ban on DTC broadcast advertising in 1997, but the level of public discourse on the topic escalated in intensity and scope following the “Vioxx situation” in 2004. At
that time, pharmaceutical giant Merck pulled its widely advertised blockbuster drug, the painkiller
Vioxx, from the market after studies showed that the drug sharply increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Pfizer’s Celebrex—like Vioxx, a COX-2 inhibitor—remained on the market, but
the company stopped advertising in 2005 (resuming two years later). The ensuing furor set the
stage for lawsuits against Merck, harsh criticism of the FDA, increasing concern over drug safety
issues, and calls for the FDA to place limits on DTC advertising, especially for new drugs.
The bill that ultimately passed in 2007 was considered by the advertising and media industries to be a “significant victory.” It gives the FDA the authority to fine marketers for misleading
DTC ads and boosts the number of people at the FDA who will review ads, but it does not include
the harshest restrictions that had been proposed by the House and Senate earlier: a ban on advertising a new drug for the first two or three years and a special logo and warning indicating that all
the side effects may not have been found.44
Although a headline in Time magazine asked “Are Direct to Consumer Drug Ads Doomed?”45
total DTC drug advertising spending increased more than 300 percent between 1997 and 2009,
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when expenditures were estimated at $4.5 billion. There is evidence, however, of a change in the
media mix, with more advertising migrating from network television and magazines to cable and the
Internet. Pfizer was the largest pharmaceutical advertiser in 2009, spending $1.1 billion.46 The
United States and New Zealand are currently the only countries in the world to allow DTC advertising, though intensive lobbying efforts are underway to overturn bans in Europe and Canada.47
Let’s consider a summary of the positions taken by advocates and detractors. Supporters suggest DTC advertising is good for these reasons:
• It educates consumers about common yet serious conditions such as hypertension, diabetes,
elevated cholesterol levels, and depression that often go undiagnosed and untreated. Increased awareness brings patients into doctors’ offices seeking help.48
• It helps to avert underuse of medicines among individuals who require them for ongoing
treatment of chronic conditions.49
• Patients become more involved in their health care. Advertising frequently encourages them
to seek more information from their physicians, websites, or medical offices. A study published in Drug Week found that the number 1 action taken after seeing a DTC ad is information seeking, not rushing to doctors to request a prescription.50
• The pharmaceutical industry makes its living from drug prescriptions. At the same time, millions
of Americans are living longer lives if they have the correct prescription to fill their health needs.
Detractors suggest DTC advertising is not good because:
• Advertising is overtly persuasive in intent, so it is ill-suited to educate. Studies have found that
DTC ads tend to include more emotional than informational content, frequently rely on images, and rarely mention lifestyle changes as an alternative to medication.51
• Consumers do not understand the technicalities, are confused into believing that inconsequential changes are major breakthroughs, and develop unrealistic expectations about drug
performance.52
• DTC advertising contributes to consumers’ increased anxiety, self-diagnosis, and requests to
doctors for particular drugs. Research among physicians who had patients request a specific
prescription brand in the previous six months showed that responses to patient requests were
almost equally split between acceptance and refusal to prescribe.53 However, it has been suggested that DTC advertising results in some overuse of prescription drugs.54
There can be no doubt that more and more DTC pharmaceutical advertising will be directed toward us, although there are indications that the media mix will change. The Fifth Annual Cegedim
Dendrite DTC Industry Check-Up survey found that pharmaceutical companies planned increased
spending on more targeted online activities such as websites, search-engine marketing, and e-mail.55
The FDA recently announced a “Bad Ad Program,” urging doctors to report ads and sales
pitches that violate FDA rules. The program has been met with tepid response from the pharmaceutical industry.56 Then too, a recent article in Advertising Age suggests that consumers are more
interested in hearing from other consumers than from those with commercial interests. They are
creating online communities to share information about illnesses, provide support and rate prescription medications. (e.g., see www.patientslikeme.com or askapatient.com). Clearly, the dynamics
of the promotion of pharmaceuticals is in flux, even more so as consumers recognize and take advantage of opportunities for greater involvement. ◆
Depending on your perspective, the DTC advertising boom can be viewed as “the successful
marriage of the drug companies’ profit motive and their patients’ interest” or as an instance of patients becoming “unwitting tools of the drug manufacturer’s marketing department.” At the core,
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these perspectives differ on the perceived rationality of consumers. If we assume that individuals
will not be prone to developing symptoms to match those described in the advertising, if we assume that individuals will not be taken in by the uplifting images that populate many DTC ads,
and if we assume that consumers will be diligent in discerning and assessing all the possible side
effects of the promoted drug, then the relationship between profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies and health-seeking consumers may well be a fruitful one. This is particularly true if we
view consumers not only as information processors, carefully reflecting on information in the ads,
but also as information seekers, encouraged by the ads to go to websites, medical offices, or their
physician.
When patients and physicians support DTC advertising, support seems to be largely in utilitarian realms. The assumption is that both the patient and the doctor are being well served—the
patient via the empowerment that comes with awareness and knowledge and the doctor by a patient more informed about treatment options.
When patients and physicians object to DTC advertising, they seem to do so from two ethical
positions. The utilitarian argument suggests that, on balance, the greatest good for the greatest
number is not being served by attempts at self-medication. Complex areas are made to seem simpler largely to satisfy the demands of the techniques of modern advertising. Some adopt the Kantian position that it is just wrong in any way to apply pressure on the presumed expertise of the
physician in the time-honored doctor–patient relationship. As patients, we are used to having drug
companies attempt to persuade us about over-the-counter, that is, nonprescription, drugs. With
prescription drugs, however, we pass through the gatekeeper of the physician, who, we expect,
knows far more about the condition and the treatment than we do.
Additional ethical concerns arise more starkly in the context of the unintended consequences
of DTC advertising. In “Marketing Drugs to Consumers. Prescription Drugs Are Rapidly Becoming
‘Consumer Products,’ ”57 Asher Meir asks this seemingly simple question: What role does consumer
advertising have in the prescription drug market at all? DTC pharmaceutical advertising is a clear
instance of the logic of the consumer marketplace inserting itself and indeed, some would argue,
overwhelming an arena never intended to function within that logic. Many have noted the possibility that the DTC ads violate the balance of the doctor–patient relationship, and we can look beyond
that general observation to pose additional questions. In an article in the British medical journal The
Lancet, Jonathan Metzl, writing about European Union consideration of allowing DTC advertising,
notes that European doctors and patients should “take heed of the cautionary tales” of the American
DTC experience. Metzl58 and others raise a number of considerations worthy of reflection:
• How do patients’ requests for prescription drugs by name affect the traditional notions of
medical authority, medical communication, or doctor–patient interaction? While patients
have always asked for particular treatments, do DTC ads change the ways in which physicians and patients speak and listen to each other?
• How does DTC advertising change physicians’ understanding of the treatments they prescribe? Here, Metzl reminds us “that physicians’ beliefs about and expectations of prescription drugs are shaped by the fact that they too are members of U.S. culture and are as such
subject to the same advertisements as are their patients.”59
• How does DTC advertising amplify or change cultural expectations about illness and health?
• In an article titled “Merchandising Madness: Pill, Promises, and Better Living Through
Chemistry,” Rubin asks whether in the process of commodifying pharmaceutical brands it is
not possible that drug companies are manufacturing and commodifying not only drugs but
also diseases. He writes, “People who struggle with the very common problems of shyness,
sadness, nervousness, malaise, and even suspiciousness are offered refuge under the umbrella of drug-assisted well-being.”
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• Although drugs advertised to consumers are predominantly new drugs to treat chronic conditions, concerns have arisen over the increased advertising of “lifestyle” drugs, “available
only to those capable of recognizing and consummating the products’ constructed marketplace value.”60 One pharmaceutical industry observer sarcastically suggests that such drugs
may “one day free the world from the scourge of toenail fungus, obesity, baldness, face wrinkles and impotence.”61
• Concerns over the use of images in advertising more generally are exacerbated in DTC advertising. Metzl notes:
For instance, television in the USA is replete with images of Levitra-invigorated men throwing
footballs through tyres or women who are proficient at motherhood duties because of antidepressants. . . . The advertisements connect prescription medications with assumptions about
what it means to be a normal man, woman, black person, white person, lover, worker, or a host
of other abstract, protean roles in U.S. society. By doing so, the advertisements promote information not only about drugs, but also about the social contexts in which medications accrue symbolic meanings, that, one might well surmise, play out in clinical contexts.62
Any matters concerned with health are important and are touched with a sense of urgency.
This makes it particularly noteworthy that a Gallup poll in 2007 found that Americans rated their
image of both the health care industry and the pharmaceutical industry negatively; each industry
saw its image deteriorate more than the average of all industries in the previous four years.63
Much of the controversy swirling around the issues of DTC pharmaceutical advertising
seemingly arises from a discomfort with the fit of profit motive and the inviolability of the
doctor–patient relationship. This comment from former FDA commissioner David Kessler and
Douglas Levy illustrates the perceived fault line:
There is nothing wrong with pharmaceutical companies communicating directly with consumers, but they should adhere to the standards and ethics of medicine, not the standards and
ethics of selling soap or some other consumer product that presents minimal risks.64
25 SHOPPING TO SAVE THE WORLD
Cause related marketing’s case has never been clearer or more compelling. More people are becoming increasingly civic-minded; supporting causes by purchasing products that promote them
is a simple way to express this disposition. Simplicity is the key. That’s why cause related marketing provides so much money for charitable causes; it’s simply more convenient for consumers than
other forms of fundraising.65
Social responsibility has not always fit easily into a business culture where, to quote a well-known
economist and Harvard business professor, Theodore Levitt, “the business of business is profits . . .
virtue lies in the vigorous, undiluted assertion of the corporation’s profit-making function.”66 Once,
corporations were hesitant to link themselves to a cause, fearing that their involvement would appear to be exploitation of the cause for commercial gain. More recently, however, according to the
2010 Cone Cause Evolution study, 88 percent of Americans agree that “it is acceptable for companies to involve a cause or issue in their marketing”; 90 percent of consumers “want companies
to tell them the ways they are supporting causes.” Additionally, consumers indicate that they will
reward companies they view to be good citizens (e.g., by switching brands or recommending products or services to others).67
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Corporations now undertake a variety of initiatives in the name of corporate social responsibility; spending on cause marketing is expected to reach $1.6 billion in 2010.68 Kotler and Lee suggest that one noteworthy trend indicating this change in corporate philosophy is the transformation
of corporate philanthropy from giving as an obligation to giving as a strategic business tool.69 Indeed, in a 2007 survey reported by the Conference Research Board, a business research organization, 77 percent of the companies responding indicated that “aligning their giving with business
needs . . . was the most critical factor affecting their giving.”70
Cause-related marketing refers to corporate social initiatives that depend on consumer participation. Today, these initiatives are diverse; the degree and nature of consumer involvement vary.
Consumers simply may be asked to purchase a product they might buy regularly; a percentage of
sales will go to the cause. Some companies create items particularly to raise money for a cause;
again, a percentage of the profits will go to the cause. In still other instances, consumers are asked
to buy a symbol of their support of a cause—breast cancer’s looped pink ribbon, a red-dress pin for
heart disease, the Nike/Lance Armstrong Live Strong bracelet for cancer research—“wearable proof
. . . a visible declaration of concern.”71 Extreme, fitness-based events in which charitable foundations link with corporate sponsors to provide training programs for individuals who participate in
endurance events to raise money for a cause have become so commonplace that a writer in The
New York Times identified them as “the latest trend in fitness.”72 Nonprofit organizations have
raised about $1.5 billion annually via participatory athletic events.73
As Glenn noted in the statement that opened this case, corporate cause-related marketing fits
comfortably, almost seamlessly, in our consumer culture. Individuals routinely construct their identities and announce their allegiances and generosity: buying, charging, cooking for a cause; accessorizing with yellow bracelets, pink ribbons, red Converse sneakers; walking, running, cycling for a
cause. Indeed, cause-related marketing initiatives are so much a part of our business and cultural
landscape that we participate almost unconsciously. Glenn continued his statement by noting: “One
day soon marketers will drop the prefix ‘cause-related’ and see campaigns that stir the consumer’s
conscience as plain, simple marketing—unremarkable and barely worthy of comment.”74 Are these
cause-related marketing campaigns truly “unremarkable and barely worthy of comment”? ◆
Cause-related marketing as a strategy raises questions about the nature of corporate philanthropy and social participation. Certainly, corporations should be commended for using their assets in positive ways to make a difference, be it locally, nationally, or globally. Without such
corporate social initiatives, organizations addressing issues ranging from education and arts to environment, health, and social welfare would be hard-pressed to operate. Indeed, the long-term relationships created through corporate–nonprofit alliances provide the nonprofits with a far greater
ability to engage in long-term planning than more traditional, grant-based funding may. Thus,
from a utilitarian perspective, we might rationalize that any type of philanthropy is ethical because
the greater good of civic action is served.
Does a corporation’s motive for undertaking a cause-marketing social initiative need be totally without an expectation of reward for it to be ethically virtuous? Or does the concept of
“strategic giving” illustrate a golden-mean balance between pure altruism and economic return?
Let’s return to Theodore Levitt’s logic mentioned at the outset. Certainly, the stark position
that he and others, most notably economist Milton Friedman, advocated decades ago is no longer
defensible. Yet, in the article from which Levitt’s observation is drawn, “The Dangers of Social Responsibility,” he continues:
. . . at bottom [a corporation’s] outlook will always remain narrowly materialistic. What we have,
then, is the frightening spectacle of a powerful economic functional group whose future and
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perception are shaped in a tight materialistic context of money and things but which imposes narrow ideas about a broad spectrum of unrelated noneconomic subjects on the mass of man and society. Even if its outlook were the purest kind of good will, that would not recommend the
corporation as an arbiter of our lives.75
Levitt encourages us to reflect on the values and principles on which decisions regarding
public welfare should be made. Are we comfortable with the insertion of a commercial imperative
into this social realm? Are we comfortable with corporate decision makers, who by professional
necessity are motivated primarily by the needs and objectives of the corporation rather than by social welfare, making decisions about the relative importance of social needs in achieving or maintaining public welfare? Certainly the realization that the decision to support one cause (let’s say
breast cancer) over another (AIDS) may be the result of no greater urgency than to create an image
among a particular target market gives one pause.
The issue becomes even more complicated. Corporate decision makers rarely have any particular expertise in the relevant areas of public welfare. Thus a decision to form an alliance with a
particular group related to a cause is simultaneously a decision to advocate a particular solution
to the problem, that is, to say, “This is the way that the problem should be solved.” The application of a utilitarian perspective becomes a bit more fragile.
To be genuinely altruistic in nature, that is, to demonstrate other-centered love, a gift must
have benefit to the recipient as its primary motive and purpose but not necessarily its only motivation or purpose. Therefore, strategic giving may be regarded as ethical.
Then, too, cause-related marketing legitimizes and reinforces consumption not only as a
route to social benevolence but also as an act of activism. To appeal to consumption amid concerns
about exploitation and depletion of resources, environmental degradation, social inequities, escalating energy consumption, and so on might seem indefensible to many. In response to the Red
Campaign for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria launched by rock star and
activist Bono, a columnist in the Chicago Tribune asked plaintively, “Do you have to suffer and sacrifice to make the world a better place? Or can you just buy more cool stuff?”76 Indeed, has “buying more cool stuff” replaced political activity?
Finally, consider the nonprofit organizations whose causes do not align themselves easily
with corporate or business objectives. In an era of “cause clutter,” charities may find themselves
tempted to reposition their groups or reconstruct their cause into a more marketable commodity.
The temptation to dramatize and overemotionalize need in order to attract donors may only be exacerbated in this new giving environment. Here, Mill may need to be tempered with Aristotle. A
utilitarian focus may emphasize the urgency of fund-raising, the acquisition of a corporate partner, as the route to generating the greatest benefit. Yet consequences of challenges, transformation,
and perhaps even the violation of values and principles supporting the cause require careful consideration at both the individual and organizational levels. A balance of emotional and logical argumentation in fund-raising appeals may be needed to avoid the extremes that would justify using
any means to raise funds for worthwhile ends.
26 HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT? ETHICS OF BEHAVIORAL TARGETING
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. You had to live—did live, from
habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and
except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
George Orwell, 1984
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As often happens with technological innovations, exuberance over newly discovered capabilities coupled with optimistic and perhaps idealistic visions of never-before possibilities finds us doing
things because we can before we’ve given sufficient thought to unintended consequences or
varied perspectives (sometimes identified as runaway technology). In some sense, that’s the case
with behavioral targeting: it has something to offer both marketers and consumers, but it comes
at a price.
What is behavioral targeting? Unfortunately, that’s a question not easily answered. Definitions
of the concept are many and varied; some define the process of behavioral targeting and others
define the outcome. Then, too, definitions depend to a large degree upon two factors: (1) whether
you are functionally knowledgeable about Internet technology and how the Internet “works”
(cookies, IP addresses, PII and non-PII data, algorithms and such), and (2) whether you are an observer (i.e., a gatherer and user of data) or merely one of the observed (which, like it or not, we all
are). For our purposes here, we will rely upon the definition provided by the FTC:
. . . the tracking of a consumer’s activities online—including the searches the consumer
has conducted, the web pages visited, and the content viewed—in order to deliver advertising targeted to the individual consumer’s interests.77
If you are a marketer, your interest in behavioral targeting is precisely because it enables you
to use online behavior data such as pages visited, searches, and so on to target advertising to
those users who are most likely to find your ad relevant. These data also can be combined with
other data such as demographics and purchase behavior to facilitate even more precise targeting.
eMarketer estimates that advertisers will spend $960 million on personally targeted ads in 2010.78
If you are not a marketer, chances are you may never have thought about being “behaviorally targeted,” though you might have noticed that ads showing up on your Facebook page seemed to
know what you were thinking—like the time you mentioned on your page that you were working on a class project involving Harley Davidson and soon all things Harley began to appear on
your page. According to Michael Learmonth, writing in Advertising Age, the same technology that
makes behavioral targeting possible also makes a variety of other services possible. Not only would
you receive the same ad—and very likely an ad that was irrelevant to your interests—each time you
revisited a site, “all your favorite sites would lose your preferences; information fields would never
auto-fill; and e-commerce would become too annoying to contemplate.”79 “If there is no information collected, it would be like a constant exchange with an amnesiac,” said David Berkowitz,
director of emerging media at 360i.”80
Behavioral targeting has become something of a must-try marketing strategy in recent years,
as well as something of a lightning rod for controversy. The controversy seems to be less about the
concept of behavioral targeting per se than about the gathering of the information that makes behavioral targeting possible. In short, it’s a discussion about online privacy; and it’s a complex discussion. Consider the following scenarios:
• Facebook introduced Beacon on November 6, 2007. The system tracked a member’s activity on forty-four third-party sites, among them Blockbuster and Fandango, and reported activity back to that member’s friends. Enrollment was automatic unless the member opted
out. Facebook’s stated intention was to “help people share information with their friends
about things they do on the web.”81 After only ten days, 50,000 Facebook members had
signed a petition objecting to Beacon. Facebook tweaked the system, facilitating the optout process; however, it was soon discovered that even though the information did not appear on the site once the member had opted out, the information was still sent to
Facebook.
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In September 2009, Facebook settled a class-action suit alleging that the Beacon service
had violated users’ privacy by sharing information without their consent. The suit accused
Facebook of trying to profit off the data by selling targeted advertising. The settlement included shutting down the service and paying $9.5 million to create a foundation funding
products that promote online privacy, security, and safety.82
• Although there is some doubt about whether they will gain mainstream popularity, a number
of start-ups have been introduced to help people share information on the Internet. Blippy, a
“weird-that-it-exists site”83 was launched in December 2009 with $1.6 million financing from
a number of venture capitalist firms. On its website, Blippy describes itself as “a fun and easy
way to see and discuss the things people are buying” and invites you to “automatically share
your favorite purchases from iTunes, Amazon, Zappos, Visa, MasterCard and more.”84 It
works like this: A user creates a profile and shares online purchases with a mass group of
friends using his or her Blippy card, which is merely the card the user told Blippy to track. One
writer described it as “akin to a giant Facebook mall for shopping.”85
In March 2010, Blippy raised $11.2 million in a second round of funding. Blippy was
profiled in The New York Times, on April 22, 2010. The next day Blippy experienced a smallscale glitch when it was discovered that four users’ credit card numbers were discovered in a
simple Google search. Philip Kaplan, the founder of Blippy, described the problem on the
Blippy blog as “a lot less bad than it looks,” provided detailed descriptions of how and why
it happened, and assured users that things had been corrected and it wouldn’t happen again.
Notably, that same day, Blippy raised $8 million in another round of funding.
• Anonymizer.com, an Internet privacy service, reminds us that “1 in 5 online consumers are
victims of cybercrime,” and then describes the benefit of its service: “Our technology keeps
all your Internet activities—Web browsing, email, chat, webcam—private and anonymous. No
one will have any idea what Web sites you are visiting or what you are doing, except as you
choose.”86 In essence, you leave no digital footprints. Does that mean no more recommendations from Amazon?
And, just in case you are one of the risk averse, and are now satisfied that you can “anonymize”
your digital footprint, think about this advice from Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science
at Cornell University who studies social networks: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public—because increasingly, it is.”87 ◆
Lou Hodges wrote that “as our ability to invade privacy has increased, so too has our
willingness to invade.”88 Though he was talking about the press, the statement is no less true here.
At the core, the most obvious ethical dilemmas in behavioral targeting are those of privacy and its
accompanying values of trust and respect. And, what is privacy? The definiton offered by Alan
Westin is a useful one: “the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others.”89
At the outset, discussion is complicated by differences in understanding privacy and differences in the value placed on it, as is evident in the scenarios in the case. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, has advocated for years that users should be more open to sharing information. Others
argue that private information is a property, that it belongs to the individual. In short, they argue
that privacy is a commodity. In what seems to be a mood of online openness, however, many provide “seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation” without a second thought.90 One writer noted:
This new world owes its origin to the rampant sharing of photos, resumes and personal news
bites on services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, which have acclimated people to broadcasting even the most mundane aspects of their lives.91
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In fact, some are particularly eager to share information ranging from what they have purchased and where they are, to their travel schedule and even their DNA profile.92 Others are less
enchanted with the idea of sharing information but will to do so if sharing results in some benefits that they value. Mark Andrejevic writes in this regard:
Indeed, opponents of corporate surveillance seem unable to provide a compelling rationale for privacy protection in an era when consumers remain surprisingly willing to surrender increasingly comprehensive forms of personal information in response to offers of convenience and customization.93
Insofar as we give consent for our personal information to be collected and to be handled in
particular ways, that is, that we consent to its being shared with third parties, it might be argued
that collecting data for behavioral targeting is ethical, and indeed, perhaps beneficial. Still, to what
degree are individuals aware that their digital footprint is being tracked? Certainly Kleinberg may
tell us that we should behave online as if we were in public, and we might even nod our heads in
agreement, but do we actively incorporate that knowledge the next time we order a book or chat
with a friend? Or, do we come to the “relationship” with a foundation based in trust and a reasonable expectation of privacy? And what of transparency? Monitoring online behavior is one
thing; inclusion in a detailed database that is shared with others is quite another. Selling that information for profit, too, is something quite different.
Would you find it acceptable for someone to stand behind you while you surf the Internet, write
down everything you look at and them keep those notes for themselves? Would you trust that
person to safeguard those notes? To not turn them over to anyone else, particularly someone who
you didn’t know? How would you feel if that individual sold the notes for profit?94
Recall that the controversy surrounding behavioral targeting is less about the concept of behavioral targeting per se than about the gathering of the information that makes behavioral targeting possible. Behaviorial targeting is a double-edged sword. In an environment inundated with commercial
messages, messages targeted and received can be more relevant and so more effective. However, this
benefit is only possible through the collection and use of personal data—data mining and sharing in
ways the consumer cannot control and perhaps would not condone. Those very technologies that
threaten our privacy have resulted in many benefits. It is the means to those ends that are in question.
Here, once again, we encounter the classic question of means and ends at both the personal
and organization level. How much are we willing to “pay” for information that is customized to
our interests? Are we aware of long-term consequences—consequences beyond those of possible
harm when the information is misused? Andrejevic writes:
Rumors of the death of privacy in the 21st century have been greatly exaggerated. The increasingly
important role of on-line surveillance in the digital economy should be constructed not as the disappearance of privacy per se, but as a shift in control over personal information from individuals
to private corporations. The information in question—behavioral habits, consumption preferences,
and so on—is emphatically not being publicized. It is, rather, being aggregated into proprietary
commodities, whose economic value is dependent, at least in part, upon the fact that they are privately owned. Such commodities are integral to the exploitation of customized markets.95
Now let’s shift the focus of the discussion slightly. What if people form mistaken impressions
that we have no opportunity to correct? What if targeted information comes to us based on a mistaken impression? Think, for example, of the impression that might be formed of your interests as
you are working on a research paper about pornography. Are we not, in these instances, in Kantian terms, diminished as human beings when we are so objectified?
Businesses, it seems, have two obligations in this area. The first is to inform you about what
will and will not be done with the information they collect. Will it be shared with other companies?
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And second, if it will be shared, you must be given an opportunity to choose whether you want
that information shared.96 It sounds so straightforward, but think of the questions regarding consent and assurances of anonymity. Is the privacy policy users are asked to sign clear and understandable? Are users promised anonymity? Can any site truly promise anonymity? Is it ethical to
automatically enroll users, that is, track their online behavior if they have opted out? Or is it more
responsible to choose not to enroll users unless they opt in? Is it ethical to essentially demand that
users be vigilant to guarantee their own right to privacy? These are not merely technical questions;
at their core, they are questions of trust, respect, and responsibility.
Finally, Davidson calls to our attention the buyer–seller relationship that undergirds this
discussion:
Behind the issues of consumer privacy is the problematic buyer–seller relationship. If it is fundamentally a cooperative relationship, businesses will use personal information only in the best interest of their customers. If the relationship is fundamentally adversarial, however, business will
continue to manage personal information an an asset so that it produces the maximum profit.97
NOTES
1. William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhally, and Jacqueline Botterill, Social Communication in Advertising:
Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace, 3rd ed. (New York, Routledge, 2005), 3, 6.
2. Global expenditures : http://www.dmnews.com/advertising-spending/topic/1294/ ; U.S. expenditures:
http://www.kantarmedia.com/sites/default/files/press/kantarmediareportsUSAdexpenditures.pdf.
3. Mark Richtel, “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price,” New York Times, June 7, 2010, 1.
4. Eric Sass, “The Kids Are Addicted to Social Media,” Social Media & Marketing Daily, April 26, 2010,
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126919.
5. Matthew P. McAllister and Joseph Turow, “New Media and the Commercial Sphere: Two Intersecting
Trends, Five Categories of Concern,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 46:4 (2002): 505–514.
6. Aimee Lee Ball, “Are 5,001 Facebook Friends One Too Many?,” New York Times, May 28, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/5/30/fashion/30FACEBOOK.html?scp=3&sq=aimee_lee_ball&st=cse.
7. http://fanpagelist.com/category/brands.
8. David Karr, “For the Rich, Magazines Fat on Ads,” New York Times, October 1, 2007, C1.
9. http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com.
10. Joseph Turow, “Audience Autonomy at the End of Television,” in The Advertising and Consumer Culture
Reader, eds. Joseph Turow and Matthew McAllister (NY: Routledge, 2009), 406; Stephanie Clifford, “Product Placements Acquire a Life of Their Own on Shows,” New York Times, July 14, 2008.
11. Jim Spaeth, “A Day in the Media Life,” Media, October 2005, 48.
12. Joe Mandese, “Hitting the Wall,” Media, October 2005, 29.
13. Matthew Creamer, “Caught in the Clutter Crossfire: Your Brand,” Advertising Age, April 2, 2007, 1.
14. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_31/b3743001.htm.
15. http://www.girlsintelligenceagency.com/.
16. Barbara Barbieri McGrath and Roger Glass, The M&M’s Brand Counting Book (Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishers, 2002).
17. Laura Petrecca, “Amateur Advertisers Get a Chance; Companies Pick Up Ads Made by Novices and
Regular Old Customers,” USA Today, March 28, 2006, 2B.
18. Turow, “Audience Autonomy,” 40?
19. The Public Mind: Consuming Images, PBS documentary with Bill Moyers, 1989.
20. Genetics & IVF Institute, advertisement, “Over 40 and Thinking of Having a Baby?” New York Times,
September 30, 2007, 18S.
21. David F. Noble, “Technology and the Commodification of Higher Education,” Monthly Review, March 2002.
22. Ibid.
23. http://www.adage.com/moy2008/article?article_id=131810.
24. Jane Deery, “Reality Television as Advertainment,” Popular Communication 2:1 (2004): 1–20.
25. Nato Thompson, “The Flip Side to the Commodification of Revolution: A Critique of the Activist Scene,”
Journal of Aesthetics & Protest (http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20070831101802403).
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See also, Thomas Frank, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent,” in Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler
(New York: W. W. Norton: 1997) and Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).
26. Sut Jhally, in The Ad and the Ego, video documentary, Parallax Pictures, 1997.
27. Brooke Capps, “The Reserved Ruler of In-Your-Face Marketing,” Advertising Age, March 5, 2007, 12.
28. Ibid.
29. Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerrilla Marketing, 4th ed., Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from
Your Small Business (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).
30. Curtis Rush, “Empty Fridges Land in Strange Places to Nourish Support for Food Drive,” Toronto Star,
September 22, 2006, A10.
31. Christine Harold, Our Space: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2007), viii.
32. Brooke Capps, “The Reserved Ruler of In-Your-Face Marketing,” Advertising Age, March 5, 2007, 12.
33. Rob Walker, “The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders, New York Times Magazine, December 5, 2004, 68.
34. http://www.wemarket4u.net/fatfoe.
35. David Kesmodel and John R. Wilke, “Whole Foods CEO Used Alias on Web Forums; Alter Ego’s Postings
on Yahoo Stock Forums Cited in Lawsuit Looking to Block Acquisition of Wild Oats Markets,” Wall Street
Journal, July 12, 2007, B-11.
36. http://www.entertainmentopia.com/scripts/displayGame.php?id=13.
37. Michael Learmonth, “Turner Pays in Boston,” Daily Variety, February 6, 2007, 4.
38. Steve Bailey, “Laughing to the Bank,” The Boston Globe, February 2, 2007, C-1.
39. Ibid.
40. http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2557.
41. Anna Wilde Mathews and Stephanie Kang, “Media Industry Helped Drug Firms Fight Ad Restraints,”
Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2007.
42. http://www.commercialalert.org/petition to sign.
43. Ira Teinowitz, “Stage Set for Senate to Shackle DTC Advertisers,” Advertising Age, February 26, 2007, 43.
44. Ira Teinowitz, “House Approves FDA Bill that Leaves Out Ad Curbs,” Advertising Age, September 19, 2007, 1.
45. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1876679,00.html.
46. http://www.mmm-online.com/dtc-spending-stabilized-in-2009-amid-strong-growth-for-cable-internetadspend/article/165030/.
47. http://www.sourcewatch.org/.
48. Wendy Macias and Liza Stavchansky Lewis, “Sex, Drugs and the Evening News: DTC Pharmaceutical
Drug Advertising,” in Issues in American Advertising: Media, Society, and a Changing World, 2nd ed., Tom
Reichert (Chicago: Copy Workshop, 2008).
49. J. M. Donohue, M. Cevasco, and M. B. Rosenthal, “A Decade of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising,” New
England Journal of Medicine, 357:7 (August 16, 2007): 673–681.
50. “Regulatory Actions; 10th Annual National Survey on Consumer Reaction to DTC Pharmaceutical Advertising Reveals #1 Action Taken After Seeing DTC Ad: Information Seeking,” Drug Week, June 1, 2007.
51. Rita Rubin, “Analysis: Prescription Drug Ads Leave Out Risks, Alternatives; Consumers Urged to Be
Skeptical,” USA Today, January 30, 2007 7D; Ira Teinowitz, “Stage Set for Senate to Shackle DTC Advertisers; Bill Would Allow Ban of Up to 2 Years and Require FDA to Pre-Clear Drug Ads,” Advertising Age,
February 26, 2007, 43.
52. B. Mintzes, An Assessment of the Health System Impacts of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription
Medications, vol. II: Literature Review. Retrieved from http://www.chspr.ubc.ca/node/217.
53. Jisu Huh and Rita Langteau, “Presumed Influence of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Prescription Drug
Advertising on Patients,” Journal of Advertising 36:3 (Fall 2007).
54. Donohue, Cevasco, and Rosenthal, “A Decade of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising.”
55. Cegedim Dendrite, “Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Marketing for U.S. Prescription Drugs Moves Online,
Cegedim Dendrite Survey Says,” Biotech Business Week, July 30, 2007, 227.
56. Rich Thomaselli, “DA Deputizes Doctors to Police ‘Bad’ Rx Drug Ads,” Advertising Age, May 24, 2010.
57. Asher Meir, “Marketing Drugs to Consumers. Prescription Drugs are Rapidly Becoming ‘Consumer Products,’” Jerusalem Post, April 13, 2007, 17.
58. Jonathan M. Metzl, “If Direct-to-Consumer Advertisements Come to Europe: Lessons from the USA,”
Lancet 369:9562 (February 2007–March 2007).
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59. Lawrence C. Rubin, “Merchandising Madness: Pill, Promises, and Better Living Through Chemistry,”
Journal of Popular Culture 38:2 (2004): 370.
60. James F. Tracy, “Between Discourse and Being: The Commodification of Pharmaceuticals in Late Capitalism,”
Communication Review 7:15 (2004).
61. Silverstein, quoted in Tracy, ibid.
62. Metzl, “If Direct-to-Consumer Advertisements Come to Europe.”
63. The Gallup Poll, Annual Update: Americans Rate Business and Industry Sectors, September 6, 2007, http://
www.gallup.com/pou/28615/annual-update-americans-rate-business-industry-sectors.aspx.
64. Quoted in Rubin, “Analysis: Prescription Drug Ads Leave Out Risks.”
65. Martin Glenn, “There’s a Simple Rationale Behind Ties with Causes,” Marketing (UK), March 20, 2003, 18.
66. Theodore Levitt, “The Dangers of Social Responsibility,” Harvard Business Review (September/October 1958): 42.
67. http://www.coneinc.com.
68. http://www.causemarketingforum.com/page.asp?ID=188.
69. Philip Kotler and Nancy Lee, Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your
Cause (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005).
70. Ron Nixon, “Little Green for (Red): How Much Profit Trickles Down to the Mission?” New York Times,
February 6, 2008, C-1.
71. Rob Walker, “Live Strong Bracelet,” New York Times Magazine, August 29, 2004.
72. C. Sweeney, “The Latest in Fitness: Millions for Charity,” New York Times, July 7, 2005, E1.
73. http://www.causemarketingforum.com.
74. Glenn, “There’s a Simple Rationale.”
75. Levitt, “The Dangers of Social Responsibility.”
76. Nara Schoenberg, “BUY(LESS) Targets Cause-Related Marketing,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 2007.
77. http://www.imarketingltd.com/index.cfm/page/Behavioral-Targeting:-Putting-Lipstick-on-a-Pig/
cdid/10603/pid/10261.
78. Douglas MacMillan. “The FTC Takes on Targeted Web Ads,” Bloomberg Business Week, August 2, 2009,
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2009/tc2009082_486167.htm.
79. Michael Learmonth, “Tracking Makes Life Easier for Consumers,” Advertising Age, July 13, 2009,
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=137869.
80. Ibid.
81. http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=11174.
82. Jessica Vascellaro, “Facebook Settles Class-Action Suit Over Beacon Service,” Wall Street Journal, September
18, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125332446004624573.html.
83. http://www.businessinsider.com/scary-blippy-publishes-user-credit-card-numbers-2010-4.
84. http://www.blippy.com.
85. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363034,00.asp.
86. http://www.anonymizer.com.
87. Steve Lohr, “How Privacy Vanishes Online, New York Times, March 16, 2010.
88. Lou Hodges, “Privacy and the Press,” in The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics, eds. Lee Wilkins and Clifford
Christians (New York: Routledge, 2009), 276.
89. Alan Westin, Privacy and Freedom, (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 7; quoted in Wilkins and Christians,
Handbook of Mass Media Ethics, 277.
90. Steve Lohr, “How Privacy Vanishes Online.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy
.html?emc=eta1.
91. Brad Stone, “For Web’s New Wave, Sharing Details Is the Point,” New York Times, April 22, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/technology/23sharehtml?sep=53&sq=bradstone&st=nyt.
92. Ibid.
93. Mark Andrejevic, “The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self-Disclosure,”
in The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader, eds. Joseph Turow and Matthew McAllister (New York:
Routledge, 2009), 387–388.
94. Kirsten E. Martin, “Facebook (A): Beacon and Privacy,” http://www.corporate-ethics.org.
95. Andrejevic, “The Work of Being Watched,” 397–398.
96. D. Kirk Davidson, The Moral Dimension of Marketing: Essays on Business Ethics (Chicago: American
Marketing Assocation, 2002), 131–134.
97. Davidson, ibid, 134.
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C H A P T E R
7
Advertising in an
Image-Based Culture
In any case, it is surely no longer possible to understand the media as somehow “outside” society or
an adjunct to larger concerns.1
I
t is becoming increasingly difficult, and perhaps impossible, to separate the media in
their varied formats and their apparently endless possibilities in any meaningful way
from thoughts, behavior, relationships, values, and ideas that are culture. Hence, we no
longer talk of media and culture but instead of media culture. In this context, the question
of whether advertising is a mirror, passively reflecting society and its values, or a shaper, actively constructing those social values is rendered moot. Advertising both defines and is defined by culture and is perhaps best characterized as a zerrspiegel, a fun house mirror,
reflective but rich with distortion, and selective in that not all is seen in the mirror. Consider
Michael Schudson’s observation in his book, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion:
The picture of life that ads parade before us is familiar, scenes of life as in some sense we
know it, or would like to know it.
Advertising picks up and represents values already in our culture. But the values,
however deep or widespread, are not the only ones people have to aspire to, and the pervasiveness of advertising makes us forget this.
Advertising picks up some of the things we hold dear and represents them to us as
all of what we value.2
Historically, advertising was once primarily informational in both its purpose and content.
Advertising told consumers about product features and uses. As our culture gradually evolved
from a production-based to a consumption-based culture, advertising became what historian
Rick Pollay has identified as transformational. That is, it became focused on consumer benefits
rather than product characteristics, often trying to influence “attitudes . . . toward brands, expenditure patterns, lifestyles, techniques for achieving personal and social success, and so forth.”3
Today, our media culture increasingly is image based. As Bill Moyers noted in Consuming Images,
“Mass-produced images fill our everyday world and our innermost lives, shape our private
thoughts and our public mind.”4 The implications are nothing short of phenomenal, for images
138
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challenge our traditional ways of deciding whether an argument is true or false. A short discussion by
Neil Postman, drawn from the Moyers documentary, serves to illustrate:
We have recognized, reputable ways of judging the truth or falsity of statements. We have means,
to use a phrase from Bertram Russell, defenses against the seduction of eloquence. But, we know
more or less how to do that, how to analyze what people say, how to measure the truth or falsity
of something.
Now let’s take a McDonald’s commercial. We see a young father taking his six-year-old
daughter into McDonald’s, and they’re eating a cheeseburger, and they’re ecstatic.
Is that true or false?
Is the image true or false?
Well, the words don’t seem to apply to that sort of thing. There just is no way to assess that
in the way we assess statements, linguistic utterances.
So we now build up a whole world of imagery where basically we are out of the realm of
logic and perhaps, into the realm of aesthetics. You either like Ronald Reagan or you don’t. You
either like McDonald’s or you don’t. But you can’t talk about their truth or falsity. So we now
need a different kind of defense against the seduction of eloquence.5
In an image-based media culture, the commodity has relinquished its importance to the brand.
And, what of the advertising images? They, indeed, are the commodities in which we traffic.6
The cases in this chapter introduce you to some of the ethical dilemmas encountered and the
questions raised with regard to our marketplace of images. “Making the Same Different” addresses
the question at the heart of many branding activities: Is it appropriate to “manufacture” difference
between parity products? “Stereotyping Attitude” explores the construction and perpetuation of
stereotypes hidden within strategies of humor. “Everyone Knows Her: The Unattainable Ideal” examines advertising imagery that despite widespread criticism and sometimes legal challenges persists in the celebration of an ideal feminine beauty that is unattainable for most women. “But she’s
only 4! Hypersexualization of Young Girls” examines the trends that have led to this phenomenon
and explores its ethical dimensions. The last two cases are grounded in advertising as a vehicle for
social change. “Real Beauty: Responsible Images?” looks at the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty as a
social advocacy effort. “Animal Rights: Responsible Images?” focuses on PETA, a highly successful
organization known perhaps more for its controversial advertising than for its animal rights work.
27 MAKING THE SAME DIFFERENT: BRANDING
This is the one category in which the product itself is an internationally recognized commodity
that is colorless, tasteless, and (hopefully) odorless. It is a brand category that only mad dogs and
marketers would venture to enter.7
Bottled water has become the indispensable prop in our lives and our culture. It starts the day in
lunch boxes; it goes to every meeting, lecture hall, and soccer match; it’s in our cubicles at work;
in the cup holder of the treadmill at the gym; and it’s rattling around half-finished on the floor of
every minivan in America.8
Why Do People Drink Bottled Water?
“It’s better for you.”
Is it?
• Municipal water systems are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Tap water is not
allowed to contain fecal coliform bacteria and must be tested for these pathogens 100 times
or more a month. Although bottled water is a packaged food regulated by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), bottled water plants are required to test just once weekly.9
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• The vast majority of the country’s 55,000 municipal water systems are subject to—and every
three months must pass—more rigorous quality standards than water bottlers.10
• Fiji brand water ran an ad with this copy: “The Label Says Fiji Because It’s Not Bottled in Cleveland.” A resulting analysis of Fiji water, commissioned in retaliation by Cleveland officials,
found 6.3 micrograms of arsenic per liter in Fiji water as compared with none in Cleveland
local tap water. (Fiji subsequently reported that its own analyses identified fewer than 2
micrograms per liter.)11
“It tastes better.”
Does it?
• In May 2001, Good Morning America conducted an informal blind taste test among its crew
members. The results indicated that New York City’s tap water, achieving 45 percent of the
vote, outperformed Poland Springs (24 percent), O-2 (19 percent), and Evian (12 percent) by
merit of its taste.
• In the same year, a Yorkshire study found that 60 percent of the 2,800 people surveyed could
not differentiate between their local tap water and the bottled varieties (Scientific American).
• Arguably a more pointed example of social commentary, was an episode of Penn & Teller:
Bullshit, which conducted its own experiment. The show, a documetary-style television series
on Showtime, which prides itself on identifying and exposing popular sociopolitical misconceptions, aired an episode called “Bottled Water” in March 2003. The episode introduces an
actor posing as a “water steward” at a fancy restaurant, offering a menu of fake bottled waters to unsuspecting diners. As each table orders its waters, commenting on the unique freshness of one or the sweetness of the next, the screen juxtaposes images of the water steward
filling each and every bottle with water from the garden hose.
If evidence suggests that bottled water is neither better for you nor better tasting than tap
water, why are we, as consumers, only too happy to spend between $1 and $40 per bottle for a
resource that costs us less than 1 cent per gallon from the tap? The answer, as you’ve likely
guessed, has to do with marketing, branding, and the construction of image.
Aquafina, Pepsi’s contribution to the bottled-water industry and America’s best-selling brand,
and the water we pour from our tap have something in common: their source. Both Aquafina and
Dasani, ranked first and second, respectively, in the industry, start with water from public sources
(tap water) and “refine” it using the same reverse-osmosis techniques to which the water already
has been subjected. The Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for safe drinking water require
that. “So imagine the corporate euphoria back in 1994 when the brain trust at PepsiCo became certain that consumers would buy just plain water for approximately the same price as Pepsi.”12
Advertisers for the bottled-water industry face a challenge that parallels that of any number of
industries selling parity products: How do we make the same seem different? Our consideration, of
course, is whether it is right to imply differences where, for all intents and purposes, there are none.
“Aquafina. Purity Guaranteed.”
“Dasani. Make Your Mouth Water.”
“Evian. Live Young.”
If these slogans are familiar, then copywriters somewhere are patting themselves on the back
for a job well done. They’ve differentiated each of their brands from the competition. In short,
they’ve developed brand equity. Some companies, for example, Nestle Waters, have the even
greater challenge of distinguishing numerous brands within the same corporation; Deer Park,
Zephyrhills, Poland Springs, Perrier, and San Pellegrino are all Nestle waters, branded strategically
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to establish individual identities within consumers’ minds. As you also may have guessed (or
experienced), these brand identities correspond with the prices that consumers are willing to pay
for them.
In a market of virtually indistinguishable products, our job as advertisers is to create the illusion of a difference where there may or may not be one. What are the ramifications of this process?
In terms of bottled water, a major consideration is the argument that advertising efforts for bottled
water detract from the appeal of tap water. Remember, the taste and quality for many consumers
are identical (not to mention more affordable). Additionally, groups such as Corporate Accountability International argue the inherent contradiction in emphasizing the health benefits of a product whose bottling and distribution endanger the environment.13
A writer in The New York Times noted: Politicians are banning the bottles, and restaurateurs are
wiping them off their menus, calling attention to the ecological costs of moving millions of bottles
around the world and around the United States—not to mention disposing of all those containers.14
“Sales of bottled water dropped slightly in 2008 and 2009 to an estimated $5.1 billion. Still,
estimated per-capita consumption is 28.5 gallons.15 ◆
Let’s consider more generally the dilemmas characteristic of nearly all parity product advertising. According to marketing scholar David Aaker, the creation of differentiated brands is a distinguishing characteristic of modern marketing. He notes:
Unique brand associations have been established using product attributes, names, packages, distribution strategies, and advertising. The idea has been to move beyond commodities to branded
products—to reduce the primacy of price upon the purchase decision, and accentuate the bases
of differentiation.16
In the process of constructing a brand, then, we are responsible for every detail that affects consumers’ perceptions, from the font to the graphics in the packaging, from the copy to the placement of ads, and even in the careful distribution of a product. In so doing, we create the perception
of a product that is truly superior when we know as well as its manufacturers that it is, in essence,
interchangeable with most other products in its category. The ethical question we must ask ourselves is a fundamental one: Regardless of whether it can be done, is it wrong to imply differences
where, functionally, there are none?
In answering this question, we might start by noting that we are all creatures of symbolic
meaning and are, therefore, not ill-served by communications that suggest more than they may ultimately deliver. We may in fact feel more “comfortable” with one virtually identical brand over
another—such as Dasani over tap water because of the symbolic content that makes a difference
for us. So, we could contend that this is an ethical issue without a constituency: If customers in fact
want to perceive their brand choices as different, for whatever reason, so be it.
In justifying our efforts, we also might argue that the consumers are aware of the parity in
many of their choices. But can we be sure? Would it make a difference if people knew that certain
brands were virtually identical in performance? Perhaps. But if knowledge of the parity nature of
some products would make a difference in purchasing decisions, then the comfortable utilitarian
justification of the greatest good for the greatest number is weakened.
What other justifications for making the same different are available to us? Certainly there is
this option: the conviction that moral duty is owed specifically to the client (“It is my job to establish a difference.”) or, more generally, to advertising as a communication form (“That’s the way the
game is played.”). Perhaps, also, there could be an expanded vision of utilitarianism in this context to contend that—beyond purchase consequences—the greatest good for the greatest number
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is served through allowing individuals freedom of choice, including the freedom to choose to pay
more for a functionally identical product if it suits their particular needs.
Certainly making the same different is legal. Adopting a viewpoint that what is good is what
is legal, we might choose to continue business as usual. However, if we recognize that what is legal
is not necessarily what is good for the public, then what?
28 STEREOTYPING ATTITUDE
We never single out any one group to poke fun at. We poke fun at everybody, from women, to
flight attendants, to baggage handlers, to football coaches, to Irish Americans, to snow skiers.
There’s really no group we haven’t teased.”17
Abercrombie & Fitch was founded in 1892 as a small New York City outdoors store, and over the
years counted among its patrons Amelia Earhart, Teddy Roosevelt, Katharine Hepburn, and Cole
Porter. The Limited, which purchased the store in 1988, set about changing the store’s image into
the casual, lifestyle brand the store retains today. During that process, Abercrombie & Fitch earned
something of a reputation for its risqué promotions and catalogs. Morley Safer opened a 2004
60 Minutes segment with the observation that “the image of Abercrombie is now party-loving
jocks and barenaked ladies living fantasy lives.”18 Though the company continues to nurture this
risqué image—at one time customers were met at the store’s entrance by shirtless males—its stores
have become something of a wardrobe mecca for the teen segment.
The statement that opened this case was made by Hampton Carney, an Abercrombie & Fitch
spokesperson in response to protests of the company’s “attitude” T-shirts. Let’s consider these examples of Abercrombie verbiage on women’s T-shirts:
Muck Fe
Who Needs Brains When You Have These?
Give Me Something to Scream About
I Had a Nightmare I Was a Brunette
All Men Like Tig Old Bitties
What are the implications and ramifications of these messages? In October 2005, the Women
and Girls’ Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania organized a national “girlcott” in response to this
particular line of T-shirts. This action was reminiscent of a similar protest staged three years earlier
in response to a line of Abercrombie T-shirts that “poked fun” at Asian Americans using caricatured
faces with slanted eyes, conical rice-paddy hats, and slogans such as these:
•
•
•
•
Wong Brothers Laundry Service—2 Wongs Can Make It White
Abercrombie and Fitch Buddha Bash—Get Your Buddha on the Floor
You Love Long Time
Eat In—Wok Out
Both protests resulted in removal of certain T-shirts from Abercrombie & Fitch stores, but the
official statements released by the company reflected neither remorse nor acknowledgment of any
wrongdoing. Indicating surprise at the reactions, Carney said, “We personally thought Asians
would love this T-shirt.” He deflected fault when he made a rather “aren’t you overreacting?”
response. “We poke fun at everybody”—it’s as though a bully who assaults the whole class is
somehow less culpable than one who singles out individual members.19 ◆
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In November 2004, Abercrombie agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class-action lawsuit
brought by nine former employees who claimed to have been fired or hidden because they didn’t
fit the “Abercrombie look” enough to work with the public. The settlement applies to women,
African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos.20 Given the financial implications, one might
question the soundness of the decision to produce the T-shirts from a purely business perspective.
But let’s consider for a moment that Abercrombie’s assertion is correct, that the T-shirts are,
in fact, attempts at humor and not intentionally offensive. Who benefits from this humor? Stereotypes, used even in jest, perpetuate existing power structures and systems of oppression. By portraying girls and women as little more than a collection of body parts or as enthusiastically
incompetent (as in “You Better Make More Than I Can Spend”), these T-shirts contribute to a climate in which women are not taken seriously, and perhaps more destructively, women and girls
do not take themselves seriously. Today, when women account for more than 55 percent of students in U.S. undergraduate programs, should these messages not seem a bit out of place?
Abercrombie’s racially stereotyped T-shirts should raise the same questions; as should any
advertising that relies on stereotypes, particularly offensive stereotypes, for effectiveness. One
Asian American protester noted of the T-shirts: “It’s really misleading as to what Asian people are.
. . . The stereotypes they depict are more than a century old. You’re seeing laundry service. You’re
seeing basically an entire religion and philosophy being trivialized.”21 A journalist for Asianfocused magazine Monolid asked more pointedly: “Who benefits, who gets empowerment, from
these kinds of images? It denigrates Asian men.”22
Who indeed? In other words, “but it’s funny” is a weak argument to offer in exchange for
ethical decision making. Similarly, creating humor for one group at the expense of another (or, in
this case, several others) hardly seems sound ethical strategy.
Let’s examine the “equal opportunity offensiveness” defense by looking at Abercrombie’s Tshirt line for men. If women are objectified and Asian Americans are stereotyped as launderers and
caricatures, what does Abercrombie have to say about its mainstream target, white men? The company does, after all, purportedly “poke fun at everybody?” Let’s take a look:
My Lucky Number is 3. Bring a Friend.
Freshmen. I Get Older, They Stay The Same Age.
I’ll Make You a Star of the Walk of Shame.
I’d Do Me.
Not surprisingly, these messages, like most advertising images in the United States, reinforce particular notions of masculinity and femininity. They celebrate masculine sexual prowess and trivialize
the role of women as interchangeable parts in the masculine pursuit. Abercrombie’s T-shirts don’t
“poke fun” at men as Carney suggested, but rather serve to elevate their status as the group in control.
What then are ethical dimensions here? Starting with a traditional marketing defense of utilitarianism, the obvious retort is: “But people buy these shirts.” Such a statement could be viewed
as at least indirect approval of the advertising message. A Kantian approach might flounder on the
question of whether all mass media representations are not likely to be offensive to at least some,
thus essentially precluding the very essence of advertising as a communication form that relies on
stereotypes for quick communication.
Do cultural icons and trendsetters like Abercrombie & Fitch have an obligation to society to
create and disseminate more socially responsible messages? Although Abercrombie & Fitch defends its efforts as being appropriate for the intended target audience of college-age students, the
fact remains that younger consumers are hopelessly devoted to the brand. Jennifer Black, a retail
and apparel analyst, postulates that Abercrombie “owns the most powerful stable of brands targeting the teen customer.”23 Are the ads, in this case T-shirts, appropriate for the targeted audience?
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The difference between a billboard and a T-shirt that reads “Muck Fe” is negligible. In either
case, the message comes across loud and clear to whomever the message reaches.
29 EVERYONE KNOWS HER:
THE UNATTAINABLE IDEAL
It’s like the frog in the water: If you slowly turn up the heat, it doesn’t know it’s being boiled to
death. After a while, a size 0 starts to seem normal, not cadaverous.24
As advertisers, we are responsible for the creation of the estimated thousands of ads to which the
average American is exposed daily. Yet, for all our pride in pushing the envelope and cutting-edge
creativity and innovation, the images we produce and distribute are strikingly and alarmingly similar. This is especially obvious in the portrayals of women and girls. The world of advertising is populated by women who no longer resemble even their iconic predecessors, much less the average
American women to whom they represent an ideal. In fact, in a culture of Botox, plastic surgery,
and digital retouching, this ideal not only may be lofty, but also is likely to be distinctly unattainable for most women, unattainable in any number of ways. The ideal is most likely young; a New
York Times writer noted that we are in the midst of a trend toward “the rebranding of aging from
biological inevitability to outmoded lifestyle option.”25 She is almost inevitably white, particularly
on the runway. “Weird,” a fashion designer said looking at photos of potential models, “They’re
all the same.”26 “The same” meant pale, thin, with blonde hair. Of all the features of the ideal, it
is her downsizing that most consistently has been the target of concern, and at times, outrage.
“When the models themselves were famous, designers would gladly alter a dress to fit the
girl. But when the models are generically interchangeable, it’s easier to find a girl who fits the
dress,” reads one Vogue article.27 These “interchangeable” girls are the nameless faces of the advertising world. We pack our advertisements with their emaciated, vacant imagery, so ubiquitous
now that it takes on the semblance of normalcy. They are an entire society, narrowly constructed
to represent our notions of perfection—in silence—on the runway and in our advertisements. In repeatedly casting women (and in many cases, girls) who meet an ever-shrinking standard of beauty,
we reinforce practices and mindsets that are dangerous to those who look to the ideal for a suggestion of what it is to be beautiful and are damaging to the models.
• In August 2006, Luisel Ramos, a young Uruguayan model, collapsed on the runway and died
of heart failure, assumed to have been the result of anorexia nervosa.28
• Six months later, her sister Eliana, also a model, died of a heart attack associated with malnutrition.29
• In November 2006, Ana Carolina Reston, a Brazilian model weighing eighty-eight pounds, at
five feet eight inches, died of complications of anorexia.30
The ensuing uproar about ultraskinny models began an industry-wide conversation.
• One month after the death of Luisel Ramos, Spain adopted a body mass index (BMI) minimum
of 18 for its runway models at the 2006 Fashion Week in Madrid. Thirty percent of the
women who participated in the previous year’s event were turned away as a result of the new
standard.31
• Also in 2006, India’s health minister objected to the presence of “waif-like” models on its catwalks, and Israeli retailers opted to exclude “overly thin” models from their ads.32
• In 2007, encouraged by the positive feedback to its “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,”
Unilever banned size 0 models from its advertisements. The company said it wished to take
into account “the possible negative health effects that could occur should people pursue unhealthy or excessive slimness.”33
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The Council of Fashion Designers of America also issued guidelines; Anna Bulik, director of
the University of North Carolina eating-disorders program, criticized the document as “an anemic
response.”34 An article titled “The Vanishing Point” focused on the downsizing of male models
(“chicken-chested, hollow-cheeked, and undernourished”) and commented about female models,
noting “it’s safe to say that they [female models] remain as waiflike as ever.”35
If the women of fashion are pushing their physical limits to the point of death to maintain a
standard that the public simultaneously spurns and reveres, why do the fashion and advertising
industries perpetuate the standard? ◆
In addition to the fashion industry in general, many of the critiques are directed toward advertisers. So what is the advertising industry to do? One might find the issue easy to dismiss as an
offense residing within the fashion industry. Still, is it not our industry that takes the remote model
and repackages her for mass distribution? Walking down the street, would Kate Moss have the
same effect on women if advertising had not elevated her to the “Face of Calvin Klein?”
Another perspective often offered in defense of advertising—and the media as a whole—
argues that our messages are merely the reflections of existing cultural beliefs and values. The images we see in advertising then are not surprising in a culture that celebrates beauty and its
frequent companion, youth, almost to the point of obsession; our role as the “mirror” (as opposed
to the “shaper”) is, in essence, benign. If, on the other hand, we acknowledge that the efficacy of
our work as advertisers relies at least in part on our ability to shape attitudes in a direction favorable to our client, then might we not also assume some degree of responsibility for the standards
that we transmit and so, reinforce?
The appeal of an advertised good lies in the perception that it has the ability to enhance an existence. To convey that potential, advertisers draw from a narrow pool of images that appear exceptional when juxtaposed with an average American’s life. They choose to use thin models
because they assume that they will be regarded by their target audience as attractive either directly
(e.g., choose our diet plan and look like this) or indirectly (e.g., Sarah Jessica Parker uses this product and she’s an appealing celebrity). Given the ambiguity of advertising effects, they would generally receive no clear confirmation that these assumptions were in fact correct, so these advertisers
are probably choosing to conform to an unwritten group norm—the assumption that slim is better
than not slim. And, in so doing, advertising perpetuates a standard that exists only within the borders of the ads themselves. Advertisers are responsible for the creation of that standard, so are they
likewise responsible for the consequences associated with promoting an unattainable ideal?
Of course, none of this would be an issue if women demonstrably resisted the waif look and
punished advertisers who promoted it. They could send their message directly by protest to the
advertisers or indirectly by withdrawing patronage, ideally telling the advertiser why they’ve
done so.
On a collective and an individual level, advertisers have available to them a number of ways
to confront this ethical dilemma. They may opt to do one of the following:
1. Pass the buck to another industry, ultimately maintaining the status quo of the current
advertising industry.
2. Blame society for its own superficial standards, prompting society to shift its values before
advertising can reflect them more realistically.
3. Maintain the standards but publicize the unnatural and/or unhealthful circumstances surrounding the marketing of these ideal women. This option also allows advertisers to continue down their current path but introduces a disconnect between the coveted images in
advertising and the reality of their attainability.
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4. Accept responsibility for perpetuating unhealthful practices and thought patterns, thereby
paving the way for a new set of standards. The danger in this option is, of course, that any
individual actor in an industry comprised of individual actors renders himself or herself vulnerable to professional criticism, public opposition, and societal resistance.
If we agree that this is an issue in which we justifiably may be viewed to play a role, do we
have a responsibility to make a change? And will a society—even one that acknowledges a problem—ultimately be receptive to that change? Where do you stand?
30 “SHE’S ONLY 4!” THE HYPERSEXUALIZATION OF YOUNG GIRLS
According to the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls published by the American Psychological Association in 2007, sexualization has to do with treating other people (and sometimes oneself) as “objects of sexual desire . . . as things rather than as people with legitimate sexual
feelings of their own.” When people are sexualized, their value comes primarily from their sex appeal, which is equated with physical attractiveness. This is especially damaging and “problematic to
children and adolescents who are developing their sense of themselves as sexual beings.”36
The turn of the new millennium has spawned an intriguing phenomenon: the sexy little girl. She’s
an all-too-familiar figure in today’s media landscape: the baby-faced nymphet with the preternaturally voluptuous curves, the one whose scantily clad body gyrates in music videos, poses
provocatively on teen magazine covers, and populates cinema and television screens around the
globe. She’s become a fixture in Western pop culture: we all know her various incarnations, from
Britney Spears to the sex-kittenish cartoon girls of animé.37
The phenomenon of the hypersexualized young girl is in many ways the product of a perfect storm.
As a market, children spend money, influence their parents’ spending, and are poised to be the future market. They are vulnerable and yet more sophisticated, mature, and savvy than ever before.
Comfortable with technology, they are accustomed to a commercialized world saturated with
brands. Four-year-olds want to be eight. Eight-year-olds want to be thirteen. Thirteen-year-olds
want to be twenty-one. Taking advantage of children’s natural desire to be older, marketers adopt
an “age compression” strategy, marketing new kinds of products to kids at younger ages.
Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in marketer’s current obsession with the tween market. This market, variously defined as 8–12, 8–14, 10–13, is that niche between “the rock of childhood” where fitting in and rules are still appealing and the “hard place of adolescence” where
carving out an identity becomes a primary activity.38 There are approximately 25 million tweens,
and they have billions of dollars of buying power (either their own or influencing their parents).
Tween girls are especially targeted because they spend more money than boys. In Born to Buy, Juliet
Schor provides an example of how age compression plays out in the day-to-day life of girls:
A classic example of this is real makeup for five-and six-year-old girls. It used to be there
wasn’t that much makeup marketed to kids, and it was fake. The idea was that they would
be playing grown-up with these fake things. Now they market real makeup to girls. Even
pre-school girls wear nail polish and lip gloss.39
The hypersexualized young girl, engaged in the make-believe game of becoming an adult,
emerged from this milieu as a consumer culture phenomenon.
Let’s look at popular culture:
• Toddlers & Tiaras is a TLC reality-based television series which the network describes this way:
On any given weekend, on stages across the country, little girls and boys parade
around wearing makeup, false eyelashes, spray tans, and fake hair to be judged on
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their beauty, personality, and costumes. Toddlers & Tiaras follows families on their
quest for sparkly crowns, big titles, and lots of cash.40
Backstage, we learn about spray tans, fake teeth, and caviar hair treatments. We become privy
to coaching sessions, dance rehearsals, and hair and nail appointments. We meet mothers of these
little girls who are sometimes as young as two, like McKenzie’s mom who says: “Are you willing to
play this game? If you are, then you have to do the things that need to be done.” Henry Giroux, a
cultural critic and critical pedagogy theorist, describes the experience of watching this way:
The images of these kids dressed up like little adults with the moms insisting that they be
spray tanned, adorn fake nails and eyelashes, and wear more makeup on their faces than
the late Tammy Faye Baker once used is harder to watch than even the cheesy dance routines in which they learn to swing their hips and flip their hair back in a shameful, highly
eroticized manner.41
Ironically, TLC is The Learning Channel.
• M. Gigi Durham opens her book The Lolita Effect with this story:
Last Halloween, a five-year-old girl showed up at my doorstep decked out in a tube
top, a gauzy miniskirt, platform shoes, and glittering eye shadow. The outfit projected a rather tawdry adult sexuality. “I’m a Bratz!” the tot piped up proudly, brandishing a look-alike doll clutched in her chubby fist.42
Sales of Bratz dolls, with their “lush butts, melon-sized breasts,”43 giant eyes, sexy outfits,
and “a passion for fashion,” surpassed Barbie sales in 2006. McAllister writes that unlike Barbie,
who is recognized by girls as being a grown-up, Bratz (note the “z” for a hip-hop connection) are
tweens, and they are all about consumption. Bratz are not a toy, they are a lifestyle brand. One of
the Bratz marketing executives explains the strategy this way: “We want the girls to live the Bratz
life—wear the mascara; use the hair product; send the greeting card. The toy business is shrinking.
Kids are getting older younger and we’re losing them to clothing, computers and DVDs. If Barbie
is about fantasy, then Bratz is about real life.44
• The Girls Intelligence Agency (GIA) was established in 2002 by Laura Groppe, an award-winning
film producer. GIA claims to have 40,000 “secret agents” aged eight to twenty-nine around the
country and “uses a variety of means—from texting to sleepovers—to tap into the business of
girls.” In a recent 60 Minutes profile, Groppe said her agents were “hot”; they were the girls
that other girls listened to, the “alpha girls.” Most of the activity takes place in the “inner
sanctum”—that would be a girl’s bedroom. The alpha girl invites her friends and then goes
about gathering whatever information the company needs. Sometimes it’s market research;
sometimes the alpha girls are to “evangelize,” lauding the virtues of a new product. These sessions are essentially focus groups of sorts or sales sessions, but GIA agents are also available for
ongoing shopping trips and in-room hangouts. The website (http://girlsintelligenceagency.com)
indicates GIA is “a recognized voice of authority for the young female market” and boasts a
client list that includes: Disney, Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, Sony, and Mattel. Critics are particularly troubled by the fact that the alpha girls, who are told they “gotta be sneaky,” are being
asked to use their friends to the end of gaining information or selling products.44 ◆
The hypersexualization of young girls through marketing and advertising efforts raises a
host of ethical questions. Seemingly each strategy—the beauty pageants, the use of alpha girls to
create buzz—introduces a new set of dilemmas. Here, we will probe only the broadest of ethical
dimensions as a starting point.
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At the macro-level, hypersexualization has developed as a product of no single company, advertisement, or campaign, but through the collective impact of innumerable marketing efforts.
Drumwright reminds us that “the difficulties of dealing with macro-level criticisms are legion. . . .
it is difficult to imagine having any perceptible impact on macro-level social problems from the
micro-level of an individual practitioner.”46 Still, a report issued by the American Psychological
Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls indicated a strong connection between young
girls who have to endure a premature emphasis on sex and appearance and “three of the most
common mental health problems of girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression.”47 Given these findings, it is incumbent upon advertisers to pay careful attention to their
strategies.
Certainly advertisers have every right to advertise their product and to persuade in the
process of doing so. Yet, they also have obligations to the broader social community: the legal
obligation to be truthful, but also the responsibility to treat that community with fairness and respect. At the outset, these obligations, both professional and social, are based on the recognition
that advertisers have a special responsibility in marketing to children. Children are a vulnerable
audience—yes, perhaps more savvy and sophisticated than ever before but still vulnerable. Ethically advertisers must ask themselves: Can the target audience distinguish between fantasy and
reality? Between advertising and entertainment? Do they understand the purpose of advertising?
Can they distinguish their own genuine needs from those suggested by advertising? If they cannot, persuasion becomes manipulation and is inherently unethical.
The example of Bratz discussed in the case provides an illustration of how easily the line between fantasy and reality blurs. Children recognize Barbie as older, perhaps 19; in essence, Barbie
is “not me.” By contrast, Bratz by design is clearly younger, a tween, and Bratz might more easily
be viewed by tweens as “like me.” Certainly the ambitious effort to transform the sexualized Bratz
from toy to lifestyle can create confusion in an impressionable target, even as it adds another layer
of commercialization to an environment already saturated with brands. Here too, marketers must
be watchful of their contribution to the excessive materialism that may result from consistently
elevating consumption over other social values. Barbie bought things, but the Bratz “lifestyle” is
all about consumption—“spectacular consumption.”48
Marketers want to tell children about their products, for example, where to buy them. Where
do they draw the ethical line in creating persuasive messages? By their own admission, marketers
are practicing age-compression; they are creating products and sending messages once intended
for older girls to younger and younger girls. Recall the somewhat “fragile” terrain upon which the
tween stands: one foot in childhood and the other in adolescence where carving out an identity becomes a primary activity. Can the targets recognize and neutralize the persuasive power of the advertising messages? Can they negotiate advertising grounded less often in fact and instead in
emotion, self-expressive benefits, and visual representations? Can they negotiate the more sexualized, more adult content that may characterize advertising efforts? Yet again, advertisers have the
responsibility to assess and remain well aware of the vulnerability of their target audience and
make every effort not to exacerbate it.
In response to criticisms of manipulation, advertisers typically fall back on the “competitive
marketplace” and the need to “stand out” when explaining efforts that are charged with being too
old, too sexual, too persistent, and too consumption oriented. Girls, they say, are sophisticated and
want to be entertained not informed. Advertising must “enchant, startle, trick, or cajole” to get attention. And of course, it must be seemingly everywhere.
Historian David Potter suggested more than a half-century ago that “though it wields an immense social influence, comparable to the influence of religion and learning, it [advertising] has no
social goals and no social responsibility for what it does with its influence, so long as it refrains
from palpable violations of truth and decency.”49
We have a responsibility to our profession and to society to prove him wrong.
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ADVERTISING AND SOCIAL CHANGE
The last two cases in this chapter examine the use of advertising as a vehicle for social change. The
first example that comes to mind may very well be the Ad Council. The council is the leading producer of public service announcements (PSAs) addressing critical social issues since 1942. It has
created some of our most well-known icons: Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, the CrashTest Dummies; most recently, the council is using Shrek to encourage children to spend more time
outdoors enjoying nature. PSAs are a widely used technique for social change messages. But there
is a broad range of ways that advertising might be used to effect social change, “hybrid” efforts if
you will, each slightly different from the other.
Benetton wanted to be recognized as a company with a social conscience, so it transformed
its advertising from sales messages to public communication for social causes—multiculturalism,
racial harmony, AIDS. Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani used politically charged images with
no products and only the logo for The United Colors of Benetton. So controversial were the
images—a priest passionately kissing a nun, a white baby suckling at a black breast, a photo of colored condoms floating in the air—that they were frequently banned both in the United States and
in Europe.
Nike’s “If you let me play” commercial, also without a product, caught viewers off balance.
Children were discussing adult issues such as domestic abuse and teen pregnancy. The commercial ended with a black screen, the Nike logo, and the slogan “Just Do It.”
The question that underlies much of the discussion in this area is, quite simply stated, can social goals and capitalist aims be reconciled? Or, to put it colloquially, does advertising simply carry
too much baggage? Researchers found that issues addressed in Benetton campaigns were
“tainted” by their connection to a commercial interest and lost their significance as problematic
human conditions. That is, audiences couldn’t see advertising as any thing more than a vehicle of
corporate manipulation of the consumer society.50 Benetton wrote:
What is often seen as offensive, however, is not the images themselves but their use within the
narrow context of advertising. We feel this represents a very narrow view of the potential for advertising as a medium for effective communication which goes beyond simply pitching a product or asserting that “ours is better than theirs.”51
Perhaps advertising is so invested in the commercial enterprise that it cannot escape its narrow confines.
31 REAL BEAUTY: RESPONSIBLE IMAGES?
The Dove campaign lambasts traditional women’s toiletries marketing for promoting unreal
images of beauty.52
As if women’s “reality” depended on their body shape or size. This campaign is a new shade of
lipstick on the same old pig.53
In 2004, Dove, a company that had long viewed the “everyday woman” as its core user, launched
one of the most talked-about campaigns in years: the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.54 According to the company, the global campaign was designed to “challenge today’s one dimensional and
restrictive view of beauty by showing how beauty can come in many different shapes and sizes.”55
It was a risky strategy. Instead of the superthin models that are the sine qua non of the fashion and
cosmetics industries, Dove used “ordinary” women. Six women of varying sizes and ethnicities
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wearing nothing but white cotton underwear and sporting a good deal of attitude appeared on
billboards and in print ads for Dove firming products. Here, then, were real women, unadorned and
unretouched, not pouting, not provocatively posed. These women were not objects; instead, they
were laughing and having fun.
The shock value was enormous, and the campaign generated mounds of publicity. Initial reactions were wide-ranging. A male staff reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Really, the only
time I want to see a thigh that big is in a bucket with breadcrumbs.”56 Others pointed out the irony
of telling women to be happy with who they are while selling them firming products. Skeptics doubted
the longevity of the strategy, ominously forecasting boredom and the danger of becoming “the brand
for fat girls.”57 Dove claimed to have received a flood of e-mails saying, “yes, yes,” and “thank you.”
And sales for firming products skyrocketed, growing by 700 percent after the campaign.58
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was a social advocacy effort that aimed “to change the
status quo and offer in its place a broader, healthier, and more democratic view of beauty.”59
Toward this end, the company established a website (http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com) with
a discussion board and an opportunity to vote: gray or gorgeous? wrinkled or wonderful? oversized
or outstanding? The Dove Fund for Self-Esteem includes a number of programs all over the world.
Dove expanded the campaign to younger girls via the Uniquely Me! Program with the Girl Scouts.
The company endowed the Program for Aesthetics and Well-Being at Harvard to explore representations of women in popular culture and the effects of those representations.
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty won the 2006 Best of Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America. In presenting the award, Dave M. Imre noted, “This campaign effectively challenged hundreds of thousands of men and women worldwide to rethink their ideas of
what beauty really is.”60 ◆
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (which since has produced two viral videos, Evolution
and Onslaught, and has launched a Pro-Age line in commercials featuring Annie Leibovitz photos
of “grandmothers in the buff,” which garnered publicity when they were rejected by television
networks61) is not without its critics. Perhaps a victim of its own publicity, detractors scrutinize the
motivation for the campaign as well as the ads themselves. A sampling of their concerns:
• Can a business, which exists solely to make money, sincerely promote social change, or is it
simply coopting a broader social agenda as a business strategy?
• If beauty is inherent in the person, why use the product?
• Can you sell a beauty product without playing on women’s insecurities?
• Real cannot be understood except in context of what it stands in opposition to, that is, the
ideal; so real serves as subtle reinforcement of the very beauty myth it seeks to negate.
Eventually, underlying corporate (Unilever) contradictions began to surface. One writer
asked, “Can a company that owns and markets both Axe and Dove be considered sincere in either
effort?”62 Advocates stand firm in their support, suggesting that women get genuine benefit from
the images regardless of the motivation.
What do you think?
1. Is the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty simply a selling strategy, coopting social advocacy for
the purpose of increased sales?
2. Is the campaign a sincere social advocacy effort?
3. It is possible for the campaign to be both social advocacy and marketing?
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Are expectations for Dove too high? Linda Scott once wrote that she thought for many, feminist thought remained chained to antimarket prejudice. She pondered, as we might: “How is one
to act as a feminist while working for an ad agency? . . . Today’s feminism is so unbendingly negative in its approach to market activity that steps taken to present positive imagery in ads . . . are
sweepingly dismissed.”63
32 ANIMAL RIGHTS: RESPONSIBLE IMAGES?
PETA, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, is the largest animal rights organization in the world,
with more than two million members and supporters. The organization focuses on four areas—factory
farms, laboratories, clothing trade, and entertainment—in which the largest number of animals suffer most intensely for the longest period of time. Among PETA’s strategies are public education, cruelty investigations, animal rescue, legislative efforts, special events, celebrity involvement, and
protest campaigns.
PETA is at least as well known for its promotional strategies as for its causes. A reporter
asked, “Has a PETA ad ever been accused of being elegant?”64 Here are a few of their “inelegant” efforts:
• Tiger Woods is pictured on several billboards near his home with the caption: “Too much sex
can be a bad thing for little tigers too. Always spay or neuter.” (The boards didn’t stay up
long.)
• Elizabeth Hurley, a model for Blackgama’s fur collection, was wearing a white fur coat when
she was doused with red wine.
• Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, was dining at the Four Seasons when a PETA member walked up and threw a dead raccoon on her plate in protest of her inclusion of fur fashions in the magazine.
• A billboard showed a chubby litte boy eating a burger with the caption: “Feeding Kids Meat
Is Child Abuse.”
• A print ad juxtaposed photographs from the Holocaust with animals at factory farms or at
slaughter.
Clearly, PETA seeks controversy.
Perhaps what PETA is most famous (or infamous) for is its persistent use of highly sexualized images objectifying women. One reporter noted: “Its the sophisticated publicity technique the organization has been perfecting over the past decade, with scores of their campaigns using the female
body to try to raise awareness about animal rights. Not in a John-and-Yoko, dimply-bottoms-out-forpeace kind of way, but in a ‘put a hot naked chick next to a product you’re trying to sell’ way.”65 That
reporter’s observation was widely referenced by bloggers who repeated the query “why does a provegetarian organisation treat women like pieces of meat? time and again.” One blogger wrote: “Are
PETA exploiting women to help animals? Or do their good intentions justify the means?”66
“Veggie Love Spot,” a TV ad described as “a bevy of beauties who are powerless to resist the
temptation of veggie love,” was deemed too hot for the 2009 Super Bowl. NBC rejected the ad for
“depicting a level of sexuality exceeding our standards.” PETA asked for explicit reasons for the rejection and received a list of scenes to be cut before the ad would be reconsidered: licking a pumpkin, rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin, and so on. PETA posted the list on its website. So
commonplace is it for PETA’s commercials to be banned for sexually explicit content that it proudly
includes a button marked “Too Hot for TV” on its website.67 ◆
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This case poses an interesting ethical question: When are ads with a controversial message
unethical? Let’s try to determine if PETA crossed the line.
PETA is responsible for its own marketing/advertising/promotional efforts. It is, in effect, its
own advocate; it seeks no professional assistance. It is quite possible, then, that PETA perceives its
obligations and responsibilities quite differently than advertising professionals. The latter, at least
in theory, are responsive to self-regulatory structures and are bound by codes and professional duties, obligations, and responsibilities to a variety of constituencies.
At the broadest level, one might ask: Why would an advertiser allow any ads that might offend? An advertising professional might contend that if the ads were truly objectionable, PETA
would be punished by failing to meet its goals. The goals of PETA’s efforts appear to be education
and perhaps new membership. It seems as well that education is something best provided by the
website; hence, PETA’s promotional efforts seem to be devoted to driving people to its website.
Still, what are we to make of PETA? Dan Mathews, PETA vice president noted that because
PETA is a “charity organization,” it essentially has no advertising budget. As a result their efforts
to focus attention on their core issues must take place with minimal expense.68
Because we have such a full agenda, we’ve had to be very creative in trying to adapt all of our
campaigns into ways that will attract as much public attention as possible. That’s our currency.
Our currency is being obnoxious. The public finds a lot of our campaigns titillating or annoying,
but the companies that we target find them very threatening.69
The rejected ads, and publicity surrounding them, have been very beneficial for us, because
with every ad, we try to make it interesting, titillating and drive traffic to the website so people
will see what our core issue is.70
Might not PETA’s efforts better be perceived as guerrilla marketing—getting consumers to see
things that they aren’t used to seeing, creating something that lives in the context of what they do but
that is out of context with what they are used to? (See Case 23.) The category of social causes, such as
it is, is extremely competitive; PETA is simply pushing the envelope to get noticed above the din.
Certainly however, some of PETA’s efforts border on illegality. Its advertising is almost uniformly sexually provocative and offensive to many. Some suggest that PETA intentionally crosses
the line of good taste and ethicality, creating ads that will be banned, giving them life on YouTube
and its own website, and making the most of the publicity generated. PETA is a successful organization with a long list of animal rights accomplishments documented on its website.
Are PETA’s ads unethical? How far will PETA push the envelope?
What are we to make of PETA?
NOTES
1. Suzanna D. Walters, Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995).
2. Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
3. William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhally, and Jacqueline Botterill, Social Communication in Advertising:
Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace (New York: Routledge, 2005), 75.
4. The Public Mind: Consuming Images, PBS documentary with Bill Moyers, 1989.
5. Ibid.
6. Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 2002).
7. Barry Silverstein, “Voss: High Water,” Brandchannel.com, March 5, 2007.
8. Charles Fishman, “Message in a Bottle,” Fast Company, July 2007.
9. International Bottled Water Association (http://www.bottledwater.org).
10. Sally Squires, “The Lean Plate; The Bottle-versus-the-Tap Debate; Consumers Who Spent $10 Billion Last
Year on Bottled Water Think It’s a Better Bet. But Is It?” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2006, 4.
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11. Luci Plavent, “Bottled Water Sales Decrease for the First Time in Five Years,” Tiny Green Bubble, August
12, 2010, http://tinygreenbubble.com/eco/environmental/item/577_bottled_water_sales_decrease_for_
the_first_time_in_five_years. August 12, 2010.
12. Bob Garfield, “The Product Is Questionable, But Aquafina’s Ad Holds Water,” Advertising Age, July 9,
2001.
13. thinkoutsidethebottle.net (Corporate Accountability International).
14. Ian Daly, “Purification That Comes in a Bottle: Water Takes on New Responsibilities,” New York Times, November 28, 2007.
15. John Laumer, “US Bottled Water Sales Down Slightly. Why Are So Few Willing to Change?” http://www
.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/US_bottled_water_sales_down-slightly_why_few_willing_change.php.
16. David A. Aaker, Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name (New York: Free Press,
1991), 7–8.
17. Jenny Strasburg, “Abercrombie & Glitch: Asian Americans Rip Retailer for Stereotypes on T-shirts,” San
Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 2002, A-1.
18. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/05/60minutes/main587099.shtml.
19. Strasburg, “Abercrombie & Glitch.”
20. http://www.eeoc.gov/press/11-18-04.html.
21. Strasburg, “Abercrombie & Glitch.”
22. Ibid.
23. Jayne O’Donnell, “Apparel Sales Show Teens’ Fickleness,” USA Today, March 9, 2007 4-B.
24. Robin Givhan, fashion editor of Washington Post, in Rebecca Johnson, “Walking a Thin Line,” Vogue, April
2007, 384.
25. Natasha Singer, “Nice Resume. Have Your Considered Botox?” New York Times, January 24, 2008, E3.
26. Rachel Dodes, “Crossing Fashion’s Thin White Line,” New York Times, February 1, 2008, B1.
27. Johnson, “Walking a Thin Line.”
28. Rebecca Seal, “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” Observer, September 9, 2007.
29. Ibid.
30. Valli Herman, “Is Skinny Going Out of Style?” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2006, E-1.
31. Ibid.
32. Seal, “Incredible Shrinking Woman.”
33. Unilever press release.
34. Guy Trebay, “The Vanishing Pint,” The New York Times, February 7, 2008.
35. Ibid.
36. Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne, So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do
(New York: Ballentine Books, 2008), 4.
37. M. Gigi Durham, The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It
(Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2008), 24.
38. ”Caught in the Middle—Tweens, Children Between the Ages of 10 and 13—Brief Article—Statistical Data
Included—Polling Data,” American Demographics, July 1, 2001, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/
is_2001_July_1/ai_76574305/.
39. Juliet Schorr, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (New York:
Scribner, 2004).
40. http://www.tlc.discovery.com/tv/toddlers_tiaras/about_toddlers_and_tiaras.html.
41. Henry A. Giroux, “Child Beauty Pageants: A Scene From the ‘Other America,’” Truthout, May 11, 2009.
42. Durham, The Lolita Effect, 21.
43. Linn, quoted in Matthew A. McAllister, “‘Girls with a Passion for Fashion’ The Bratz Brand as Integrated
Spectacular Consumption,” Journal of Children and Media, 1:3 (October 2007): 244.
44. Gold, quoted in Matthew A. McAllister, “‘Girls with a Passion for Fashion’ The Bratz Brand as Integrated
Spectacular Consumption,” Journal of Children and Media 1:3 (October 2007): 256.
45. Schor, “Born to Buy,” 77.
46. Minette E. Drumwright, “Advertising Ethics: A Multi-level Theory Approach,” in eds. The Sage Handbook
of Advertising, Gerard J. Tellis and Tim Ambler (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007), 407.
47. Quoted in Giroux, “Child Beauty Pageants.”
48. McAllister, “Girls with a Passion.”
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49. Quoted in Drumwright, “Advertising Ethics,” 407.
50. Serra A. Tinic,”United Colors and Untied Meanings: Benetton and the Commodification of Social Issues,”
Journal of Communication 47, 3, Summer 1997: 3–25.
51. Benetton, quoted in ibid., 22.
52. “Trends: The Real Thing,” Marketing Week, January 13, 2005.
53. Louise, writing in “Media: Organ Grinder: Your Views on Whether Dove’s Ad Campaigns for ‘Real
Beauty’ Are as Clean as They Purport to Be,” Guardian (London), April 3, 2006.
54. http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com.
55. “Trends: The Real Thing.”
56. Susanna Schrobsdorff, “Summer of Dove; Are the Women in the Company’s New Ad Campaign Too Big
to Sell Beauty Products, or Have Our Minds Gotten Too Small?” Newsweek, August 3, 2005.
57. Seth Stevenson, “When Tush Comes to Dove: Real Women. Real curves. Really Smart Ad Campaign,”
http://www.slate.com/id/2123659.
58. “Trends: The Real Thing.”
59. Jeff Neff, “ ‘A Step Forward’: In Dove Ads, Normal Is the New Beautiful,” Advertising Age, September 27,
2004.
60. “PRSA Announces 2006 Best of Silver Anvil Award Winner: ‘Dove Campaign for Real Beauty’ Receives
Top Honors at Annual PR Event,” Business Wire, June 9, 2006.
61. Jack Neff, “Soft Soap,” Advertising Age, September 24, 2007, http://adage.com/article?article-id=120640,
10/24/2007.
62. “Hawkish on Dove,” Toronto Star, August 23, 2005.
63. Linda Scott, “Market Feminism: The Case for a Paradigm Shift,” Advertising and Society Review 7:2 (2006).
64. Shawn Richer, “30-Second Spots/Dispatches from the World of Media and Advertising,” Globe and Mail
(Canada) May 28, 2010.
65. Josephine Tovey, “Why Does a Pro-Vegetarian Organisation Treat Women Like Meat?” Sydney Morning
Herald, July 17, 2008, 17.
66. http://www.mansamia.com.au/weblog/2008/07/does_peta_treat_woman_like_meat.html.
67. http://features.peta.org/veggielove/default.asp/.
68. Allison Kugel, “Dan Mathews: PETA’s Outspoken VP Spends His Life on the Front Lines for Animals––
With a Partial Foreword by Pamela Anderson,” PR.com, March 13, 2008, http://www.pr.com/article/1093.
69. Ibid.
70. Tovey, “Why Does a Pro-Vegetarian.”
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8
The Media Are Commercial
T
he media are commercial. What exactly does this mean? A casual response might
be, “There are ads.” And indeed, that’s part of the answer; advertising makes up a
substantial portion of our media content. Advertising provides the financial support for most media, and for some media, is the only source of revenue. The ensuing trade-offs are the ongoing stuff of pride (advertising helps make media available at lower
cost, without possible dependence on government subsidy) and controversy.
The media are also commercial in the sense that in our capitalist economic system, the
media are structured so that their primary goal is profit. Because the media rely on advertisers for revenue, their audiences become commodities—in a sense, products, produced
and sold to advertisers. Advertisers are looking for people who are most likely to buy what
they have to sell and have both resources and a willingness and opportunity to spend those
resources. In this regard, not all audiences are equal; some are more desirable than others.
Advertisers “shop” for audiences in much the same way consumers shop for products.
As a result, media shape their content to attract those audiences advertisers want to
reach. So, for example, our media landscape until most recently was shaped in large part by
the advertising industry’s preoccupation with eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds. Sex and the
City, American Idol, and a seemingly endless spate of reality programs, action movies, and
“laddie” magazines stand as testimonial to that preoccupation.
This arrangement between advertising and the media gives rise to some of our most
common ethical concerns:
Advertising may exercise control over noneditorial content or may attempt to do
so. Maintaining a barrier between advertising and editorial content is a hallmark of journalistic integrity in a democratic society, a responsibility clearly stated in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.1 Charges of the media allegedly “selling out” to advertiser
interests are a long-standing concern, and that concern has escalated as media struggle in the
current economic downturn. Ronald K. L. Collins and Todd Gitlin assert in the introduction
to their book, Dictating Content:
Typically, we associate censorship and related problems with meddling or authoritarian
government. [This book] documents that in modern America, censorship is far more likely
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to be imposed by advertisers and advertising-related pressures, and far more likely to be tolerated
by our commercially supported media.2
Advertiser attempts to shape nonadvertising content are not limited to news but extend to
other media content as well. Advertisers have been known to withdraw their support if certain popular programs do not change “offensive” content. Sometimes effort to exert control is explicit (e.g.,
a product placement written into a script, a statement that advertising will be pulled in the event of
some “offense” to the advertiser); at other times, a medium might practice self-censorship, “softening” or choosing not to publish a story to avoid the possibility of a disconcerted advertiser. In
1992, the New England Journal of Medicine reported a study that showed that magazines that relied heavily on cigarette advertising were far less likely than others to write about the dangers of
smoking. Women’s magazines were found to be the worst offenders.3 In many women’s interest
magazines, a “supportive editorial environment” or “complementary copy” is almost essential to
attracting advertisers.4
Advertising influences the media available; that is, it “creates” the media landscape. As noted,
that landscape tends to be designed to attract the “haves,” usually defined in terms of consumption potential. Entire segments of the population, thus, might be ignored if advertisers do not deem them “desirable” as a target market. In this sense, advertisers play a powerful role in shaping the marketplace
of ideas.
These concerns are particularly troubling given the normative role of the press in a democracy,
and they have intensified in the face of persistent media consolidation. The number of companies that
control the majority of the media has been shrinking rapidly, placing enormous political, economic,
and indeed, cultural power in the hands of a few corporate giants.
Yet another dimension of the commercial media structure is the fact that media are often viewed
by these corporate owners primarily as profit centers, not foundations of democracy. Robert McChesney,
media scholar, activist, and cofounder of Free Press, a “national nonpartisan organization working to
reform the media,” articulates this point repeatedly and vehemently:
Even the most conscientious CEO on the planet cannot avoid the fact that his primary responsibility is to shareholders, not public audiences or the information needs of democracy.5
Media corporations . . . have determined that news gathering and reporting are not profitmaking propositions. . . . Our founders never thought that freedom of the press would belong only
to those who could afford a press. They would have been horrified at the notion that journalism
should be regarded as the private preserve of the Rupert Murdochs and John Malones. The
founders would not have entertained, let alone accepted, the current equation that seems to say that
if rich people determine there is no good money to be made in the news, then society cannot have
news.6
The cases in this chapter examine several complex ethical dilemmas. “Marketing U.S.
Latinidad” explores the processes and implications of the active construction of the Hispanic market as a target market and media audience desirable to advertisers. “Media Gatekeepers: ‘Sorry,
No Admittance’” reminds us that while media need advertisers, advertisers also need media to
reach audiences effectively and efficiently. This case explores power wielded by the media in
terms of advertising acceptance/rejection. “Shocking: The Case for Due Diligence” focuses on
the unusual situation of shock-jock radio, asking us to consider whether advertisers have responsibility for the content their money supports. “Front Page for Sale?” probes the professional dilemma posed by the blurring of advertising and editorial content. A final case,
“Welcome to Madison and Vine” examines the ever-increasing presence of product placement
in media content.
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33 MARKETING U.S. LATINIDAD7
Every consumer market is a construction of reality. This realization does not mean that the categories used to construct consumer markets have no basis in actuality. It does mean that the categories designed and the questions asked that contribute to the categories are for the benefit of
advertisers and their clients, not consumers.8
Targeting is an everyday convention of marketing practice; as advertisers, we routinely identify
a group, define that group using any number of characteristics, and subsequently direct our
marketing efforts toward it. Targeting is an effective and efficient approach to creating and delivering marketing messages. Stereotyping, while rarely acknowledged as such, is an inherent
part of the targeting process. Most anyone, even if he or she is not in advertising, can tell you
what characterizes a boomer, a Gen-Xer, or a tween; the “coveted” eighteen to thirty-four market
conjures up images and ideas that go well beyond age, as does the 55⫹ demographic. Target marketing is so much a part of what advertisers do that we rarely give it a thought. Perhaps we
should.
As the opening quotation suggests, a group’s recognition as a market is neither natural nor
automatic; it occurs in the context of social relations.9 That is, a market isn’t “out there” waiting
to be discovered; advertisers in effect define it into existence. Let’s briefly examine the Hispanic*
market and how it has come to be. Note that the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies estimated that the market’s spending power was $978 billion in 2009 and was expected to top a trillion dollars in 2010.10
The Hispanic market became a topic of conversation in the advertising trade press in the mid1960s, identified then as untargeted, ignored, neglected, and invisible. Marketing to Hispanics primarily was local; brokers bought time on English-speaking television stations. At the time, Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) rules precluded noncitizens from owning more than 20 percent of a network. Emilio Azcarraga, a Mexican TV entrepreneur with Televisa, had long been looking for a way to get Televisa programs into the United States. He began by buying television stations
in San Antonio and Los Angeles in 1961 and establishing the Spanish International Network and
Spanish International Communications Corporations (SIN/SICC).11
SIN then grew:
• By the mid-1970s, SIN owned sixteen stations.
• The network became the first U.S. network connected by satellite in 1976.
• By 1982, SIN claimed a 90 percent reach of Latino households through its 16 networks, 100
repeater stations, and over 200 cable systems.
• SIN was later sold to Hallmark and renamed Univision.
As noted earlier, in a commercial media system, audiences are commodities, products sold to
advertisers. To interest advertisers in supporting Spanish-language broadcasting, Latinos were identified, that is, called into existence as a lucrative, untapped market. The broadcasters had to convince advertisers that Latinos were desirable consumers, that Latinos were a large enough group
with enough spending power to make it a worthwhile target market. In an article titled “Spanish
Gold: Stereotypes, Ideology, and the Construction of a U.S. Latino Market,” Roberta Astroff analyzed discussion in the advertising trade press and noted:
*Most people are likely to use the terms Hispanics and Latinos interchangeably—despite the differences in the
terms, as explained in reference 7. Given that we draw data from various sources, we generally use the terms
used by our sources.
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. . . the U.S. Latino population was transformed from an “invisible market” into “Spanish
gold” through the redefinition, but not the elimination, of traditional stereotypes: though
basic elements of the stereotypes persist, values useful to advertisers are now assigned to
the stereotyped ascriptions and behaviors.12
The market also had to be identified as having unique characteristics that required separate media.
In short, Latinos had to be packaged as a marketable, commercially valuable identity. In this process,
Latinos—be they Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican—came to be identified in the marketing sense
as a nation within a nation, possessing a distinct culture, ethos, and language.13 They became identified as Spanish-speaking. Davila notes:
“Hispanics” remain a protected segment by their mere definition as a homogeneously
bounded, “culturally defined” niche. It is this definition that makes all “Latinos” part of
the same undifferentiated “market”—whether they live in El Barrio or in an upscale New
York high-rise, or whether they watch Fraser or only Mexican novelas, or love Ricky Martin
or consider him a sellout. . . . 14
Davila goes on to argue that the implications of this construction go far beyond marketing.
Commercial representations and recognition as a vital market have not translated into expansion of
the Hispanic role in participatory democracy:
. . . [C]ommercial representations may shape people’s cultural identities as well as affect
notions of belonging and cultural citizenship in public life. . . . Latinos are continually recast as authentic and marketable, but ultimately as a foreign rather than intrinsic component of U.S. society, culture, and history. . . . marketing discourse is not without economic
and political repercussions.15
Carl Kravetz, chairman of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, made a similar
argument:
. . . [W]e allowed the Hispanic advertising industry to be dragged into a Spanish vs. English
debate, and . . . in order to get ourselves out of the language corner, there [are] three
things we need to do: One. To move beyond defining our market in terms of English or
Spanish. Two. To insist on permission to be complex. Three. To adopt a new language . . .
the language of agency . . . the language of marketing . . . the language of businessbuilding. . . . it is up to us to define our consumers or risk having them defined for us.16 ◆
Targeting appears to be a valuable tool in a professional and pragmatic sense. It provides the
basis of efficient communication with a group of desirable consumers, and it minimizes monetary
waste as well as message delivery to individuals to whom the message might not be relevant and
so might be particularly annoying. Certainly, it also can be argued that the Hispanic media created
to facilitate targeting have been welcomed by many in the Hispanic community, despite that community’s diversity. Those media provide not only entertainment but also information on issues important to the group and an opportunity for dialogue. In short, the Hispanic community has been
given a voice, albeit a commercially driven voice.
To help clarify the construction of any target market, we might ask these questions:
• How do a variety of people come to be identified as belonging to a single group?
• What characteristics determine membership in that group?
• Who attributes the meanings given to these characteristics?
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In this case, Hispanics were defined by Hispanic media entrepreneurs who subsequently assumed
roles as “professional consultants” for the purpose of packaging Hispanics as a marketable audience. The market was constructed, one might say “othered,” by language and identified as a nation within a nation. In being distinguished in this manner, Hispanics were marginalized as
outside the mainstream, “forever needy of culturally special marketing.”17 Was the market constructed in response to the market’s genuine needs or as a means to achieve a marketer-defined
end? Was the Hispanic market simply constructed as an audience, a commodity, to ensure the
viability of Spanish-language broadcast media?
If the answer to this last question were yes, Kant would question the morality of the process.
For in the strictest sense, to “use” others in pursuit of our goals, or perhaps more clearly, in mere
pursuit of our goals, is immoral. To show disrespect for the humanity of another human being is
morally wrong. Two additional factors might be considered. One of those factors might be termed
the vulnerability of the market. Brooks reminds us that “it is through the discourses of advertisers
and their clients that the categories of consumers get established.”18 The Hispanic community was vulnerable in rather a different way than that which we might typically conceive. The community was
vulnerable to stereotypical interpretations and misinterpretations by a larger community that
knew very little about its many and varied cultures. To the degree that the Hispanic community
lacked control of its representations, it was at a decided disadvantage. Here again, however, the
complicity of Hispanic professionals as brokers of understanding should be acknowledged. As
Kravetz noted:
It was the Cuban revolution that kicked off U.S. Hispanic advertising. . . . [A] number of
Havana advertising men suddenly found themselves in exile and they wanted to work at what
they knew best. So they began the long arduous process of convincing American advertisers that
there was a vast, untapped market hidden away right under their noses. And the reason they
were untapped? Because they didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand advertising in
that language!19
Still, Kravetz conceded, these “founders” had spawned an entire industry. And what of that
industry? In an interview with Fortune, Cesar Conde, president of Univision Networks, noted that
while the advertising industry “has been buzzing about the Hispanic market for years,” advertising dollars to equal the buzz have not been forthcoming. Marketers spend many times more on
reaching European markets than on reaching Hispanics in the United States. The top 500 advertisers in the country spend 5.4 percent of their budgets on Hispanics; Hispanics are 15 percent of
the population. “It’s out of whack,” Conde says.20
The second factor to be considered is the persistence with which the marketing community
has addressed the Hispanic market as precisely and solely that, a market. The constructed images
and representations of the Hispanic market play a vital role in how individuals in that market are
understood more broadly as social, economic, and political participants. Is there some ethical middle ground where we recognize, at one and the same time, their value as consumers and their value
and rights as citizens? As advertising professionals we must consider the consequences of behaviors that often seem routine, and we must do so in each new situation, with each new product and
each new target. Of course we have a professional obligation to be an advocate for our clients, advancing their interests and the achievement of their goals. At the same time, we have a responsibility to do our work with fairness and sensitivity.
The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not . . . living “outside” society. They have always
been “inside”—inside the structure which made them “beings for others.” The solution is not to
integrate them into the structure of oppression, but to transform the structure so that they can
become “beings for themselves.21
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34 MEDIA GATEKEEPERS: “SORRY, NO ADMITTANCE”
The marketplace of ideas, the belief that “the best way to discover truth is through robust competition of a multitude of voices,” is a metaphor deeply entrenched in American culture and democracy.22 In the introduction to this chapter, we noted that because our media system is advertising
supported, media routinely craft their content to attract audiences that advertisers find desirable.
As such, it is possible and indeed quite likely that entire segments of the population may be ignored; they are not participants in the marketplace of ideas.
This case explores the marketplace of ideas from another perspective; examining the power
of any medium to reject advertising messages (with the exception of political advertising) for whatever reason it chooses. Certainly, this has economic implications for particular advertisers, making
it difficult if not impossible for them to have voice in the economic marketplace. In addition, if we
recognize advertising as a vehicle of social communication as well as a business tool, it is quite possible that through media rejection of advertising, entire groups of people as well as particular ideas
seeking to be heard via advertising messages may be rendered voiceless.
Note that media rejection of advertising messages or requests of advertisers to amend their
messages is not uncommon. Usually, this occurs without fanfare; many of us may not even be
aware that media regularly approve or reject advertising according to a medium’s established guidelines. However, in some instances, typically in cases of controversial groups or issues, media rejection becomes news.23 Let’s look at some examples.
In 2004, NBC and CBS halted negotiations with the United Church of Christ (UCC) concerning a television spot that invited minorities to the church. The ad features two bouncers at the entrance of a church who turn away a gay couple, an African American woman, and a Latino man
but allow a young, white family to pass. The words, “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do
we,” appear on the screen, followed by the image of a church sanctuary filled with a smiling group,
diverse in age, ethnicity, and sexual preference. The spot concludes with a narrator saying, “The
United Church of Christ: No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome
here.”24 According to the UCC, CBS explained its rejection of the spot with this statement:
Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority
groups by other individuals and organizations, and the fact that the executive branch has
recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a
man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the networks.25
NBC merely cited the ad as “too controversial.” Both NBC and CBS approved an alternate commercial from the UCC in which a girl plays the traditional hand game, “Here’s the church, here’s
the steeple; open the doors and see all the people.” Ultimately, the original ad aired on various
cable channels, including ABC Family, AMC, BET, Discovery, Fox, Hallmark, Travel, TBS, and TNT.26
Across the ocean in July 2007, the Gay Times, a gay lifestyle magazine published in the
United Kingdom, struggled to find an outlet for its message. The magazine duplicated its cover
on a series of advertisements to be displayed in “Tube” stations (the London Underground; the
equivalent of New York Metro stations). This particular cover celebrated the fortieth anniversary
of the decriminalization of homosexuality, with the word freedom written in bold across the center, over the image of two men in a partial embrace The London Underground required the Gay
Times amend the ad, stating that one of the models was in an “unnecessary state of undress.”
Ironically, when juxtaposed with advertisements featuring heteronormative models, the Gay
Times ad seemed less provocative than many. Gay Times editor Joseph Galliano said of the ad,
“We had a picture of two guys, the one in the foreground fully dressed, then behind him, craning his head on his shoulder, a guy in pants. In comparison with many ads that the London Underground runs, a very tame, rather tender image.”27 Nevertheless, the Gay Times altered the ad;
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one of the models was mostly hidden, with the exception of his arms, hands in the first model’s
pockets.
Consider now a case from Georgia concerning Lamar Advertising, a prominent billboard company, and Georgia Equality, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights organization. In
2005, Georgia Equality created the “We Are Your Neighbors” campaign, pairing images of prominent community figures such as a gay firefighter with the copy, “I protect you, and I am gay. We
are your neighbors,” or a lesbian doctor with the copy, “I care for you, and I am a lesbian.” Initially,
the campaign was featured on Clear Channel billboards in the Atlanta area, but the second phase
of the campaign came to a close with rejection of the ads in south Georgia by local Lamar managers. An e-mail from Lamar’s president to Georgia Equality explained that although he did not necessarily object to the campaign himself, “Right or wrong, we give our local management the
responsibility and authority to accept or reject ad copy.”28
At the other end of the political spectrum lies another billboard campaign. The “God Speaks”
campaign was introduced in 1998 by an anonymous donor. Black billboards featured, in white lettering, such phrases as these:
Don’t Make Me Come Down There. —God
If You Think It’s Hot Now, Just Keep Using My Name in Vain. —God
What Part of “Thou Shalt Not . . .” Didn’t You Understand? —God
Big Bang Theory, You’ve Got to Be Kidding. —God
The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), a group consisting of all billboard owners and renters in the United States, adopted the series of billboards as its national public service
campaign for 1999. An estimated $15 million worth of billboards (approximately 10,000) were donated to the ad campaign in 200 cities across the United States as a “gift to the community.”29 According to an Oklahoma City news story,30 “Lamar Advertising says they’ll keep putting them up
around the metro, whenever they have space available.” The God Speaks campaign continues on
billboards throughout the country; a new version of the boards including the God Speaks URL was
launched in 2009. God Speaks also sponsored a “very fast billboard on wheels,” a car on the
NASCAR circuit.31◆
These examples call our attention to an ethical dilemma that may not be viewed as such by
many. After all, media have the right to refuse any advertising (except political advertising); a medium
need not specify the reason for its rejection. Media clearance is viewed as an integral part of the regulatory mix, having the advantage of preempting public exposure to ads that might be false or deceptive. Common justifications for rejection include a violation of company guidelines, consumer
protection from deception, the belief that some products (ideas?) are objectionable to the target audience, and fear of offending audiences. Let’s look more carefully at the Lamar Advertising case.
Lamar Advertising welcomed the God Speaks campaign—even donating the billboard
space—after denying the same (paid) billboard space to Georgia Equality. We cannot know if the
motivation for rejection of the Georgia Equality boards was anything other than that stated. Nevertheless, one might speculate about the possibility that personal beliefs played some role. Billboards are not targeted media, so worries over audience reaction are less likely to have been at
issue. If the decision makers, in this case the administration of Lamar Advertising, had shaped
their social contracts from behind the veil of ignorance, they would be rendered unaware of their
own positions on the political and social spectrums involved. Thus, in making their decisions, they
would have to employ the principle of “justice as fairness.” As self-serving individuals, they could
neither condemn nor elevate any particular group’s message for fear of condemning themselves.
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A more familiar example of this thought process involves two people sharing one cake. If it
is agreed that one person will cut the cake and the other will choose his or her piece, the cutter cannot be aware of which piece he or she will receive in the end. Thus, it follows logically that the individual cutting the cake will divide it as evenly as possible, not to ensure the chooser a fair piece
but to protect his or her own share. From this perspective, ethical behavior does not necessarily
arise from altruism, but from a human inclination toward self-preservation.
Realistically, we are not expected to engage in an internal, Rawlsian debate on each decision
we encounter. We may, however, consider if we would feel ourselves to have been fairly treated if
the tables had been turned. With this in mind, consider Lamar’s options in accordance with the
obligation of fairness:
1. Lamar could grant access to both Georgia Equality and God Speaks, even if one or the other’s
message conflicted with the decision maker’s personal beliefs.
2. Lamar could deny access to both groups, acknowledging that each campaign may be equally
controversial and/or polarizing and as such is inappropriate for the particular media channel which reaches a broad, largely undifferentiated audience.
Quite simply, because media can reject particular ads does not necessarily mean that they
should reject those ads. Such decisions should be made with an obligation to fairness and justice.
Reflect on the following questions:
• Is it ethical to reject an advertisement or request it be amended for no reason other than that
it is inconsistent with our personal beliefs?
• Do the media have an obligation to subject rejection decisions to strict scrutiny, recognizing
the role those advertisements might play in the social marketplace as well as the economic
marketplace?
• Is identifying an advertising message as “too controversial” (as NBC did in rejecting the
United Church of Christ commercial) a legitimate reason for rejecting an ad in a culture that
celebrates the marketplace of ideas? If so, who should determine what constitutes controversial subject matter?
35 SHOCKING: THE CASE FOR DUE DILIGENCE
Many top talk shows hosts, from the recently resurrected Don Imus to industry giants such as
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity regularly employ and promote hate speech aimed against
women, minorities, homosexuals, and foreigners over public air waves, while simultaneously blurring the lines between entertainment, opinion, and journalism. . . . these highly paid, hugely
powerful, mostly male, and all-white “shock jocks” deliver one-sided, highly politicized versions of
the news, influence our national conversations and affect legislation on important social issues
ranging from immigration to abortion. At the same time, they foster a climate of social acceptance
of racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic language and hate speech—one that inevitably leads
to tolerance of acts of hatred.32
In Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio from which the quote above was drawn, author Rory
O’Connor notes that “by any measure—political, social, cultural, economic—talk radio is ‘hot.’”
And, “values” of radio talk shows seemingly have been successfully translated to television in politically oriented cable news shows. Glenn Beck is perhaps the most controversial “pundit” at the moment. Beck became wildly popular almost immediately after he began at the Fox News channel in
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2009, drawing 2.3 million viewers to his early evening program. Today, he is infamous for calling
President Obama a racist. “I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people,” Beck stated. “I’m saying
he has a problem. The guy is, I believe, a racist.”33
It is in instances like this, perhaps, that one reflects upon rights granted by the First Amendment.
Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote in Abrams v. United States, the case that would become the basis
of modern speech law: “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in
the competition of the market.” He added, “I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death.”34
It is also at these moments that we realize the enormity of those guarantees. In a recent New
York Times article, “Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech,” Adam Liptak wrote
that “merely saying hateful things about minorities, even with the intent to cause their members
distress and to generate contempt and loathing, is protected by the First Amendment.” It is precisely that tolerance of hate speech, according to Mark Steyn, quoted by Liptak, that is “the
bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal
cousins. . . . the First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from
the rest of the Western world.”35
The ethical dimensions surrounding the phenomenon of publicly broadcast offensive speech
are many: questions of truth, fairness, justice, respect, professional responsibility. Here, we want to
consider the perspective of advertisers who support programing that includes what many would
identify as hate speech, posing this question: Is it ethical for advertisers to support media rife with
racist, sexist, homophobic remarks injurious to others and to the social community? The focus is
Don Imus, long-time radio “shock jock,” once identified by Tom Brokaw (then anchor of the NBC
Nightly News) as a “low rent lounge act,” and a situation that played out very publicly over a weeklong period in 2007.
It all began on Wednesday, April 4, 2007, on Imus in the Morning, a radio program originating at CBS Radio–owned WFAN-AM in New York, syndicated to over sixty stations around the country through Westwood One and simulcast on MSNBC. During back-and-forth banter with his
sidekick, Bernard McQuirk (who many suggest is equally at fault for this episode), Imus referred to
the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, the Scarlet Knights, as “nappy-headed hos.” The
response to his remark was immediate and vehement. Media Matters for America, a liberal media
watchdog group, posted the story on its website, complete with video clip and transcript. The comments came swiftly and were uniformly negative. “I will never understand how MSNBC continues
airing Imus when his show promotes some of the most hateful, sexist, homophobic, racist garbage
imaginable!” wrote one. “Does anyone know what today is? It’s the day MLK was shot and killed.
For these slimeballs to spew this overt racist garbage today is obviously a provocation,” wrote another on the Media Matters for America website.
The week progressed as follows:
• Thursday, MSNBC issued a statement trying to distance itself from Imus; the Philadelphia
chapter of the NAACP called the remarks “racist and unacceptable.”
• Friday, the National Association of Black Journalists President Bryan Monroe indicated that
“Imus needs to be fired. Today.” The Rutgers president and the president of the NCAA called
the remarks unconscionable. Imus apologized on his show. WFAN apologized. CBS Radio
apologized.
• Saturday, Reverend Al Sharpton said, “I accept his apology, just as I want his bosses to accept
his resignation.”
• Monday, CBS Radio and MSNBC announced that they were suspending Imus for two weeks.
• Tuesday, advertisers began to pull their commercials.
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• Wednesday, the list of advertisers canceling lengthened, and MSNBC announced: “Effective
immediately MSNBC will no longer simulcast Imus’ radio show.”
These comments were deeply hurtful to many, many people. And we’ve had any
number of employee conversations, discussions, emails, phone calls. And when you
listen to the passion and the people who come to the conclusion that there should
not be any room for this sort of conversation and dialogue on our air, it was the only
decision we could reach.36
• Thursday, CBS announced that it had fired Imus.37 ◆
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, well-known media commentator and professor at the Annenberg
School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, remarked that it was “interesting that
[the firing] happened as late as it did. It should have happened the moment they were aware the
statement had been made.”38 From Jamieson’s perspective, the issue was a matter of professional
values and obligations. Imus had made racist and sexist remarks injurious to others; firing him
should have been swift and sure. Yet it wasn’t until a substantial number of advertisers began to
pull their advertising from the program that the decision to fire was made. Paul Farhi, writing in
The Washington Post, acknowledged the role advertisers had played in the decision: “Amid widespread media attention and expressions of dismay from prominent officials, including White House
Press Secretary Dana Perino, the advertiser defections were clearly a tipping point for NBC.”39
This episode raises a troubling ethical question from the advertising perspective: What responsibility, if any, do advertisers have for the content their advertising dollars support, particularly given the professional recognition of the wall separating advertising and editorial content?
Because few media can exist without advertising revenue, advertisers have considerable power to
choose those who are given a voice and those who are not. Advertisers and the media their dollars
support seldom call public attention to this fact of media life. That is, for the most part, it remains
largely out of sight unless something goes awry; typically this happens when advertisers are perceived as wielding their power inappropriately.
Audiences viewed by advertisers to be “less desirable” might choose to draw public scrutiny
to the refusal of advertisers to support their media. For example, the feminist magazine Ms. was unable to gather enough advertising, ceased publication, and ultimately relaunched without advertising support.40 Similarly, today advertisers frequently are criticized for not using minority media to
their full potential.41 In other cases, the fact that advertisers threaten to withdraw their advertising
if a certain program does not agree to change “offensive” content—or actually do pull their support
(e.g., Ellen DeGeneres, Roseanne)—becomes newsworthy. These situations almost universally are criticized as advertiser attempts to exert inappropriate control over media content, and they are viewed
as undemocratic in the sense that the lack of support of advertisers in effect “silenced” a voice in
the marketplace of ideas. The Imus episode turns this scenario on its head; advertisers are called to
task for failing to use their economic power to silence ideas viewed to be offensive.
O’Connor points out that programs like Imus in the Morning are “paradoxically profitable,42
suggesting the availability of interested advertisers. Let’s examine the situation from the position
of an individual advertiser, in this case, Procter & Gamble. Procter & Gamble is one of the largest
consumer goods companies, the largest advertiser in the United States in 2010 ($4⫹ billion), and
one of America’s most reputable corporations. According to the company website (www.pg.com),
the values of the corporation are integrity, leadership, ownership, passion for winning, and trust.
The company has a strong advertising and promotions policy based on honesty, intolerance of deceptive advertising or questionable promotional activity, and standards of commercial fairness.
In the past, Procter & Gamble has pulled advertising from programs it did not deem “appropriate,”
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and in 2001, the company joined in launching the Family Friendly Program Forum (FFPF), an organization of advertisers that pays seed money to networks to create family-friendly shows. In other
words, Procter & Gamble clearly has taken great care in distancing itself from objectionable or offensive programming. In fact, when the company decided to stop advertising on Imus in the Morning, a
spokesperson for the company indicated, “We have to think first about our consumers, so anyplace
where our advertising appears that is offensive to our consumers is not acceptable to us.”43
This action seems consistent with company policy, but raises additional questions. In his New
York Times op-ed column, Bob Herbert suggested that Imus’s denigration of the Rutgers team was
“business as usual”:
So this hateful garbage has been going on for a long long time. There was nothing new about
the tone or the intent of Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho” comment. As Bryan Monrole, president
of the NABJ told me the other night, “It’s a long pattern of behavior. . . .”44
Despite the widely acknowledged impropriety, bigotry, and sexism that characterized the Imus
program, and Procter & Gamble’s corporate values of “integrity, leadership, ownership, passion
for winning, and trust,” Procter & Gamble regularly had purchased advertising time on Imus in the
Morning. Why?
An obvious answer is economics. The program reached a large “desirable” audience, two
million listeners a day. The practical ability to reach this audience efficiently speaks to the advertising professional’s responsibility of acting in the client’s interest. That responsibility apparently
trumped any concern over the offensiveness of program content or social consequences related to
that content; more pointedly, economics trumped ethics. One writer on the occasion of Imus’s firing speculated that “somewhere in those corporate halls, there is fretting [that] Imus just cost his
advertisers plenty of inconvenience (‘Now where will we advertise and get such an audience?’)
and undesired publicity.”45
Another possibility relates to the fact that Imus is a symbol package fraught with contradictions. O’Connor comments on this noting that talk radio is characterized by
. . . the clever and continual blurring of distinctions between news, opinion and entertainment
practiced by leading talkers. . . . Sounding like journalists—while denying that they do— [this]
allows them to dodge responsibility for their provocative comments. It also inexorably leads to
the dissolution of borders between fact, fiction, and fun . . . 46
Then too, it may be a quirk of our consumer, celebrity culture. Despite Imus’s known bigotry, vitriol, and racism, well-known guests—Doris Kearns Goodwin; Senators Christopher Dodd, John
Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and John McCain; Andre Agassi; Frank Rich; Paula Deen; Sally Quinn; Governor Bill Richardson—came regularly and apparently quite easily to chat with him. The presence
of these widely recognized personalities may have provided something of a gloss of propriety that
assuaged advertiser discomforts.
In defending themselves against criticism, shock jocks regularly call upon their First Amendment right to free speech. Indeed, as noted earlier, the First Amendment does protect that speech,
though there is something of an overstatement in their interpretation. Consider Drumwright and
Murphy’s observation that while the First Amendment does prohibit government from abridging
freedom of speech
. . . it does not stand for the proposition that all speech is equally worthy and should be uttered
and encouraged, or that speakers should not be condemned for the speech that they make. . . .
That the government does not prosecute those who make racial slurs does not mean that racial
epithets should be encouraged. . . . [s]ome misinterpret free speech law as meaning that [we] are
exonerated from personal responsibility.47
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Often advertisers who are reluctant to withdraw advertising do so on the basis of recognizing freedom of speech rights. Procter & Gamble’s willingness to pull support from other programs that did
not meet their guidelines suggests that in this case, concern over free speech was not an issue.
Writing in Advertising Age, Bill Imada, chairman and CEO of IW Group, a communication firm
specializing in multicultural markets in the United States, noted that he was shocked by the number of prominent brands that advertised on what he identified as “offensive” programming. He believes strongly that planners have a responsibility to listen and watch the vehicles in which their
clients’ ads are placed. “We should all recognize,” Imada wrote, “that the intentional use of words
and phrases to degrade, demean and perpetuate hatred against other human beings should never
be supported or tolerated through advertising, marketing or other means.”48
Another advertiser notes:
I do not believe any client should ever have to be in the position of having to defend itself based
upon its choice of media venues. Who cares what the numbers say? If the air is blue, it will stink
up the message and the perception becomes the reality.49
We are left once again contemplating the inherent tensions between professional values and
social responsibility. Although both of these individuals suggest that advertisers do in fact
have a responsibility for the content they support, that responsibility seems to be based primarily on the possible carryover of offensive content to the perception of their clients’ efforts,
perhaps hindering those efforts, rather than on a concern for possibile consequences in the
social community.
Fran Kelly, chief executive at Arnold Worldwide, indicated that while Imus had every right
to be on the air and to say what he wanted to say, “advertisers have every right to vote with their
dollars.”50 The question remains: What provides the basis for that vote?
POSTSCRIPT
Don Imus returned to radio on WABC-AM in New York on December 3, 2007, “chastened but still
proudly obnoxious.”51 He told his audience: “I will never say anything in my lifetime that will
make any of these young women at Rutgers regret or feel foolish that they accepted my apology
and forgave me. . . . And no one else will say anything on my program that will make anyone
think I did not deserve a second chance.” He indicated, however, that “the program is not going
to change.”52 The roster of guests was familiar, including then-presidential hopefuls John McCain
and Christopher Dodd. Back too were some of the long-standing advertisers. On October 5, 2009,
Fox Business Network picked up a simulcast of Imus’s radio talk show.
36 FRONT PAGE FOR SALE? ADVERTISING AND EDITORIAL CONTENT
Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.53
There can be little doubt that the newspaper business is in trouble. In the face of dramatic declines
in circulation, the migration of advertising to other media, Web and online competition, and reduction in perceived credibility, the industry is facing the “worst revenue slide since the Depression.”54
Newspapers, as one observer noted, “are shaking the couch cushions to try and find spare change.”55
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Individual newspapers have undertaken a number of routes to remain viable. However, a number of
metro dailies, among them The Rocky Mountain News, which had been publishing in Denver for 150
years, ceased publication. Some papers have created “hybrids,” melding an online and print presence. The Christian Science Monitor, another more than 100-year-old paper, went from a daily to a
weekly print format in 2008 and began to focus on its Web presence. In 2009, the Seattle PostIntelligencer, which had been publishing for 146 years and was Seattle’s oldest business, became the
nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.56
Signaling the severity of the situation while also voicing a mild optimism for the future,
newspaperdeathwatch.com, a website “chronicling the decline of newspapers and the rebirth of
journalism,” was launched in March 2007. Maintaining the boundary between advertising and editorial content as stated in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics is a challenge in the
best of times, requiring vigilance from those on either side.57 However, the inherent tension between economics and ethics clearly has escalated in the current economic climate.
April 9, 2009
NBC purchased a traditional strip ad running across the bottom of the front page in the Los Angeles Times for a new TV series, Southland, premiering that night. On the surface, it was a relatively unremarkable occurrence. A number of papers, including USA Today, The Wall Street
Journal, and The New York Times had begun selling ads on the front page. But the Los Angeles
Times ad was different. Adjacent to it was another ad unit which resembled a news column; the
headline was “Southland’s Rookie Hero.” The story told of a fictional LAPD rookie police officer’s first day on the job, and included a slug at the bottom in italics, indicating that this was
just one of many “incredible” stories the series would be bringing to viewers. Topped by the
NBC peacock logo, the ad/article had no byline and no jump to an inside page, and it included
the mandatory word advertisement above the headline. All these elements were designed to let
the readers know they were reading paid content and not the news.58 Still, it looked like a news
story.
According to Adam Stotsky, president of marketing for NBC, the entertainment advertising
department of the Los Angeles Times had developed the idea and had come to the network; NBC
wrote the story/ad with the Times advertising staff giving advice only on incidentals such as font
size. “What was great about this ad unit is it gave us a quote–unquote ‘editorial voice,’” Stotsky
noted.59 “The more contextualized you can make your marketing, the more engaging it becomes.”60 The Times said of the ad:
The delivery of news and information is a rapidly changing business, and the Los Angeles
Times is continuously testing innovative approaches. . . . that includes creating unique
marketing opportunities for our advertising partners, and today’s NBC “Southland” ad was
designed to stretch traditional boundaries.61
The ad drew complaints from seventy readers by the afternoon of the day it ran and aroused
debate among journalism educators and industry professionals.62 Geneva Overholser, director of
the University of Southern California (USC) journalism school, called the effort a “fundamental act
of deception.”63 Bob Steele, values and ethics scholar at the Poynter Institute and professor of journalism at Depauw University, was equally critical:
Making the ad look like news in story style and writing trades on the credibility of news
content, with the hope that readers will be more inclined to read the ad and give it greater
credence. . . . The Times’ execs are chopping away at the journalistic foundation. They are
selling pieces of the paper’s journalistic soul.64
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March 5, 2010
Readers of the Los Angeles Times opened the paper and were greeted by “a garishly multicolored
image of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in the film Alice in Wonderland.”65 The image, which
took most of the front page, was superimposed over what looked to be the usual front page, and
there, above Depp’s head, was the Los Angeles Times banner. Partially visible were actual news
articles on health care and Afghanistan bracketing the outside of the image.66 The ad was a cover
wrap of the A section, a front-to-back, two-page spread. Disney reportedly had paid $700,000 for
what a Times spokesperson called the “most valuable real estate in the paper,”67 the front page.
In response to the earlier Southland effort, the Poynter Institute’s Bob Steele noted:
It’s unwise and ethically problematic to have advertising morph into news content and
style. Each step may seem like a small one. But each time you cut a corner, you create
weakness in the overall product.68
Steele’s remarks now seemed prescient.
“Wow,” one reader tweeted. “I didn’t know you could buy the front page of the Times.” ◆
The Los Angeles Times decisions to run the controversial front page ads raises a number of ethical issues fundamental to professional journalists. According to the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics, “Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of
justice and the foundation of democracy. . . . Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility.”69 The mandate to maintain a distinct separation between commercial interests,
advertising, and editorial content, is fundamental to the integrity of the news product. It is essential to a paper’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities to its readers, the organization, and the profession. The importance placed upon this mandate is evident in a petition objecting to the ad signed
by more than 100 LA Times staff members. The petition read, in part:
The NBC ad may have provided some quick cash, but it has caused incalculable damage to this
institution. . . . This action violates a 128-year pact with our readers that the front page is reserved for the most meaningful stories of the day. . . . [and] makes a mockery of our integrity and
journalistic standards.70
The petition was delivered to Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein, who decided to run the ad despite
these objections. The editorial advertising department and the client seemed elated with this
“unique marketing opportunity”; editor Russ Stanton merely seemed resigned to the financial realities that had made this effort necessary. “There is not an editor in this nation—including me,” he
noted, “who really wants to see something like that on the front page of his or her publication.”71
As noted, the Los Angeles Times was not the first newspaper to sell front page advertising.
USA Today has been selling space on the “bottom of the front page” since 1999. The Wall Street Journal began to sell front page advertising at the “lower right-hand corner” in 2006; The New York
Times has sold front page advertising “below the fold” since January 2009. The Washington Post was
the sole holdout among the national dailies but announced it would sell ads on the front page
starting September 19, 2010. What is striking about the LA Times efforts is their boldness. There is
no sense of the reluctance that undergirded The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times announcements that they would be selling advertising on the front page. Absent too is the reticence inherent in proposed limitations of “below the fold,” “at the bottom of the page,” and “in the lower
right-hand corner.” By contrast, the LA Times efforts seemed almost cavalier. Other papers sold
advertising on the front page; the LA Times had sold the front page!
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Robert Niles, a former journalism professor at the University of Southern California said the
front page Disney ad was “a sign of just utter surrender by the Times.” He continued:
It’s a pretty dangerous road to go down for any news organization to actually sell advertising that
covers up your news reporting. . . . It really shows a lack of respect for the audience and a lack
of confidence in your editorial product.72
A spokesperson from the Times, John Conroy, disputed any notion that the ad undermines the
paper’s editorial integrity:
We made it clear that this was a depiction of the front page, rather than a real front page of the
newspaper. We had an unusual opportunity here to stretch the traditional boundaries and deliver
an innovative ad unit that was designed to create buzz.73
Reader comments in response to both ads, as well as comments made in articles about the
ads, clearly indicated that, indeed, the LA Times had squandered public trust. Readers had expected more from the Times. A sampling:
• You are a NEWSPAPER, for God’s sake, not an advertising throwaway! You mean there was no
news that was fit to print? Unfortunately, and with great regret, I have canceled my subscription.74
• Whoring the front page of a national daily is just gross. . . . If Disney can buy the front page, why
not the news? Where is the line? This is a very sad day for me.75
• The LA Times just sold its credibility, which is all a journalistic institution really has. Hope it got
a good price.76
But not all comments were negative. One reader wrote: “I saw the faux front page, and I think
it was brilliant. Someone with a lot of creative talent was behind this one.” Many others swooned over
Johnny Depp. Frequently, you could sense cynicism. For these readers, this wasn’t simply about the
Los Angeles Times; it was about the newspaper industry. It was about journalism. Again, a sampling:
Writer 1: This is the wave of the future. Ads will be inserted into journalism in the same way product placements infiltrated film and TV.
Writer 2: No they won’t. Because the result will not be journalism.
Writer 1: And you think it’s journalism now?!
And this one:
I’m so relieved there is a “freedom of the press,” otherwise the govt might crack down on . . .
Oh . . . never mind.
For Disney, it was an unusual opportunity, and a golden one. It was a prime spot, uncluttered
by other advertising and drawing a substantial audience. The credibility of the paper lent credibility to the ad, which also benefited from the paper’s timeliness (the movie was opening that
night). Then, of course, there was the buzz. This was an ad like no one had ever run before. There
would be publicity; it might be good or bad, but it would be publicity. This was the kind of buy
media strategists dreamed about.
Advertising agencies certainly have a professional responsibility to their clients, but they also
have an obligation to the social community and to the media in which their ads appear. Times are
tough for all media, but particularly for newspapers. Papers are making concessions in the name
of survival; the wall between advertising and editorial content is becoming more and more
strained. And yet, maintaining that wall is a shared responsibility.
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Adopting a utilitarian perspective, one would believe the greatest good for the greatest number
would be served by maintaining the strictest of barriers between advertising and editorial content.
Monetizing content in any manner might provide a short-term solution; however, in the long term,
the very foundations of the paper and the profession will erode. Think of the reduction in newspapers’ perceived credibility that already exists. What might further advertising–editorial collaboration
mean for the integrity of the newspaper? For the perceived integrity of newspapers as a viable source
of news? How long will it be before the news department finds itself at mercy of the advertisers, stops
reporting news, and starts running content that pleases advertisers? Some did say then (in 2009 and
2010) and would say, now: “It is simply wrong!” For these individuals, monetizing content is not viable in the long run; professional consequences trump immediate concerns with economic viability.
Consider this comment on a discussion of LA Times front page ads on responsiblemarketing.com: “I don’t care what desperate financial situation newspapers are in, there’s no excuse for
this. They’ve sacrificed any journalistic integrity they had for a buck. If that’s what they have to do
to stay afloat then they don’t deserve to stay afloat.”77
And yet, it is difficult to argue with the view that the greatest good would be served by a newspaper’s survival, a perspective not without its merits. Faced with what might rightfully be termed
dire economic straits, one can sense resignation in many comments of critics and industry professionals, and even of readers. “Newspapers are facing a really remarkable economic challenge, but to
me, this is exactly the wrong way to go about surviving,” Geneva Overholser said of the 2009 ad on
the front page of the LA Times: “This breaks perhaps the most important bond that newspapers have
with their readers, which, to me, is a bond of trust.” But Dan Kennedy commented: “Given that we’re
in pretty desperate times, far better that the LA Times do this than say no to the revenue and end up
having to cut back on their actual news coverage.”78 Reading these comments, one senses the reticence with which many have “accepted” what they view to be a creeping commercial imperative.
The ethical question also is relevant to those on the advertising side of the equation, for advertising, too, depends on the integrity of the news product. Advertising in newspapers is deemed
useful, in part, because of the halo of credibility cast from the editorial content. In the case of the
2010 Disney ad, efforts appear to have been conceptualized and spearheaded by the marketing department of the LA Times. As professionals employed by the paper, the advertising department has
a responsibility to maintain the commercial foundations of the paper. As an advocate for the client,
the department has some responsibility to act in the client’s best interests as well. Do the advertising professionals also have a duty to the public? Is the integrity of the news product partially
their responsibility?
Have we reached an ethical impasse? Is there room for compromise? How do newspapers protect their journalistic integrity at the same time they develop new revenue streams? The stakes are
high: “. . . who, if anyone, can assume newspapers’ traditional role as a watchdog?” notes one CNN
reporter. “For more than 200 years, that role has been an integral part of American democracy.”79
37 WELCOME TO MADISON AND VINE
Let’s take a glimpse into contemporary popular culture.
Miracle Whip (a salad dressing sometimes used instead of mayonnaise), trying to develop a
“snappier” image for its brand, introduced its new packaging with an integration effort in Lady
Gaga’s nine-minute music video, Telephone. That video not only featured Miracle Whip and Beyoncé,
but at least eight other brands. Some were product placements, others were simply selected by
Lady Gaga for personal reasons. In the trade press, reactions to the video were mixed, in most instances a reflection of the video’s highly sexualized content. Commenting on the effort in
Advertising Age, one writer noted: “What was interesting was that the video was so nakedly a
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commercial. . . . What may be the woman’s [Lady Gaga’s] real contribution to marketing is her
understanding that she’s . . . a medium through which brands may move.”80
A major character in the serial spy comedy Chuck not only delivered a Subway sandwich to
his colleague, but he also spoke the brand’s then-current advertising slogan, “$5 foot long.” That
was, as one Advertising Age writer noted, “tantamount to turning Chuck for even the briefest of
moments into a bona fide Subway commercial.” Later, when NBC indicated the show might not be
renewed, fans on Facebook and Twitter rallied supporters to write letters of protest, buy Subway
sandwiches, and watch the season finale to show the network the fans had buying power. The program was renewed in part because of a deal signed with Subway for another season; in return for
the large amount of money the brand spends with the network, Subway is said to receive a bit of
creative latitude in developing their integrations.81
American Airlines and Hilton Hotels had “more than enough unique branding moments for
each sponsor to make their participation worth millions in media dollars” in the movie Up in the
Air, but they didn’t pay a cent.82 An American Airlines promotions director quipped: “We don’t
have any money to spend—you read the headlines, right?”83 Instead, the two sponsors provided
locations and branding to defray costs. “Planes don’t come cheaply.”84
The Spanish-language broadcast network Telemundo has signed licensing deals with manufacturers to develop products—jewelry at this point, home decor products in the near future—that
can be integrated in telenovelas and other programming. The products would not otherwise exist
for consumers to buy. The jewelry, which has already appeared in a telenovela, El Clon, is available
for sale on the Telemundo website. ◆
Product placement, paying to have a brand embedded in media content, is hardly a new phenomenon. The Lumière brothers are said to have made the first product placement recorded on film
for Unilever’s Sunlight Soap in 1896.85 In the 1950s, Gordon’s Gin paid to have Katherine Hepburn’s character in The African Queen toss its product overboard.86 Currently, there appears to be
something of a frenzied resurgence of the strategy fueled by a number of factors, among them: technological innovations; digital competition; clients seeking creative ways to reach an ever-harder-toreach, fragmented audience in relevant ways; high production costs; a decline in television viewing;
and advertising clutter. Then too, the survival of a 30-second spot is fraught with uncertainty; a digital video recorder, a thumb on the remote control, and the commercial may be gone, sight unseen.87
Bouyed by successful promotions of products in films and television, brand placement has
become almost ubiquitous, spreading to novels, recorded songs, music videos, plays, video games,
and blogs. Estimates of expenditures on product placements are notoriously varied, though there
is consensus on the fact that increases in upcoming years will be nothing short of phenomenal. PQ
Media estimates that global paid product placement will soar to nearly $7.6 billion in 2010. In 2009,
paid placement in the United States was $1.5 billion; overall product placement including barter
and nonpaid placement reached nearly $4.5 billion.88
Once, product placement was little more than sending out props and hoping for the best.
Today, however, placement is strategic and highly managed. Increasingly, the term brand integration has come to replace product placement in industry conversations and in concept. In a New York
Times article, “Product Placements Acquire a Life of Their Own on Shows,” Stephanie Clifford
remarked on changes taking place:
These days consumer brands not only appear on shows, but are also elaborately woven into the
plot, with advertisers calling a lot of the shots. Their agencies approve television scripts, suggest
plots that hinge on the product, attend and critique the episode shoots, and review the rough cuts
of episodes.89
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As the trend toward integration escalates, advertising representatives become more involved
and more demanding. “We almost consider ourselves to be the junior writers of the show,” one
wrote.90 In this milieu, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild have become particularly watchful of their creative freedom and the integrity of their work. And, it seems, rightfully so. In an article aptly headlined “Don’t Like Product Placement? Here’s Why It’s Your Fault,”
an Advertising Age writer noted:
Never has it been more clear that commercials and content are fast becoming one and the same,
wholly indistinguishable from each other. . . . At some point, ads and shows might blur so much
that the notion of a “commercial break” becomes a silly, antiquated thing of the past.91
The president of the Screen Actors Guild, perhaps sensing that the day was fast approaching,
described product integration as “an intrusive process that is getting more and more out of
hand.”92 Alternatively, one industry writer suggests integration is “the future of brand marketing
on the first screen.”93 It is a troubling juxtapositioning. Indeed, the platform has already altered
dramatically as advertisers seek ever-deepening integrations, coupling placements with other promotions, online activities, and traditional advertising.
Networks and producers are thrilled with the revenue generated and advertisers applaud the
creative possibilities afforded by integration strategies, but not all are so accepting. Viewers have
complained that some placements are too blatant—they clearly resent the intrusion of branded
messages that appear out of place or out of story. Proponents of brand placement suggest that such
placements were simply poorly executed and argue that brands are part of the reality of daily life
in a consumer culture. Proponents think brand placements add to the reality of the created environment of entertainment programming, giving a sense of authenticity to the plot and aiding in
character development.
In many ways, once again, we encounter something of a clash between advertising and nonadvertising content. Discussions of the wall between advertising and nonadvertising content typically are confined to news content, but that wall applies to entertainment as well. Certainly one
might argue that replacing a plain box labeled “cereal” on a kitchen table with a box of Kashi GoLean Crunch (oops! a placement) adds a sense of reality and seems a relatively benign intrusion.
This is particularly true when compared to today’s more orchestrated integrations. And yet, it is a
commercial incursion into noncommercial space.
When contemplating the ethical dimensions of product integration, recall that the use of this
strategy increased as marketers attempted to counter consumers efforts to avoid advertising by
skipping or fast-forwarding through commercials. Despite the fact that brand names may very
well add authenticity to program content, the strategy emerged as a fundamentally adversarial
one: Consumers don’t want to see ads, so marketers create ads that don’t look like ads and slip
them in television programs, books, movies, videogames—just about anywhere to get in front of
potential customers. Is this a violation of responsibility to the public? Does product placement
simply serve the needs of the media while disregarding those of the public? Is product placement/
integration unethical, given that viewers are unaware that they are watching a promotional message? Is this deception?
Robert Weissmann, managing director of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit group that aims to
limit commercial marketing, believes that advertising involvement in shaping scripts is a “fundamental encroachment on the independence of programming.” More importantly, he suggests,
product placement is dishonest, deceptive, and manipulative.
TV networks send programs into living rooms that are packed with embedded advertising. . . .
TV stations pretend that these are just ordinary programs rather than paid ads. This is an affront
to basic honesty. . . . Product placements are inherently deceptive, because many people do not
realize that they are, in fact, advertisements.94
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The FCC, in its examination of the phenomenon, agrees: “[Product placement] is particularly insidious because viewers often are unaware that someone is trying to influence, persuade or market to them.95
Calls for regulation have revolved around mandatory disclosure and how that disclosure
might best be effected. Current rules require that when money or “another consideration” has been
received, the station must broadcast full disclosure of that fact at the time of the airing of the
material and must identify who provided or promised to provide consideration. The public should
know “who is trying to persuade them with the programming being aired.”96 The requirement is
typically met with a disclosure in the end credits (“promotional consideration paid by . . . “) that
remains on the screen long enough to be read or heard by the average viewer. Critics have suggested variations; for example, disclosures should be longer, larger, and on the screen at the time
placements occurs. In so far as they perceive current disclosures to be inadequate, consumers are
being deceived.
The advertising industry and the media disagree: “Our audience is aware that product placement exists and that advertisers are probably paying for some of the more branded mentions that
they see in the body of the show . . . the audience gets it.”97
Then too, some suggest that product placement not only increases the commercialization of
entertainment but may be an unwarranted violation of privacy of essentially “captive” audiences.
If one views privacy as the right to be let alone, is the interjection of paid integration into entertainment programming without disclosure an invasion of privacy because the viewer is not being
told of the commercial insertion and is not given the right to choose to view or not?
In a capitalist economy, many do not consider brand promotion to be a vice. Yet its unannounced presence raises a number of ethical questions:
• Do consumers have the right to know whether they are viewing or hearing paid advertising
from the manufacturer of a product?
• Do advertisers have some moral and perhaps legal obligation to be certain their messages are
understood to be promotional?
• Alternatively, do advertisers have freedom in their efforts, relying on consumer sophistication?
• Is product placement socially responsible given its contribution to the escalation of commercial voices and monopolization of cultural space?
• Are there possible points of compromise between critics and advocates on issues of product
placement? If so, what actions might be taken to effect such a compromise?
NOTES
1. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.
2. Ronald K. L. Collins and Todd Gitlin, Dictating Content (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Commercialism, 1992), 41.
3. Cited in Ronald Bettig and Jeanne Lynne Hall, Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economy,
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 97.
4. Gloria Steinem, “Sex, Lies, and Advertising,” Ms., July/August 1990.
5. Bettig and Hall, Big Media.
6. John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers, http://www
.libertytreefdr.orgpublications/nichols_newspapers.
7. This concept, Latinidad, is derived from Arlene Davila, Latinos, Inc.: The Making and Marketing of a People
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). She defines it as “enactments, definitions and representations of Hispanic or Latino culture” (p. 17). She also clarifies the distinction between Hispanic and Latino.
Hispanic is viewed by Latino activists as being “more politically sanitized” (p. 15). Latino is seen as being
more politically correct; however, all agencies tend to use the official name Hispanic.
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8. Dwight E. Brooks, “In Their Own Words: Advertisers’ Construction of an African-American Consumer
Market, the World War II Era,” Howard Journal of Communications 6:1–2 (October 1995): 48.
9. Roberta J. Astroff, “Spanish Gold: Stereotypes, Ideology, and the Construction of a U.S. Latino Market,”
Howard Journal of Communications 1:4 (Winter 1988–1989): 155–173.
10. http://ahaa.org/default.asp?contentID=29.
11. The whole of this story is detailed in the book by Arlene Davila, Latinos, Inc.
12. Astroff, “Spanish Gold.”
13. Davila, Latinos, Inc.
14. Ibid., 8.
15. Ibid., 2, 4, 235.
16. Speech delivered by Carl Kravetz to the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies on the AHAA
Latino Identity Project, September 20, 2006.
17. Davila, Latinos, Inc., 4.
18. Brooks, “In Their Own Words,” 34.
19. Kravetz, speech delivered to the AHAA.
20. Mina Kimes, “Do Advertisers Have a Blind Spot Toward U.S. Hispanics?,” http://money.cnn.com/2010/
04/09/news/companies/univision_hispanics_latinos.fortune/index.htm.
21. P. Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1970).
22. W. Wat Hopkins, “The Supreme Court Defines the Marketplace of Ideas,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 73:1 (Spring 1996): 40.
23. We would be remiss if were failed to note that there are instances in which advertisers are believed to create advertising messages they know will be rejected in order to garner the publicity that will follow and
the notoriety that comes with being a “banned commercial” on YouTube. The ethical issues surrounding
this “strategy” will be dealt with in later chapters.
24. Robert Marus, “Networks Reject UCC Ads, Citing Gay Controversies,” Associated Baptist Press, December
2, 2004.
25. Alan Cooperman, “Two Networks Bar Religious Commercial: CBS, NBC Turn Down United Church of
Christ’s Ad Touting Its Inclusiveness,” Washington Post, December 2, 2004, A-8.
26. Ibid.
27. As quoted on gaytimes.co.uk: http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/loteract/Blogs-section-587-articleid-2829.html.
28. Ann Rostow, “Billboard Company Rejects Pro-Gay Ads,” Gay.com, August 7, 2005.
29. http://www.godspeaks.com/AboutGodspeaks.asp?PageId=CampaignHistory.
30. Ed Doney, “God’s Billboards,” Oklahoma NewsChannel 4, KFOR.com, 2006.
31. http://www.godspeaks.com/racing.asp.
32. Rory O’Connor, Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio, America’s 10 Worst Hate Talkers and Progressive
Alternatives (San Francisco: AlterNet Books, 2008), 1–2.
33. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/07/29/2009-07-29_fox_news_glenn_beck_president_
barack_obama_is_racist_with_deepseated_hatred_of_w.html.
34. Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616(1919).
35. Adam Liptak, “Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech,” New York Times, June 12, 2008.
36. ”NBC News: Only Decision We Could Reach,” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18063461/.
37. Though the chronology is readily available from individual news stories, this chronology was drawn from
John Horn, “The Imus Scandal: Chronology and Aftermath,” Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2007.
38. Michael Klein and Michael Shaffer, “CBS Fires Imus from Radio Show,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 2007,
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/television/20070413_CBS_fires_imus_from_radio_show.html.
39. Paul Farhi, “MSNBC Drops Imus’s Show; As Advertisers Pull Out Amid Backlash, CBS Director Hopes
Host Will Be Fired,” Washington Post, April 12, 2007.
40. Gloria Steinem, “Sex, Lies, and Advertising.”
41. Mina Kimas, “Do Advertisers Have a Blind Spot?”
42. O’Connor, Shock Jocks.
43. Jacques Steinberg, “Imus Struggling to Retain Sway as a Franchise,” New York Times, April 11, 2007.
44. http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12herbert.html?ref=don_imus.
45. Robert Trigaux, “Advertisers Need Imus, No Matter How Crude,” St. Petersburg Times, April 16, 2007.
46. O’Connor, Shock Jocks.
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47. Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick Murphy, “How Advertising Practitioners View Ethics,” Journal of
Advertising 33:2 (Summer 2004): 13.
48. Bill Imada, “Advertisers Do Have a Responsibility for Content,” Advertising Age, October 3, 2007,
http://adage.com/print?article_id=120902.
49. Ibid.
50. Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg, “Off the Air: The Light Goes Out for Don Imus,” Advertising Age, April
13, 2007.
51. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/arts/television/04imus.html?ref=don_imus.
52. Ibid.
53. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.
54. Richard Perez-Pena, “A Cover Ad that Mimics a Newspaper’s Front Page,” New York Times, March 6, 2010,
B-4.
55. http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/130305-10-times-outsources-reporting-to-nbc-and-hopesyou-notice.
56. http://www.seattlepi.com/business/403793_piclosure17.html.
57. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.
58. Josef Adalian, “NBC’s ‘Southland’ Pushes Ad Limits in L.A. Times,” http://www.tvweek.com/news/
2009/04/nbcs_southland_pushes_ad_limit.php.
59. Stephanie Clifford, “Front of LA Times Has an NBC ‘Article’”, New York Times, April 9, 2009, http://www
.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/business/media/10adco.html.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Alana Semuels and Martin Zimmerman, “Times’ Front Page Ad Sparks Outcry,” Los Angeles Times, April
10, 2009 http://www.articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/10/business/fi-times10.
63. http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0744114/.
64. http://www.silha.umn.edu/news/spring2009.php?entry=197009.
65. Perez-Pena, “A Cover Ad.”
66. Ibid.
67. http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/03/06/10/la-times-sells-front-page-alice-wonderland-ad.
68. Perez-Pena, “A Cover Ad.”
69. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.
70. http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/04/09/la-times-staffers-fume-over-front-page-ad/.
71. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/10/business/fi-times10.
72. http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/la-times-sells-disney-entire-front-page-14953.
73. Ibid.
74. http://www.businessinsider.com/people-actually-cancelled-la-times-subscriptions-over-southlandad-2009-4#ixzz0rFtvfMZr.
75. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/06/los-angeles-times-front-p_n_488593.html.
76. Ibid.
77. http://responsiblemarketing.com/blog/2009/04/13/deceptive-or-smart-the-la-times-southland-ad.
78. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/business/media/10adco.html?ref=business.
79. http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/19/newspaper.decline.layoff/index.htm.
80. http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=142794.
81. http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=136036; http://adage.com/madisonandvine/
article?article_id=136301; http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=136747.
82. http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=141059.
83. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/business/media/21adco.html.
84. See note 81.
85. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux1CJbC2-EUY.
86. Rick D. Saucier, Marketing Ethics (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), 25.
87. Brian Steinberg, “Don’t Like Product Placement? Here’s Why It’s Your Fault,” Advertising Age, February 11,
2010, http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=142069.
88. http://promomagazine.com/research/paidplacementreport/.
89. Clifford, “Front of LA Times.”
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90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
Persuasion in Advertising
Ibid.
Steinberg, “Don’t Like Product Placement?”
T. L. Stanley, “A Place for Everything,” Adweek, February 28, 2010.
Ibid.
http://www.commercialalert.org/issues/culture/product-placement.
Stanley, “A Place for Everything.”
http://www.fcc.gov; http://fjallfoss.foc.gov.docs_public/attachmatch/FCC-O8-155A3.doc.
Brian Steinberg, “Product Ads Gain More Screen Time, Boston Globe, July 28, 2009.
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C H A P T E R
9
Advertising’s Professional Culture
P
rofessions occupy a position of great importance in America; they influence the relationships between individuals and their work and their work and society.1 The tendency toward professionalization began to emerge in the United States around 1840;
baseball players, funeral directors, teachers, and even private detectives sought to
join lawyers, doctors, and the clergy as recognized professionals.2 Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, advertising too sought the credibility, authority, and
“job security” that comes with professional stature. Earliest efforts were designed primarily
to distance advertising work from the hucksterism so characteristic of its founders: P. T. Barnum
and “snake oil” salesmen hawking patent medicines (Dr. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup: “Makes
‘em lay like the dead ‘til mornin’”).3 The introduction of the rationality and rhetoric of science to the practice of advertising became the “Scientific advertising” movement.4 Practitioners undertook other professionalization efforts as well:
• Formation of local clubs and national associations, which served to bring the community together, foster a sense of self-identification and recognition, and “announce” the
existence of the profession to clients and the broader public5
• Appearance of a number of trade journals in which practitioners negotiated and renegotiated the boundaries of the profession, celebrated its victories both large and small,
mourned its defeats, applauded the victors, and dissected the strategies of the losers as
a cautionary tale6
• Establishment of academic programs in advertising at universities, signaling the special
knowledge required to practice7
• Development of internal efforts to gain ethical control of the field; the industry’s first
code of ethics was the Printers’ Ink Statute (1911)
The success of these efforts—that is, the answer to the question of whether advertising is a profession—remains a point of continuing debate. In part, this may be a reflection of the fact that even today, there is only limited consensus on the answer to the
question of what makes a profession a profession (you need only Google that question to
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see evidence). Then, too, the term professional has entered everyday vernacular; frequently it is
used to indicate little more than that someone has worked at something for an extended period of time. Even so, one characteristic found in virtually all but the most colloquial definitions, sometimes explicitly and at other times implied, is the possession of theoretical
knowledge, in some sense, a “magic circle of knowledge” that distinguishes the profession
from the laity. Others—be they clients, patrons, or patients—convinced of the need for the professional’s knowledge provide “job security.”
Even in advertising’s earliest efforts, then, we get a glimpse of the paradox inherent in the
advertising profession today: the conflict of art/creativity (something based on inspiration) and
science. A scholar expressing his doubt of advertising ever achieving professional stature clearly
articulated this conflict:
The production of creative ideas is the basic work that the advertising agencies perform. Creative
ideas, however, by definition resist . . . the application of any social-scientific theory in their generation. If the innovative solutions marketers need were deducible from a basic set of principles,
arguably, they would not need advertising agencies to perform creative services for them.8
The answer to the question of advertising’s professional stature is not the subject of this discussion. What is more important for our purposes is the recognition that much of what we are as
an industry, what we value, and what we dismiss, is a reflection of advertising’s early efforts to
professionalize and current acknowledgment of the importance of professional recognition. While
advertising practitioners may use the term infrequently today, it is evident that their concerns—
providing a rational basis for decision making, maintaining authority in their relationships with
clients—are grounded in issues of professional stature and credibility.9 Inherent in those concerns
is the belief that advertising’s primary role is to “be a constructive force in business.”10 Have we
clung too tenaciously to that singular objective? Have we overlooked our responsibilities as professionals to other constitutencies?
The advertising profession is what Bivins identifies as a “consulting profession” unlike journalism, we are “almost always speaking on behalf of someone else.”11 The profession is contractually obligated to be an advocate of the client, working to advance the client’s ends. Yet, as noted
in the “Ethical Foundations and Perspectives” section of this book, we do well to remember that
as media professionals we are variously obligated. Davidson summarizes the complexity of ethical decision making faced by the advertising profession:
There is tension—sometimes conflict—between economic goals and ethical goals. . . . The great
challenge . . . is to accomplish these goals simultaneously: to operate economically and efficiently
to build market share and establish brand names and a good customer base and behave ethically,
and to make a satisfactory profit and still contribute to the well-being of society overall.12
Each advertising agency has its own culture grounded in philosophy/approach, tradition,
organization, goals, recognitions, and history. Although agency cultures vary widely, they exist in
the context of a larger professional culture. Think of the professional culture as a shared understanding of what it means to be an advertising professional, how we make sense of the advertising
profession, what we think we are doing when we are “doing advertising work.” Professional culture encompasses a number of dimensions, grounded in the values, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of a profession and it includes both private ethos and public perceptions. Professional
culture, then, is an ever-evolving constellation of these elements:
• What we value. Our professional values certainly are apparent in our output (i.e., our ads) but
also in awards we give and to whom we give them (note, for example, that most of our awards
are based on creativity, not effectiveness, the notable exception being the EFFIE; indeed, we
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are a complicated profession!); codes of ethics and our attention to those codes; client relationships; policies of inclusion and exclusion; pro bono work; and so on.
• How we go about our work. This includes such things as the routines, payment processes, relationships and interaction with constituencies—clients, the public, colleagues, the media;
the persistent debate about the “the pitch” process, the consolidation, organization, and ownership patterns; the use of crowd sourcing to generate creative ideas.
• How we think about ourselves. As noted, advertising initially sought to establish an image of
rationality and continues to do so given the emphasis in business on accountability and return on investment. At the same time, we work hard to create an image of advertising as
glamorous; youthful; willing and indeed, eager to take a risk, push the envelope, be edgy;
and always innovative and creative.
• How others think about us. Among our stakeholders are clients, the media, our colleagues and
associates, and the public. The public views advertising variously as entertaining, disturbing,
innovative, offensive, informative, exploitative, and unbelievably intrusive—until they find
the “coolest advergame” or create their own commercial either by corporate invitation or out
of spite. Those who practice advertising consistently rank low in public opinion polls based
on trust and honesty.13 Our professional response to these perceptions—a shrug of the shoulders, a thoughtful editorial, or a column in Advertising Age—reveals quite a lot about our industry’s values.
Looking at the chapters in this section of the book, you’ll recognize that each reveals something about advertising’s professional culture. This chapter does so explicitly. The first case, “ . . .
Perhaps the Absence of a Code of Ethics”? considers the role of ethical codes in defining behavior,
providing guidance in day-to-day decision making, and fostering an environment in which ethical
decision making is the norm. You are invited to examine the AAAA Standards of Practice (as well as
other professional codes of ethics) and consider their adequacy as well as the profession’s attention
to those standards. The second case, “Ethical Vision: What Does It Mean to Serve Clients Well?,”
looks at a hypothetical decision-making scenario to probe the ethical dilemmas and constraints that
might occur day-to-day in the advertising workplace. It explores the concept of responsibility and
the relationships among advertising practitioners, clients, and the public. The third case, “Kids Are
Getting Older Younger,” pulls us back to the macro-level to explore one of the most contentious and
persistent criticisms facing the profession: advertising to children. The chapter uses this a single
case to illustrate broader ethical questions inherent in that practice. The last two cases center on our
profession’s rules of engagement with complex issues of diversity, looking first at women’s experiences and then at the lack of ethnic and racial groups in the advertising workplace.
38 “ . . . PERHAPS THE ABSENCE OF A CODE OF ETHICS”?14
I think this is probably one of the most ethical businesses there is. It is so regulated. Everything
that we do has to go through our lawyers to make sure that it’s conforming to law, and then our
client’s lawyers, and then we have to send it through to the networks and their lawyers. . . . It’s
really hard to be unethical in this business even if you wanted to.15
In 2005, Shona Seifert, a former Ogilvy & Mather executive, and her codefendant, Thomas Early,
the former financial director at Ogilvy, were found guilty of one count of conspiracy and nine
false claims in a case that captured the trade press headlines for several months. The case involved overbilling the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a $1 billion account,
to cover a shortfall of $3 million. Seifert was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment, two
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years probation, and 400 hours of community service, and she was fined $125,000. In handing
down the sentence, Judge Richard M. Berman indicated that the case was essentially about the
“slippage in ethics and perhaps the absence of a code of ethics.” Hence, as an additional component of her sentence, Seifert was to write a code of ethics for the advertising industry.16
Despite the obvious irony of having a then-convicted felon write a professional code of ethics,
the sentence and Judge Berman’s reference to the advertising industry’s “culture of carelessness”
drew attention to the existing code, the AAAA Standards of Practice.17 All member agencies of the
American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) must subscribe and adhere to these
Standards. At the time, the advertising industry appeared reluctant to engage in self-reflection. One
industry analyst noted, “ . . . it was difficult to find anyone who thinks the industry needs another ethics
statement.”18 Similarly, O. Burtch Drake, then president and CEO of the AAAA, said in response,
“The 4As has in place strong standards of practices that have served the industry well over the
years. I don’t see a need for a change or addition to these standards.”19
The industry’s first effort at a professional code of ethics emerged in the context of advertising practitioners’ earliest drive to be recognized as a profession. The Printers’ Ink Statute was
adopted by the Associated Advertising Clubs of America (AACA) in 1911.20 Quentin Schultze
writes that prior to that, ethics was a matter of “individual morals, not collective and professional
service.”21
They [practitioners] were very concerned with maintaining personal standards of integrity
and morality in a world that increasingly valued business success. In fact, advertising practitioners seemed disengaged with the large-scale nature of many business transactions and
sought to reassert personal ethics as a means of coping with the daily pressures and demands of publishing houses and product manufacturers.22
When the AACA met in Boston in 1911 to discuss what was then called “the truth movement,” a newspaper professional from Detroit told the group: “If you are to become a profession,
you must here and now formulate a code. That code need spell but the one word, Truth, and all
other worthy things shall be added unto you.”23 Thus, the Printers’ Ink Statute served both an inward and an outward function: It institutionalized the collective moral standards of the profession,
and it signified having done so to others. (“Truth,” in the sense of not false or misleading, is now
required by law.) The AAAA Standards of Practice, those “strong standards of practice” to which
Drake referred, were adopted in 1924 and most recently revised in September 1990.
Now as we reflect on the adequacy of the AAAA Standards, let’s begin by considering the distinction between ethicality and legality. Then we will examine the role of professional codes of
ethics in today’s media culture, a media culture very different from that of 1990.
Cunningham defined advertising ethics this way: “what is right or good in the conduct of the
advertising function. It is concerned with questions of what ought to be done, not just with what
legally must be done.”24 In his oft-cited book, The Tangled Web They Weave: Truth, Falsity, and Advertisers, Ivan Preston expresses the distinction between law and ethics a bit more pointedly: “For
advertisers who believe that the law is sufficient, ethics never really starts”.25
Certainly then, adhering to legal restrictions is a component of ethical behavior, but as these
scholars suggest, beyond legality there is ethicality. Advertising is regulated by the same laws that
regulate business practices—as well as by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), and a host of other federal, state, and local bodies—regarding truthfulness,
deception, and fairness. The industry also has a well-developed system of self-regulation, the
National Advertising Review Council (www.narcpartners.org).
Beyond the truthfulness required by law, there is the matter of taste. Indeed, tastefulness of advertising content or the lack thereof, emerges again and again in controversies surrounding advertising and society. Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide, addressed this issue in an
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article titled, “The Taste Debate: Making a Case for Decency in Advertising.”26 He acknowledged that
taste is neither arguable nor able to be regulated but quoted Kirk Carr of The Wall Street Journal:
The fact that constructive measures are not easily crafted and that universal agreement is
not likely to emerge doesn’t relieve the leaders of our community from the responsibility
of tackling this difficult issue [taste].27
The introduction to this chapter reminded us of the complexity of the advertising profession, a
consulting profession contractually obligated to work to advance the client’s ends, but also bound
with a wide variety of stakeholders and hence, a number of obligations and responsibilities. Examine
and reflect on the AAAA Standards of Practice on the Media Ethics website. (Ethics codes from other
professional organizations—Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), American Advertising Federation
(AAF), American Marketing Association (AMA)—are also available there.) It is commonly understood
that to be relevant, professional codes of ethics need to be contemporary. Codes should be viewed
as a “living document,” frequently revisited and revised to reflect changes in the profession and in
the arenas in which that profession operates. Reflection on codes reminds members of obligations
and legitimizes the institutionalization of moral decision making as the norm. The advertising industry actively constructs its image and, indeed, seemingly “lives” at the forefront of creativity and innovation. Yet, the AAAA Standards of Practice were last revised in 1990, more than twenty years ago.
Do the Standards continue to “serve the industry well” as former AAAA President and CEO
Drake suggested? Given today’s media culture—a culture in which accelerated technological developments provide seemingly endless opportunities to reach anyone (everyone?) anywhere (everywhere?) almost immediately; a culture cluttered with commercial messages; a global culture that
knows virtually no boundaries—do the Standards remain not only viable but relevant? Are there issues, obligations, interests, and even conceptual understandings that should be addressed? What
might those be? ◆
Evaluating a code of ethics is a deliberative as well as a daunting task. Let’s begin by asking
this question: What is the role of a code of professional ethics? Johannesen has identified the following list of possible functions28:
• Codes can educate new persons in a profession or business by acquainting them with guidelines for ethical responsibility based on the experience of predecessors and by sensitizing
them to ethical problems specific to their field.
• Codes can narrow the problematic areas with which a person has to struggle.
• The very process of developing the formal code can be a healthy one that forces participants
to reflect on their goals, on allowable means to achieve those goals, and on their obligations
to all claimants.
• An effective and voluntary code may minimize the need for cumbersome and intrusive governmental regulations.
• Code provisions can be cited as justification for saying no to a communication practice requested by peers or employers.
• Codes provide an argumentative function. They can serve as a starting point to stimulate
professional and public scrutiny of and debate over major ethical quandaries in a field.
• Codes can be seen as having a function, not just of serving as rules of behavior but primarily as establishing expectations of character. In other words, codes reflect a wide range of
character traits necessary for someone to be a professional.
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The ability of any code of ethics to fulfill the roles Johannesen articulated depends on a number of factors. Among these are that the code is well written and grounded in the specific context of
the profession. Generally, a useful ethical code is an explicit statement of the values, principles, and
responsibilities that guide the profession. It goes beyond the legal framework in which we operate,
reminds us of varied obligations to our stakeholders and to society at large, and creates an environment that fosters ethical conduct—a community in which ethical decision making can thrive.29
Because codes of ethics are created in response to actual or anticipated ethical conflicts, they
may seem abstract when considered outside the context of everyday life. That is, they take on
meaning only in the “real life” application and the ethical ambiguity of a specific case. Consider
the AAAA Standards of Practice from the perspective of a hypothetical ethical dilemma that might
arise in the context of advertising. Does the document provide clear guidance on the type of case
you are facing? Is the document logical and coherent? Could it just as easily support someone
making the opposite choice? What general moral principles underlie the advice given? Does the
professional code fit your own moral compass?30
Recall Judge Berman’s characterization of the profession as a “culture of carelessness.” In this context, let us briefly consider the profession’s attention to the AAAA Standards of Practice and individual
agency codes. It is one thing to have a code and quite another to rely on that code when dilemmas arise.
Drumwright and Murphy conducted a study of advertising practitioners to discover how
they think about, approach, and deal with ethical issues.31 Their findings were disheartening in
that a “substantial portion” of the respondents did not see ethical issues or rationalized them away.
These practitioners were what the authors called morally myopic; that is, they did not see a problem; or they were morally mute in that they may have recognized a moral problem but did not
communicate their concerns. The authors found that agencies with what they identified as “talking, seeing advertising practitioners” tended to be smaller, privately owned, and appeared to have
“developed and articulated ethical norms.” It was not clear, they noted, that other agencies had
done so, “at least not in a purposeful, premeditated manner.”32 The existence of a set of ethical
norms coupled with an agency culture in which employees perceive that conversations about ethical dilemmas could and should take place, and an obvious commitment to ethical behavior from
agency leadership, speak strongly to the Aristotelian concept of a “good community” where balance is achieved through everyday cultivation of good habits and nurturance.
In a more recent study, Drumwright and Murphy examined industry and academic perspectives on ethics and also analyzed textbooks and agency websites. Recognizing that agency websites might not be true reflections of an agency’s ethical priorities, they found: “With some
exceptions, ethics did not appear to be a high priority on agency websites. Only one agency had
an extensive, coherent, and easily accessible discussion of ethics on its website.”33 The authors concluded: “It seems agencies would benefit from highlighting their genuine commitments to ethics
on their websites. Doing so would send important signals to internal and external constituents.”34
Practitioner-turned-educator Jelly Helm, in an article titled, “Saving Advertising,” wrote:
In 1924 we identified our principles and wrote them up as the AAAA Standards of Practice. We
must rejuvenate and reclarify those standards given what we now know about the state of the
world and our relationship to it.35
What would/should an advertising codes of ethics include?
ETHICS IN THE EVERYDAY
Eroticism and fast food come together in an unlikely combination to announce the arrival of the Patty Melt
Thickburger at the Hardee’s restaurant chain.36
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In 2007, Hardee’s restaurants (and sister restaurant, Carl’s Jr.), a subsidiary of CKE Restaurants, created and aired a “naughty TV spot” for its new patty melt sandwich served on a flat bun
(see the Media Ethics website). The spot featured a young, sexy teacher in a pencil skirt gyrating to
the front of a classroom, and later on top of her desk, to a rap song “celebrating flat booty,” sung
by the teen boys in her class. The song, aptly titled, “I Like Flat Buns,” had been created for a
thirty-second radio spot that was currently running.37
The response from the Tennessee Education Association was as quick as it was vehement:
How irresponsible can you get? At this very moment, there are female teachers in high school
classrooms with 30+ students who are working hard to teach our children so that they can compete in today’s world. It is unbelievably demeaning to every one of them to promote a television
advertisement showing a young teacher gyrating on top of her desk while boys in the class rap
about her body in order to sell hamburgers!38
The ad was targeted to “young, hungry guys” who were “apt to find it appealing,”39 and Brad
Haley, the chain’s marketing chief, noted that the chain had “intended [the ad] to be a humorous
music video parody. . . . It was designed to be funny, not insulting.”40 The Hardee’s ad was canceled; the Carl’s Jr. ad was modified. Still, it seems the sure way to draw viewers to an ad that has
been canceled in response to criticism is to identify it as a “banned commercial” on YouTube.
Hardee’s did just that. There the ad joined other Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. efforts: “Patty Melts for You,”
in which Swedish model Helena Mattson cooingly gyrates, tosses her hair, licks her lips, and then
invites the viewer to join her as she bites into a patty melt sandwich, and an earlier, one might say
infamous, ad for Carl’s Jr. in which a very scantily clad Paris Hilton seductively soaps herself and
her Bentley before biting into her sandwich.
Note: The preceding events are true. The scenario in the following case is hypothetical and
was created to invite you to reflect on some of the decision-making processes that might have
occurred in the conceptualization, creation, and airing of the TV spot. Although there are elements
of fact in following the scenario, they did not happen as presented here.
39 ETHICAL VISION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SERVE CLIENTS WELL?
Jeff was relatively new in his position as an assistant account planner on the Hardee’s account.
Maybe that was why he felt so uncomfortable at this meeting with the agency creative team, the
Hardee’s marketing team, and Eric, the account planner, his boss. Jeff tried to put it down to a dislike for the product. He found the very idea of the product unappealing: 1,410 calories, 70 percent
of the average person’s daily caloric intake. The rest of the world is worrying about the obesity epidemic.41 But Jeff knew it was more than that. He thought the executions the agency was suggesting were offensive, denigrating to women. Sure, they were “on strategy”; they very obviously
targeted the “young hungry guys” the restaurant was seeking. But, the executions were . . . what?
Well, they were just too much! Okay, so sex sells, or so we say in the industry. But hamburgers?
Jeff reflected on what had gone before. How had they gotten to this point? The Hardee’s team
had come with the new product, the Patty Melt Thickburger. “This is the way I see it,” the Hardee’s
marketing representative had told them. “We’re talking to young men—young hungry men. You remember when you were that age? All you cared about was food and girls. So that’s what we want
in these ads. A really big, delicious, juicy, decadent burger and a girl. What could be better?” He
seemed to be right about the link between boys, food, and girls. “There is a connection, at least in
the young man’s mind,” the director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab had noted in a
Advertising Age article, “of having a healthy appetite for food and having an identity that you believe
is appealing to the opposite sex.”42 With that client mandate, the creative team had set to work.
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Jeff’s agency was one of the “hot shops” in the industry, noted for its innovation and sometimes off the wall creative efforts. That’s why the client had come to the agency in the first place.
The client wanted an agency that would be willing to push the envelope, to be over the top, to be
edgy. A week ago, Jeff and Eric met with the team to see what they had come up with, and the
creatives were pumped! They had two spots that they thought the client would be wild about:
“‘Flat buns’ would be a play on every schoolboy’s dream of falling in love with his teacher, but done
twenty-first century style, as a parody of a music video. And, it would go with the rap tune that
had already been created for the radio spot. ‘Patty Melts for You’—well, she would never make it
on the networks, but she could be sort of an extra treat on the website. And after that? YouTube.
What do you guys think?”
Jeff thought they were joking, but no, the creative folks were serious. He hoped Eric would
round them up, but no, Eric had praised the executions. Well, Jeff wasn’t going to say anything.
He thought he’d be laughed out of the room. He knew what they’d say: “The client will love it!”
So, he hadn’t said a word and here they were, one week later, meeting with a client who seemed
to be nothng short of ecstatic over the agency’s work. “This is great. No. Not great. Tremendous.
You guys really got it this time.”
“There was that Paris Hilton ad for Carl’s,” Eric reminded him. “That hadn’t played too well.”
“Exactly. But that was a dynamite ad.” The Hardee’s manager spoke exuberantly. “It was
edgy. I loved it. It should never have run on the network. That was a mistake. Paris should have
gone right on the Web. She’s on YouTube, you know. And she gets a lot of hits every day, even
today. A few feminists might have objected, but heck, they aren’t in the target audience, are they?
Boys absolutely loved it! They still do. And if somebody objects to the teacher, if the babe doesn’t
play right, we’ll put her and her class on YouTube. She’ll be a big hit.” The client wound down
enthusiastically.
Jeff sighed. The client certainly was right about the Paris Hilton spot. It had received a lot of
publicity; people thought it was sexist, hypersexualized, and retrograde; some even called it pornographic. But the target market did like it, sales were up, and Paris, her Bentley, and her burger were
still a YouTube draw. Ads that are “banned” are always a big hit on YouTube, though that’s not
exactly a sound media strategy. And then, there was the question of social responsibility . . . ◆
The situation Jeff faced is a common one. Relatively new on the job, he found himself
alone in his belief/recognition that something was awry with the creative executions, but he
did not speak up, so no one knew or considered his concerns. No doubt the creatives thought
they were “on strategy.” In fact, they were. In that sense, Jeff’s colleagues were doing their jobs.
Wasn’t it their professional responsibility to operate in the client’s interest, to create ads that
were effective in meeting the goals the client had set? But in this situation, by all appearances
the creative team was blind to any of the possible moral consequences; the team was concerned
only with whether the client would buy into the campaign, which the creatives themselves really thought was great. Then, too, the team felt it had a particularly acute grasp of consumer
taste and an understanding of the client; the ad execution could go a bit further to get the
client’s product noticed.
The lack of awareness or concern of social consequences is not uncommon. Research has
shown that those consequences furthest away, most abstract from the individual’s own environment, are least likely to be recognized. Although Jeff was concerned and tangled with social concerns personally, he did not confront the concerns organizationally.
Some advertisers guard their corporate reputation with care and would never dream of
being associated with any advertising that might be regarded as tasteless. Others, of course, are
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less discriminating. Clearly, American culture has grown more tolerant of the sexually provocative. It’s simply where we are as a culture. In this context, some advertisers argue that the ends
justify the means; you have to do anything you can to get noticed. But, do you?
This scenario illustrates the complexities inherent in a profession in which we are bound to
the service of our client. What do we think we are doing when we do advertising work, when we
assume our role as advertising professional? In that role, we are bound to the service of our client.
But do we not also have some social responsibility to do the greatest good possible?
After conducting research on advertising practitioner’s thoughts and actions with regard to
ethics, Drumwright and Murphy suggested that “a paradigm shift seems to be needed regarding
what it means to serve clients well. Many of [the informants interviewed] expressed a strong sense
that as advertising practitioners, they are to do the clients bidding.”43 The client, in this scenario,
has had good return on investment using images of questionable appropriateness and clearly realizes their likelihood of offending. Remember, the client is planning ahead for when the executions either do not get accepted to air or create too much of a stir to keep airing. YouTube is the
client’s escape hatch.
As noted earlier, the advertising profession is obligated to a number of constituencies. Those
obligations cannot be met if all decisions are relegated to the client.44 Is the agency here in danger
of “overidentifying with the client’s perspective to the point that they have lost the ability to be
critical and objective in assessing the client’s behavior and advertising”?45 Certainly it would be
easier to leave the situation alone; clients are not likely to appreciate being subjected to critical
questioning, are they? Is it the agency’s business to question the moral judgment of the client? But
then, is the agency doing its job if it does not raise the question?
In adopting a client-is-always-right philosophy when making decisions, an advertising
agency sidesteps its professional responsibility to the client. After all, an agency’s responsibility is
to be the objective outsider, advising the client and, if necessary, challenging long-held, tenaciously
guarded perspectives and behaviors that may be operating to the client’s detriment. The ability to
be “neutral” is a professional responsibility.
In a fast-paced, competitive, creative industry, discussion of ethical concerns frequently takes
a backseat to more urgent, pragmatic issues. But are the issues raised here merely a matter of taste
rather than an ethical concern?
40 KIDS ARE GETTING OLDER YOUNGER
Kwedit.com, which Stephen Colbert identified on his program as “a new website that teaches kids
how to spend money they don’t have on things that don’t exist,” was launched in February
2010.46 Kwedit, whose slogan is “Play now. Pay later. Get virtual goods now for a promise to pay
later,”47 is a payment platform, a payment engine of sorts for the massive virtual goods market.
It is estimated that about $1.6 billion will be spent on virtual goods in the United States in 2010.
The goal is to “let people pay for on-line purchases without requiring them to obtain a credit or
debit card.”48
Kwedit has partnered with more than 1,000 online sites to allow individuals using Kwedit’s
arrangement with 7-Eleven to buy virtual goods with nothing more than a promise of repayment.
At the time of its introduction, sites identified were typically online games such as: FooPets, Happy
Aquarium, Farmville, and Puzzle Pirate. More recently Kwedit wrote on the company blog:
We are signing new partners almost every day. . . . Interest is coming from telephone service providers, e-commerce sites, dating services, educational sites, money transmitters,
and, of course, on-line games.49
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As a Kwedit user, you might use a Kwedit Promise to buy your digital dog a virtual twentypound bag of Purina Puppy Chow or to purchase a more powerful virtual weapon in a fantasy
game. The catch is that the money you pay for the pixels is real.50 It works like this:
• The player (let’s use that descriptor even though not all sites are gaming sites) goes to a partner site and purchases on-site virtual goods using a Kwedit Promise.
• Later, the player prints out the bar code from his or her Kwedit account and takes it to a participating 7-Eleven convenience store to pay. There are three options: (1) pay cash, (2) mail
payment in a Kwedit Mailer, or (3) Pass the Duck, that is, send the bill via a sort of social networking system that lets a third party pay with a credit card.
• Because there has been only a promise of repayment and no real-life penalty for not paying,
the incentive to pay is a Kwedit Score, which shows which users are paying on time. As his
or her Kwedit Score improves, the user gets more virtual goodies or a larger Kwedit Line.
It is not surprising that reactions to Kwedit frequently have been less than positive. Even
though the site claims to target people thirteen years old and older, and none of the partners allow
anyone under the age of thirteen to use their services, there is much to suggest an appeal to a
younger audience. The very name of the company and its mascot, an Aflac-like duck named
Kweddy, carry a ring of childishness that is difficult to overlook. Indeed, comments and blogs are
rich with “w” words (incwedible, cwazy). Kweddy, the company states, was not designed to appeal to children; “in fact, he was designed to make our name stick. Since ducks quack, and quack
sounds like Kwedit, we thought he would help people remember our name.”51 “The website is too
childish for teens,” one observer noted, “its target audience is young kids.” Another noted that
“Kwedit ‘requiring’ its users to be 13 is a very weak defense. Unenforced rules on the Internet such
as these solely exist so the website in question can’t be accused of allowing children access to inappropriate content and are extremely simple to get past.”52 A reviewer who visited the site to determine for himself what was going on noted that he was never asked to verify his age or provide
a birth date. In a New York Times article about the FooPets site, Scott Sorbchak, cofounder of
FooMojo which operates the site, identified the core demographic of FooPets as twelve- to fourteenyear-old girls. He added, “Kwedit is the first payment system we’ve used that doesn’t require a parent involved.”53
The most critical comments are reserved for the very premise upon which Kwedit was
founded. While Kwedit suggests that it provides a “fun way of teaching kids financial responsibility”
and does provide a useful parents page, skeptics seem plentiful:
Has anyone considered this process of using virtual credit to be the equivalent of training
wheels on a real world debt ridden lifestyle? This ties instant gratification to fun entertainment with no exertion, save clicking a button, on the child’s part! The child then forms
a pathway that says “Using credit is easy. By using it I get immediate access to more fun.
There is no “real” penalty if I don’t pay.”54
The website Kwedit [is] a site that clearly aspires to do for consumer lending what
Joe Camel did for filtered cigarettes: namely, make kids feel like they’re doing grown-up
things, even if they are things the grown-ups really shouldn’t be doing.55
Entrapping a 13-year-old to start using credit without understanding what it really means,
and rolling the ownership of debt onto others by design, is nothing short of a crime.56 ◆
Advertising to children is nothing new; breakfast cereals—Cream of Wheat, Wheaties—
advertised to children via radio in the 1920s and discovered that whenever their jingle was
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sung on the air, sales rose.57 At a time when advertisers produced radio programs, brands were
quickly linked to well-known characters frequently drawn from comic books: Ovaltine reincarnated Little Orphan Annie (“Kids, don’t forget to ask your mom to get you the swell new Little Orphan Annie Shake-Up Mug”); Quaker brought Dick Tracy to life (“If you’re a loyal Dick
Tracy fan and friend, check up on the pantry at least twice a week to make sure there’s always
puffed wheat or puffed rice there. And if there isn’t, ask Mother to order some from the grocers.”).58 Even then, some of the hallmarks of marketing strategies and critics’ concerns about
advertising to children were apparent—linking products to popular cartoon characters, plying
children with branded merchandise, and urging children to influence parents (today we call
that the nag factor).
Few issues related to advertising and society have generated as much heated controversy as marketers’ seemingly relentless effort to reach and persuade children. Children are
the “quintessential vulnerable target”: inexperienced, impressionable, and naturally, less mature than adults.59 Children are also a very profitable market; in Juliet Schor’s terms they are
the “epicenter of American consumer culture.”60 From an economic perspective, there’s little
question of why marketers will spend an estimated $17 billion on efforts to reach this profitable and powerful demographic in 2010. They are a large demographic group; there are
some 22 million children under the age of five and 41 million aged five to fourteen. They represent an extraordinary amount of buying power. Children are at one and the same time, three
separate markets. As a consumer market in their own right, children younger than fourteen
spend an estimated $20+ billion a year and teens spend almost eight times that amount. As an
influencer market, children influence an additional $180 to $200 billion in spending by their
parents.61
Marketers have focused particular effort on the future market. Recognizing that brand loyalty
developed as a child can carry through adulthood, marketers essentially create a cradle-to-grave
consumer, targeting toddlers and even babies. In the words of Susan Linn, the director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the goal of this “commercialization of childhood” is “to
incorporate a brand into a child’s identity . . . to inject brands into the very fabric of [children’s]
emotional lives.”62 Indeed, by the age of twelve months, children can make brand associations,
and today’s “tweens and teens have emerged as the most brand-oriented, consumer-involved, and
materialistic in history.”63
Despite their vulnerability, children are more savvy, sophisticated, and technologically
connected than ever before. Taking advantage of children’s natural desire to be older, marketers
practice “age compression” and have even developed an acronym for the strategy: KGOY—
Kids are Getting Older Younger. The result is that children are increasingly targeted with adult
content that carries fewer ideas about childhood and “being a kid” and more about what it
means to be grown up. Tweens now receive advertising messages and products once targeted
to teens. To facilitate this KGOY strategy, marketers have at their disposal an unprecedented number of ways to reach children: licensing, product placement, video games, Internet, cell phones—
in addition to “traditional” media. The result is an increasingly commercialized world rich with
the values of commercialism, instant gratification, and materialism.64
Marketers in the United States view marketing products to children as a First Amendment
right. Other countries—among them the EU nations, Greece, Sweden, Norway, and Belgium—
restrict advertising and marketing to children in various ways.65 In the United States, the advertising industry has established a self-regulatory body, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit
(CARU) of the Better Business Bureau to make sure that advertising targeting children is not deceptive or unfair. The guidelines remind marketers that they should “take into account the special vulnerabilities of children, e.g., their inexperience, immaturity, susceptibility to being misled
or unduly influenced, and their lack of cognitive skills to evaluate the credibility of advertising.”66 Is this enough?
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Henry Giroux, a cultural critic and a well-known theorist of critical pedagogy in the United
States, described American culture related to children this way:
This is culture that does more than undermine the ideals of a secure and happy childhood; it also
exhibits the bad faith of a society in which, for children, “there can be only one kind of value,
market value; one kind of success, profit; one kind of existence, commodities; and one kind of social relationship, markets.”[Lawrence Grossberg, Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, America’s
Future (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), 264] Children now inhabit a cultural landscape in
which they can only recognize themselves in terms preferred by the market. . . . In a society driven entirely by market mentalities, moralities, values and ideals, consuming, selling and branding become the primary mode through which to define agency and to shape the sensibilities and
inner lives of adults as well as how society defines and treats its children.67
Giroux’s observations are both powerful and profound, inviting us to reexamine our values
both personally and professionally.
Marketing to children has always been an issue fraught with ethical questions of fairness,
respect, trust, and deception. Perhaps the ethical question we should be asking is this: Should we
advertise to children at all? What do you think?
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: QUESTIONS OF DIVERSITY
If ethics broadly is concerned with how we live our lives and what we value . . . then nothing could be
more relevant to a discussion of ethics than the way people relate to, perceive, and share stories with those
who are different from them. The impact of these stories stretches from shaping international relations to
helping create empathy for a next door neighbor. Alastair MacIntyre believes that people come to know
who they are through stories with interlocking narratives. Each person’s very identity is created through
these stories.68
Although Whitehouse is writing about the news industry in the passage cited above, her argument—
that diversity is an ethical issue—is equally applicable to advertising. We too share stories. And we
fund (or not) the media in which stories are shared. And we tell our stories more frequently with
images than with words. Yes, the argument works. Whitehouse goes on to say: “If one segment of
society is ignored, vilified, or even inappropriately sanctified through mass media narratives . . .
those marginalized and the community as a whole is harmed.”
The next two cases are brief glimpses into the advertising workplace; they examine the issue
of diversity. The first looks at the experience of women and the second considers the experience of
minorities. Although they are different stories, they are the same in that they appear to be stories
of exclusion and discrimination. As you read, ask yourself these questions:
• What is it about our professional culture that created these situations?
• What barriers to full participation have been erected?
• Are those barriers structural or attitudinal?
• Are those barriers the result of lack of reflection and consciousness or are they outright
sexism/racism?
• How might organizational dynamics be changed for the better?
And finally, ask point blank
• Does the advertising profession value diversity?
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41 A WOMAN’S PLACE IS . . . ?
French Flap Reignites Gender Debate Wild Adman’s Rant Turns the Clock Back to 1960s69
Okay, so Neil French, then the worldwide creative director (CD) for the WPP Group, is, as a New
York Times reporter noted, a “bombastic and controversial figure in the advertising world,” a “legend”
according to Matthew Creamer in Advertising Age.70 Perhaps he was providing a “typically abrasive Neil French performance.”71 Peppering his conversation with the words babe and bitch, French
told a gathering of more than 300 advertising executives in Toronto that the reason there weren’t
more female creative directors in the business was that trying to balance work with family duties
was “crap.” “They can’t put in the hours. Somebody has to look after the kids.”72
That comment, as the headline above suggests, did reignite a gender debate in this industry,
as had an ad for “Advertising Week,” New York City’s annual celebration of the business earlier
that year. The ad, which many referred to as “the breast ad” (see the Media Ethics website: http://
www.mediaethicsbook.com) simply zoomed in on female breasts (no head, of course, just breasts)
clad in a black bustier, agape, but held with a tiny red ribbon and the slogan, “Advertising” (on
one breast). “We all do it” (on the other breast). The ad had drawn comments both incredulous
and outraged,73 much as French’s did some three months later.
Nancy Vonk, co-chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather Toronto, responded to French’s remarks
in an essay on Ihaveanidea.org:
What struck me so hard, as he described a group that will inevitably wimp out and “go
suckle something” after their short stint in advertising, was that in his honest opinion he
was voicing the inner thoughts of legions of men in the senior ranks of our business.74
Vonk went on to give a very concrete illustration of the destructiveness of attitudes such as
that expressed by French:
Before us was a big part of the explanation for why women aren’t succeeding in advertising. If male CDs, even a little like Neil, see a female creative coming toward him with her
work, and he’s already convinced she’s extremely limited in her ability and value, what lens
is he seeing her work—her—through? Would you expect that CD to offer the same support and guidance and consideration he gives the men? Might that woman not keep herself down on the farm when her leader conveys in countless ways she’s not as good as the
boys? Might she respond with a little less than her best effort when the adored leader expects little of her? Might she want to leave, not to have babies, but because the conditions
for her to succeed don’t exist and the message she can’t succeed is too discouraging?75
And the floodgates opened. French was celebrated and vilified. Celebrated and vilified again. Called
brilliant. Called a retrograde has-been. The lack of female creative directors had nothing to do with
their gender. It was about opportunity. It was about experience. You could make it with talent.
Two weeks after the incident, French resigned in what he suggested in an interview, was
“death by blog.”76 ◆
There is no doubt an extraordinarily complex relationship between sex and the creative job, or it
wouldn’t still be an issue 100 years after women entered the field.77
Advertising, almost since its earliest days, has congratulated itself on the “welcome” it has
extended to women. Initially, it was because women brought with them “the woman’s viewpoint.”
Here’s how that view point was explained in a trade journal in 1914:
Ever since women began to do things outside the preconceived limits of a so-called “women’s
sphere,” no field has been opened up by them that presents greater assurance of success than that
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of advertising. Women are the purchasing agents of most American families. While the man is
earning the income, the woman is watching the outgo. That is her business.
Who more qualified, therefore, than another woman to know her process of thought in deciding upon a purchase? Or, who more qualified to appeal to her taste and tickle her fancies than
one who likes the same things and sees the manner of living from the same side of the fence.78
Jo Foxworth’s experience as an advertising woman began in the 1950s. She indicated that
while the woman’s viewpoint may have given women a point of entry into the business, it ultimately constrained them in their opportunities:
It used to burn me up for someone, for a man to say, “come in here and give us a woman’s point
of view . . .” instead of the professional point of view. It always had to be a gender thing. They
would ask you to make a phone call, . . . ask you to do secretary’s work. . . . I was terribly frustrated. I couldn’t stand being treated like a non-entity or just somebody with a woman’s viewpoint. I wanted to be treated like a professional person.79
Today, women are enrolled in equal or greater numbers than men in advertising programs
(approximately 75 percent of students enrolled in advertising programs are women) and portfolio
schools, and women have been entering the profession in equal or greater numbers than men as
well. However, the participation of women declines as we go up the corporate ladder; the absence
of women in creative positions, and particularly in creative director positions, is especially noteworthy. Karen Mallia, a former copywriter and creative director now turned professor, writes,
“There’s a roadblock somewhere because many women disappear and few become creative directors.”80 In fact, it is not uncommon to see remnants of the “women’s viewpoint” even today.
Bosman, for example, wrote in The New York Times, “The dominance of men on the creative side of
the business is even more striking, considering that women commonly make up to 80 percent of
household purchasing decisions. . . . Some experts say the gender imbalance helps explain why
some advertising is perceived in polls and focus groups as sexist.”81
Feminist historian Joan Wallach Scott reminds us that when we judge professional inclusion,
we typically focus on gaining access, counting the number of individuals in a particular group
who gain entry. However, more fundamental questions might be these:
How are those who cross the thresholds received? If they belong to a group different from the one
already “inside,” what are the terms of their incorporation? How do the new arrivals understand
the place they have entered? What are the terms of identity they establish?82
The Neil French episode aroused curiosity. Why aren’t there more female creative directors in
advertising? Certainly women have fared well in the profession and in other departments. Mallia
interviewed women currently or formerly working in advertising to find the answer to that question. She discovered that “there appear to be certain factors specific to the advertising industry that
somehow make it less hospitable for women.” In fact, she said, the answer was simple. There
aren’t more female creative directors because the obstacles were too great. Not really so simple.
Here are some of the obstacles she identified:
• Managers who tend to hire people like themselves. With more men in positions of power,
more men are hired and promoted. Recall Anne Jardin’s often quoted observation that “the
glass ceiling is not glass; it’s a very dense layer of men.”83
• Nature of the client service business. The demand for availability and decreased project time
is something which women don’t confront in other industries.
• Inflexible work arrangements.
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• Subculture of sexism. The agency creative departments have long been known as “the boy’s
club.” “Regardless of how many men or women there are, or even whether the department
or the agency is run by a woman, the ‘laddish’ culture still pervades the department.”84
• Creative jobs that are uniquely personally consuming. Day and night. Body and soul.
But, the single biggest factor limiting the number of women in the position of creative director was motherhood. Mallia wrote:
Gender may not be the overarching factor that impedes women from reaching high level creative positions: it is the incompatibility between motherhood and agency creative jobs. . . . For creative women,
hitting your career peak unfortunately coincides with the loud ticking of the biological clock.85
It appears that Neil French was right.
Most women writing on ihaveanidea.org seem to agree that the lack of female creative directors is not about a lack of talent or a lack of knowledge. Instead, they cited an absence of women
role models, limited experience, limited family-friendly policies, an old boys’ club mentality, and
women starting their own companies because they could institute family-friendly policies (which,
by the way, are far more generous in Canada than in the United States). In short, “advertising has
adopted few of the structural changes that tend to attract female executives.”86
Nancy Vonk concluded her essay with a call to action:
Finally the women reading this are going to have to do better than me. I’ve suddenly realized that
looking the other way, turning the other cheek in any situation, . . . makes me part of the problem. I’m snapping out of it awfully late, and it seems obvious we can’t take this . . . and expect to
see anything change. Don’t be discouraged; be outraged and act accordingly.87
Where does this leave the advertising industry? Here, we might appeal to the Kantian notion
of human dignity and respect. Is there room for a compromise? Might the industry develop a more
“forgiving” structure that would allow a manageable work–life? If we value diversity, is it not our
obligation to do so?
42 A DIVERSE ADVERTISING WORKPLACE: AN OXYMORON?
Study Finds Super Bowl Ad Creators Overwhelming White88
That headline tells the story of a diversity problem that is almost as old as the industry itself. Of the
fifty-eight Super Bowl spots in which the creative team could be identified, 92 percent of the creative directors were white males, 7 percent were white females, and one creative director was
Latino. He wasn’t from an agency—he was the winner of the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest for consumer-generated ads.
Let’s think about diversity in the advertising profession. The advertising industry had first come
under scrutiny in the early 1970s. According to a report of the Commission on Human Rights in
1978, the Commission then believed “that the limited minority employment was not simply the
result of neutral forces, but emanated rather from discriminatory practices which have historically
excluded minorities from meaningful participation in these industries.”89
In a 1992 Advertising Age article, “The Ad Industry’s Dirty Little Secret,” Joe Winski recounts
the history of diversity in advertising, a history that is as rich in recollections and commentary as it
is painful to read:
Most of the black-owned shops specialize in black and ethnic markets, not necessarily by
choice.
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“The biggest tragedy that I confront everyday is this ‘ghettoization’ of the business,” says
Mr. Muse of Muse Cordero Chen, who likens those agencies to baseball’s old Negro leagues.
“In the ad business,” he says, “we’re still set up so that if you happen to have a brown
skin or if you happen to have a black skin, you have got to create your own league to play
in. . . . If you want to be successful, entrepreneurial, you’ve got to have a Negro league, or
you’ve got to have a Hispanic league. Do you know how outrageous that sounds?”
It’s a classic Catch-22 situation, especially for black creatives. They say general agencies
won’t hire them unless they have experience—which they can get only at black agencies
whose work isn’t universally admired by mainstream creative directors.
“Quite frankly,” Mr. Richards [a senior VP at Leo Burnett] says, “when black creatives.
want to move into the general market agencies, the people who are evaluating whether
their work is good or not don’t see the depth of work that they think is necessary.”
The subjectivity inevitably goes beyond portfolio to person and skin color. Though the
questions are rarely raised directly, blacks believe potential white employers ask themselves
what it would mean to have a black person working in that office, with those co-workers
and—especially—on that account with that client.90
Early in 2006, the industry’s minority hiring practices in New York City again were called into
question or, perhaps more correctly, “blasted . . . as an embarrassment for a diverse city.”91 And
worse, it seems the industry is getting tired of the discussion. An editorial in Advertising Age subtitled, “Will We Be Reading This Same Story Again in 2036?” presented the results of a reader poll:
Why do we—along with 93 percent of those responding to our poll—get the feeling we’ll
be reading something similar in another thirty years? There is something surreally Orwellian
about this affair. A government agency loudly demands that an entire industry reform. The
industry, on the other hand, makes public promises to meet the demands (partly in the
hope it all blows over), while ignoring the realistic goals it could conceivably achieve.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.92
In 2009, Cyrus Mehri announced the Madison Ave Project, a report to lay the foundation of
a class action suit against the advertising industry for “‘pervasive racial discrimination’ that not only
under hires and segregates African-Americans but pays them 80 cents for every dollar it pays comparable white employees.”93 ◆
Practitioners should embrace diversity as a matter of quality. . . . part and parcel of our professional standards.94
As our lives, professional and personal, become increasingly global, diversity will continue
to develop; its influence will be experienced in increasingly complex, sometimes tangled ways. In
this context, it is essential that advertising professionals adopt broad interpretations of advertising’s impact on diversity and diversity’s impact on advertising. Not to do so diminishes us as a
rich and vital world community where all are respected as equals.
A number of arguments might be advanced to suggest that discrimination is wrong. Certainly a Kantian analysis, emphasizing the value of human life as deserving of moral respect
would suggest that discriminatory practices are morally wrong precisely because they deny individuals of their moral rights to be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity. A straightforward
utilitarian argument might rest on the assumption that discrimination in the advertising industry—a highly visible industry involved in the communication of selling messages as well as attendant social values—serves to perpetuate and indeed nurture broader social inequities. Thus,
discrimination not only harms individuals, but society as a whole.
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A second utilitarian argument might suggest that in an increasingly diverse global context,
diversity is economically efficient. Just as the industry once hired women primarily because they
possessed a “woman’s viewpoint,” it might be argued that more effective communication toward diverse peoples is likely to occur when individuals addressing those peoples have been exposed to diverse cultures, shared cultural traditions and rituals, viewpoints, and ideas. In this
instance, discriminatory practices might be viewed to harm businesses as well as the advertising industry. That is, if in fact diverse individuals are necessary to create effective communications for diverse cultures made up of individuals like them, an agency would be abrogating its
professional responsibility to clients if it failed to provide a diverse employee base.
The utilitarian argument of diversity as economically efficient coupled with the lack of diversity in general-market agencies has led to the development of agencies specializing in ethnic
marketing. These agencies make their money as ethnic agencies, touting their “unique” insight
into niche cultural spaces. Increasingly, they’ve become multicultural agencies. For example,
GlobalHue, recently honored as AdWeek’s “multicultural agency of the decade,” tells its story on
the agency website: “As new market segments emerged at the beginning of the millennium, we
began a transformation from a singular-focus, African-American agency to an industry leader in
the Latino, African-American and Asian segments.”95 Today, the agency has four divisions:
GlobalHue Africanic; GlobalHue Latino; GlobalHue Asian; and GlobalHue Next.”96
Ironically, the very success at selling specialization has resulted in ethnic and multicultural
agencies being routinely passed over for general-market assignments.97 Writing in Advertising Age,
Hadji Williams, a 17-year veteran of the advertising industry, draws attention to the fact that with
rare exceptions, Fortune 1000 companies don’t retain ethnic-owned agencies as agency of record.
This, he notes, has important ramifications.
Now this wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that general-market clients spend nearly 95% of their budgets with White-owned agencies, which relegates Black-, Hispanic- and Asian-owned shops to beg/fight
over the remaining 5% slice of the pie.98
Then too, there are those who argue that diversity within an agency in no way guarantees
that general-market agencies will necessarily possess the expertise required for segmented ethnic
marketing. Alex Lopez Negrete, president and CEO of Lopez Negrete Communication, wrote that
his agency “understands and cares deeply about the Latino community in a way that generalmarket agencies do not.”99 He believes that general market agencies simply wouldn’t have the
passion to reach the Latino communities.
As the case suggests, lack of diversity and even accusations of overt racial discrimination have
plagued the advertising industry for decades. Certainly the industry’s principal professional organizations—the American Advertising Federation, the Advertising Educational Foundation, the
American Association of Advertising Agencies—explicitly articulate a commitment to diversity as
a part of their mission. For example, the American Advertising Federation’s Mosaic Center on Multiculturalism, indentifies itself as the industry’s “premiere ‘think tank’ on diversity and multiculturalism”, and has laid out general objectives for the industry.100 Among those objectives are:
• Promote inclusiveness and fairness throughout the marketing and advertising process . . . and
• Require accountability and measurable results, including data on employment and targeted
ad spending to measure the industry's pace and investment in multicultural marketing and
workplace diversity.101
Then too, industry has undertaken a variety of activities including mentorship opportunities,
career fairs, recruitment programs, and targeted internships and scholarships in efforts to create a
diverse workplace. By most accounts, there has been progress in the minority recruitment for
entry-level positions. Still, there is a good bit of “churn” in the industry. To address this issue of
retention, in 2008, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and Howard University, a
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historically black university formed a partnership to “provide professional development and leadership training to people of color in middle ranks and above.”102
Judging from these efforts, diversity appears to be a core value of our professional culture,
and yet, the threat of a class-action suit against the industry for “pervasive racial discrimination”
calls that into question.
In Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African-Americans in the Advertising Industry, Jason
Chambers traces the rich history of African-Americans working in the advertising industry. In the
epilogue, he notes that today, increased minority hiring is more than a moral imperative or a social responsibility. “It is an economic and social necessity.”103
Does the advertising industry value diversity?
The face of advertising is largely white. Only the industry’s ability to change that face, no
easy task, can hint at the answer.
A starting point might be the simple restatement of Chambers’ conclusion: Minority hiring is
more than an economic and social necessity. It is a moral imperative and a social responsibility.
Sometimes, it’s just a matter of looking at things a bit differently.
NOTES
1. Talcott Parsons, “The Professions and Social Structure,” Social Forces 17 (May 1939): 457–467.
2. Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education
in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 90.
3. Vanderbilt Medical Center Patent Medicine Collection, http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/biolib/hc/nostrums/
nostrums.html.
4. Peggy J. Kreshel, “The ‘Culture’ of J. Walter Thompson, 1915–1925,” Public Relations Review 16:8 (Fall
1990): 88–89, fn. 3.
5. Local clubs included: Agate Club, 1894; Advertising Club of New York, 1906; League of Advertising Women
of New York, 1911. National organizations included: Association of Advertising Clubs of the World, 1905;
Association of National Advertisers, 1910; American Association of Advertising Agencies, 1912.
6. Printers’ Ink (1888), Agricultural Advertising (1894), Mahin’s Magazine (1902), Judicious Advertising (1903),
Advertising and Selling (1909).
7. Northwestern University and the University of Minnesota (1903). By 1915, twenty-six universities had
advertising courses for their undergraduate students.
8. Gergely Nyilasy, Practitioner Theories at the Advertising Agency, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, 2006.
9. Greg Nyilasy, Peggy J. Kreshel, and Leonard N. Reid, “Agency Practitioners, Pseudo-Professionalization
Tactics, and Advertising Professionalism,” Journal of Current Issues in Research in Advertising (forthcoming).
10. AAAA Standards of Practice, first drafted in 1924.
11. Thomas H. Bivins, “The Future of Public Relations and Advertising Ethics,” in An Ethics Trajectory: Visions
of Media Past, Present and Yet to Come ed. John Michael Kittross (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois/The
Institute of Communication Research, 2008). See also Thomas H. Bivins, Mixed Media: Moral Distinctions
in Advertising, Public Relations, and Journalism (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004).
12. D. Kirk Davidson, The Moral Dimension of Marketing: Essays on Business Ethics (Chicago: American Marketing
Association, 2002), 7.
13. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Several Industries Take Big Image Hit This Year,” Gallup, August 14, 2008, http://www.
gallup.com/poll/109468/Several-Industries-Take-Big-Image-Hit-Year.aspx.
14. Quotation from Matthew Creamer, “An Ad-Ethics Code from Shona Seifert? Surely Not.” Advertising Age,
May 18, 2005, 1, http://adage.com/article?article_id=103976.
15. Anonymous respondent quoted in Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E. Murphy, “How Advertising
Practitioners View Ethics,” Journal of Advertising 33(2) (Summer 2004): 12.
16. Judge Richard M. Berman, quoted in Creamer, “An Ad-Ethics Code from Shona Seifert?
17. www.aaaa.org/eweb/upload/inside/standards.pdf. The American Association of Advertising Agencies
(AAAA) is a national trade organization representing advertising in the United States, founded in 1917.
18. Creamer, “An Ad-Ethics Code from Shona Seifert? Surely not.”
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19. Ibid.
20. Quentin Schultze, “Advertising Science and Professionalism 1885–1917,” dissertation, University of Illinois
at Urbana–Champaign, 1978, 175–176.
21. Ibid., 170.
22. Ibid.
23. H. J. Kenner, The Fight for Truth in Advertising (New York: Round Table Press, 1936), 18.
24. Peggy H. Cunningham, “Ethics of Advertising,” in The Advertising Business, ed. John Phillip Jones. (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999), 500.
25. Ivan L Preston, The Tangled Web They Weave: Truth, Falsity, and Advertising (Madison,WI: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1994), 127–128.
26. Keith Reinhard, “The Taste Debate: Making a Case for Decency in Advertising,” Agency, Fall 2001, 30–32
27. Ibid., 31.
28. Richard L. Johannesen, “What Should We Teach about Formal Codes of Communication Ethics? Journal of
Mass Media Ethics 3(1): 59–64, provided in Thomas Bivins, Mixed Media: Moral Distinctions in Advertising
Public Relations and Journalism (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 67–68.
29. See Charles E. Harris, Jr., Michael S. Pritchard, and Michael J. Rabins, Engineering Ethics: Concepts and
Cases. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995).
30. An extremely useful site for those interested in the development and application of codes of ethics is http://
ethics.iit.edu/codes/coe.html, a website created by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at
the Illinois Institute of Technology. IIT was created in 1975 for the purpose of “promoting education and
scholarship in the professions.” In 1996, IIT received a grant from the National Science Foundation to put
its collection of codes of ethics on the Web. The collection includes codes from professional societies, corporations, governments, and academic institutions; more than 850 codes are indexed on the site.
31. Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E. Murphy, “How Advertising Practitioners View Ethics,” Journal of
Advertising 33:2 (Summer 2004): 7–24.
32. Ibid., 18.
33. Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E. Murphy, “The Current State of Advertising Ethics: Industry and
Academic Perspectives,” Journal of Advertising, 38 (Spring 2009): 101–102.
34. Ibid.
35. Jelly Helm, “Saving Advertising,” Émigré 53 (2000), http://www.emigre.com/Editorial.php?sect=1&id=25.
36. “New Campaign––The World,” Campaigns (UK), August 10, 2007, 29.
37. Laura Petrecca, Theresa Howard, and Bruce Horowitz, “New and Notable,” USA Today, September 24, 2007, 38.
38. William Spain, “Hardee’s Ad Not Hot for Teacher,” MediaPost Publications, September 10, 2007,
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=67146.
39. Ibid.
40. Petrecca, Howard, and Horowitz, “New and Notable.”
41. Kate McArthur, “Cheeseburger in Paradise; Big Burger Sales Boom Despite Obesity Epidemic,” Advertising
Age, July 17, 2006, 4.
42. Ibid.
43. Drumwright and Murphy, “How Advertising Practitioners View Ethics.”
44. Bivins, Mixed Media (See reference 11).
45. Drumwright and Murphy, “How Advertising Practitioners View Ethics,” 13.
46. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/265469/march-02-2010/the-word—-kid-owe.
47. http://www.kwedit.com.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. This description was assembled from a number of websites, among them: http://www.colbertnation.
com/the-colbert-report-videos/265469/march-02-2010/the-word—-kid-owe; http://www.kwedit.com;
http://www.moolanomy.com/2429/kwedit-training-wheels-for-a-real-world-debt-ridden-lifestyle/
51. Kwedit.com/blog.
52. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/265469/march-02-2010/the-word—-kid-owe.
53. Randall Stross, “Buy Now, Pay Later (Maybe With Your Allowance),” New York Times, February 7, 2010, B3.
54. http://www.moolanomy.com/2429/kwedit-training-wheels-for-a-real-world-debt-ridden-lifestyle/.
55. http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2010/03/cwedit.html.
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56. Comment posted on http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/265469/march-02-2010/
the-word—-kid-owe.
57. Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant, The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture (Berkeley, CA:
Counterpoint, 2009).
58. Ibid.
59. Davidson, Moral Dimension of Marketing, 18.
60. Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (New York: Scribner, 2005).
61. Keisha Hoerrner, “Yes! Children Need Protection from the Bombardments of Sponge Bob Square Pants,
Ronald McDonald, and All the Big Purple Dinosaurs,” in Advertising and Society: Controversies and Consequences ed. Carol J. Pardun (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2009), 23.
62. Susan Linn quoted in Stephanie Cliffort, “A Fine Line When Ads and Children Mix,” New York Times, February
15, 2010; Susan Linn, Consuming Kids, Protecting Our Children from the Onslaught of Marketing and Advertising.
63. Schor, Born to Buy, 13.
64. Media Education Foundation, Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood (video).
65. Rick D. Saucier and Kimberly Folkers, Marketing Ethics, (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008).
66. http://www.caru.org/guidelines.
67. Henry Giroux, “Commodifying Kids: The Forgotten Crisis,” Truthout, April 8, 2009, http://www.stwr
.org/multinational-corporations/commodifying-children-the-forgotten-crisis.html.
68. Ginny Whitehouse, “Why Diversity Is an Ethical Issue,” in The Handbook of Media Ethics, Lee Wilkins and
Clifford G. Christians (New York: Routledge, 2009), 101. Scholars to whom Whitehouse makes reference
here are J. Jaksa and M. Pritchard, Communication Ethics: Methods of Analysis (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,
1994); A. Craig, The Ethics of the Story (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); and A. MacIntyre After
Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1984).
69. Matthew Creamer, “French Flap Reignites Gender Debate,” Advertising Age October 24, 2005.
70. Julie Bosman, “Stuck at the Edges of the Ad Game,” New York Times November 22, 2005, C1; Creamer,
“French Flap Reignites Gender Debate.”
71. Creamer, “French Flap Reignites Gender Debate.”
72. French, quoted in Creamer, “French Flap Reignites Gender Debate.” Accounts of exactly what French did
say, that is, exactly what people heard, vary widely, though all are in agreement regarding the tone and
general content.
73. The ad appeared in a variety of publications, mostly trade publications, and can be seen at this text’s website.
It ran in Advertising Age on July 18, 2005.
74. http://ihaveanidea.org/articles/index.php?/archives/268-Female-Like-Me.html. The entire dialogue
that came about after Vonk’s essay is available at this site.
75. Ibid.
76. Creamer, “French Flap Reignites Gender Debate.”
77. Karen Mallia, “Creativity Knows No Gender, But Agency Creative Departments Sure Do,” Advertising Age,
August 31, 2009, http://adage.com/talentworks/article?article_id=138709.
78. Viscountess Rhonda, Printers Ink, 1914, quoted in JWT Newsletter, February 28, 1924, JWT Archives, J. W.
Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham,
North Carolina.
79. Jo Foxworth in personal interview with Peggy J. Kreshel, New York City, March 9, 1999.
80. Karen Mallia, “Rare Birds: Why So Few Women Become Ad Agency Creative Directors,” Advertising and
Society Review 10(3) 2009.
81. Bosman, “Stuck at the Edges of the Ad Game.” See also Peggy Kreshel, “Interview with Liz Schroeder and
Margie Goldsmith,” Advertising & Society Review 4:4 (2003), http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v004/4
.4kreshel.html.
82. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia Press, 1999), 178.
83. Commonly used quotation likely to have first appeared in Margaret Hennig and Anne Jardin, The
Managerial Woman Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1976).
84. Mallia, “Rare Birds.”
85. Mallia, “Creativity Known No Gender.”
86. Bosman, “Stuck at the Edges of the Ad Debate.”
87. http://www.ihaveanidea.org/articles/index.php?/archives/268-Female-Like-Me.html.
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197
88. Kunur Patel, “Study Finds Super Bowl Ad Creators Overwhelming White,” Advertising Age May 5, 2010,
http://adage.com/article?article_id=143711.
89. Commission on Human Rights Analysis of Compulsory versus Voluntary Affirmative Action, “Minority
Employment and the Advertising Industry in New York City,” June 1978.
90. Joe Winski, “The Ad Industry’s Dirty Little Secret,” Advertising Age, June 15, 1992.
91. Lisa Sanders, “NYC to Subpoeona Ad Agency Execs in Diversity Probe,” Advertising Age, March 6, 2006.
92. Editorial, “The Ad Industry Diversity Hiring Controversy,” Advertising Age, September 17, 2006.
93. Marissa Milley and Ken Wheaton, “Black Agency Employees Paid 20% Less Than Whites,” Advertising
Age, January 8, 2009, http://adage.com/article?article_id=133638.
94. Kenneth F. Bunting, “The Future of Media Diversity,” in Thomas W. Cooper, Clifford Christians, Anantha
Babbili An Ethics Trajectory: Visions of Media Past, Present and Yet to Come, (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois:
Institute of Communications Research, 2008), 240.
95. http://www.globalhue.com/
96. Ibid.
97. Marissa Miley, “How would an integrated Madison Avenue effect the future of ethnic ad shops?” Target
Market News: The Black Consumer Market Authority, February 16, 2009, http://www.targetmarketnews.com/
storyid02170901.htm.
98. Hadji Williams, “Why can’t ethnic-owned agencies be agencies of record?” Advertising Age, posted 1013-09, http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=139640.
99. Marissa Miley, op cit
100. http://www.aaf.org/default.asp?id=20
101. http://www.aaf.org/default.asp?id=223
102. Megan McIlroy, “How Howard will help agencies diversity,” Advertising Age, May 12, 2008, 22.
103. Jason Chambers, Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
THE HEART OF THE MATTER IN ADVERTISING ETHICS
Promotional communication permeates and blends with our cultural environment, punctuating our television watching, saturating our magazines and newspapers, and popping up in our Internet surfing,
movies, and video games.1
Advertising is a major player in the global economy, an indispensable tool of business, and,
in the words of media scholar James W. Carey, “a part of the very logic by which commerce is carried
on.”2 Advertising provides the commercial foundation supporting most media, and therefore,
makes up a considerable portion of media content.
Of all media professions, it is perhaps advertising whose integrity is most frequently called
into question. Surveys of public opinion consistently find advertising near the bottom of professions in terms of honesty and trustworthiness. An academic study examining advertising practitioner views on ethics found that ethics frequently “didn’t appear on the radar screen” of the
practitioners interviewed, and when ethical dilemmas were noticed they were often not discussed.3 These authors also identified what they called “seeing, talking” practitioners who “typically recognized moral issues and talked about them inside the agency with their coworkers and
outside the agency with their clients and potential clients.”4
We by no means want to imply that advertising or those who practice advertising are inherently unethical. They are not. Nor is it unethical to persuade, even to persuade passionately, in
advertising/promotional communication. However, it seems that advertising has developed a
professional culture in which the ethical dimensions of its work might easily be overlooked. Consider these characteristics: the tendency to equate ethicality and legality; a reluctance to “tell their
clients ‘no’ regarding ethics or anything else,” based on the rationale that the “client-is-alwaysright”5; a hectic pace that leads many practitioners to believe that they simply do not have time to
think about the ethicality of a situation; and finally, a sense that it is “difficult to institute processes
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that encourage ethical behavior without restricting the freedom that creativity requires to flourish.”6 Practitioners must exercise extra vigilance and work to provide an environment in which
ethical decision making takes on a higher priority.
What then characterizes the heart of the matter for developing ethical advertising practices?
Advertising as a profession, as well as individual practitioners within the profession, should recognize that advertising is not only a business tool but a vehicle of social communication as well. In addition to its economic power, advertising is (perhaps not by intention) a cultural teacher through which
people learn ways of being and ways of relating to others, values, attitudes, and beliefs. These social
messages are what marketing scholar Rick Pollay called the unintended social consequences of advertising, the “social by-products of exhortations to ‘buy products.’”7 Recognizing this social role of advertising adds an additional focus beyond that of efficiency and effectiveness. It places additional
emphasis on our obligation, as advertising professionals, to the public and particularly to our “audiences.” In order to practice ethically, we must view those audiences not merely as means to an economic end, but as ends themselves, worthy of being treated with dignity, honesty, and fairness.
Advertising can entertain, inform, and indeed, persuade, but it must do so with respect for personal
freedom and autonomy of the audiences. If not, advertising becomes not persuasion but manipulation.
As an advocacy profession, advertising is contractually obligated to be an advocate of the
client, working to advance the client’s ends. Yet to fulfill our role as professionals, we cannot become
so singularly focused that we fail to fulfill our duties to other stakeholders to whom we are obligated: the public, our professional colleagues, our audiences, the media that carry our messages. Then,
too, Drumwright and Murphy suggest that as a profession we need to rethink “what it means to
serve a client well.”8 We can fulfill our obligations to our client and to our profession only if we refrain from adopting the norm that the client is always right. Doing the client’s bidding makes it more
difficult to interject ethical judgments, even as it hinders our ability to offer sound business strategies. We essentially abdicate our professional responsibilities. Our professional obligation is not to
please the client or do whatever the client wants but to serve as a neutral advisor in the client’s interest. To do anything less reduces our “profession” to that of a subordinate or technician.
The heart of the matter in advertising ethics is the necessity to self-consciously adopt a pattern of ethical sensitivity. A commitment to ethical values, perhaps articulated in a revised code of
ethics, should be clearly and repeatedly expressed, not merely assumed. Moral issues should be
recognized and discussed internally (inside the agency) as well as externally with clients and potential clients. In such settings, an Aristotelian “good community” can form.
A professional is called not simply to do something but to be something.9
NOTES FOR THE HEART OF THE MATTER
1. William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhally, and Jacqueline Botterill, Social Communication in Advertising:
Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace, 3rd ed. (New York, Routledge, 2005), 3.
2. James W. Carey, Ádvertising: An Institution Approach,” in The Role of Advertising, C. H. Sandage and V.
Fryburger, eds. (Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1960), 14.
3. Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E. Murphy, “How Advertising Practitioners View Ethics,” Journal of
Advertising, 33:2 (Summer 2004): 10.
4. Ibid., 15.
5. Ibid., 14.
6. Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E. Murphy, “The Current State of Advertising Ethics,” Journal of
Advertising, 38:1 (Spring 2009): 98.
7. Richard W. Pollay, “The Distorted Mirror: Reflections oon the Unintended Consequences of Advertising,”
Journal of Advertising, (April 1986), 19.
8. Drumwright and Murphy, “How Advertising Practitioners View Ethics,” p. 20.
9. Karen Lebacqz, Professional Ethics: Power and Paradox (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1985), as cited in Thomas
Bivins, Mixed Media: Moral Distinctions in Advertising, Public Relations, and Journalism, (Mahwah, NU:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 69.