Download ETHICS IN ADVERTISING

ETHICS IN
ADVERTISING
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Advertising is a form of communication that
typically attempts to persuade potential
customers to purchase or to consume more of a
particular brand of product or service. ...
a public promotion of some product or service
the business of drawing public attention to
goods and services
TYPES OF ADVERTISING:
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Media: Commercial advertising media include wall
paintings, , radio, cinema and television adverts, web
banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts,
web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches,
magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses,
banners attached to or sides of airplanes
("logojets"), in-flight advertisements on seatback
tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors,
roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage
shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands
on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in
supermarkets, shopping cart handles…
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Television commercials:The TV com mercial is generally
considered the most effective mass-market advertising
format.The annual Super Bowl football game in the
United States is known as the most prominent
advertising event on television.
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Infomercials: There are two types of infomercials,
described as long form and short form. Long form
infomercials have a time length of 30 minutes. Short
form infomercials are 30 seconds to two minutes long.
Infomercials are also known as direct response
television (DRTV) commercials or direct response
marketing.
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Celebrities:This type of advertising focuses upon using
celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain
recognition for their products and promote specific stores
or products.
MEDIAS OF ADVERTISING:
Some commercial advertising media include: billboards,
printed flyers, radio, cinema and television ads, web
banners, skywriting, bus stop benches, magazines,
newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, taxicab doors
and roof mounts, elastic bands on disposable diapers,
the opening section of streaming audio and video, and
the backs of event tickets. Any place an "identified"
sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium
is advertising. Covert advertising embedded in other
entertainment media is known as product placement.
Ethics in Strategy Formulation
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Advertisement persuade the people to buy
their products.
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It sometime entertain or educate the
people.
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Some advertisers use slippery tactics.
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The Question is that : are these strategies
are ethical ?
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Do the companies having the obligation to
tell the truth or does the goal of selling the
product override such ethical concerns ?
Advertising strategies
When advertising a product, advertisers
will use several methods .
 Most popular ones are:
 Celebrity endorsements
 Product comparison.
 Price comparison.
 Selling a dream or life style.
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Obviously, some strategies have the ability to be more
subjective than others. For example, when using the
strategy of “selling a lifestyle”, many businesses will work
hard to create a brand image. That image may be
associated with status, lifestyle, or success. When
selling a product with that brand, advertisers will then
focus on selling that image. It may not necessarily have
anything to do with the real value or quality of the
product itself. The customer is simply buying the name
and the concepts that go along with it. However, owning
that product will likely not truly change the reality of the
consumer’s status. Is it therefore ethical to sell the image
instead of the product? Is it truthful?
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It is morally wrong to use manipulative, exploitative,
corrupt and corrupting methods of persuasion and
motivation.
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The techniques involved in advertising certain products
like glamorous settings associated with superficially
glamorous people.
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Another important aspect is it relies on false information.
Principles that are particularly relevant to
advertising are
 truthfulness ,
 the dignity of the human person,
 and social responsibility
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Ethical Concerns
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Advertising typically plays upon emotions. It
uses desire to lure people into the purchase.
Creating that desire is a task that requires a
certain amount of illusion. Advertisers must
create a scenario that heightens the consumer’s
emotional state. No matter what strategy they
use, they are always building a fantasy – one in
which the consumer’s life is better because of
the product.
BENEFITS OF
ADVERTISING
Economic Benefits of
Advertising
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Advertising can play an important role in the
process by which an economic system guided
by moral norms contributes to human
development.
It is a necessary part of the functioning of
modern market economies.
Advertising can be a useful tool for sustaining
honest and ethically responsible competition that
contributes to economic growth in the service of
authentic human development.
Advertising informs people about the
availability of rationally desirable new
products and services and improvements
in existing ones, helping them to make
informed, contributing to efficiency and the
lowering of prices, and stimulating
economic progress through the expansion
of business and trade.
 All of this can contribute to the creation of
new jobs, higher incomes and a more
decent and humane way of life for all.

Benefits of Political Advertising
Political advertising can make its
contribution by informing people about the
ideas and policy proposals of parties and
candidates, including new candidates not
previously known to the public.
 Political advertising can make a
contribution to democracy analogous to its
contribution to economic well being in a
market system guided by moral norms.
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Cultural Benefits of Advertising
Advertising can itself contribute to the
betterment of society by uplifting and
inspiring people and motivating them to
act in ways that benefit themselves and
others.
 Advertising can brighten lives simply by
being witty, tasteful and entertaining.

Moral and Religious Benefits of
Advertising
In many cases, too, benevolent social
institutions, including those of a religious
nature, use advertising to communicate
their messages.
 Messages of faith, of patriotism, of
tolerance, messages concerning health
and education, constructive and helpful
messages that educate and motivate
people in a variety of beneficial ways.
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THE HARM DONE BY
ADVERTISING
a) Economic Harms of Advertising
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Advertising can betray its role as a source of information
by misrepresentation and by with holding relevant facts
The practice of "brand"-related advertising can raise
serious problems. Often there are only negligible
differences among similar products of different brands,
and advertising may attempt to move people to act on
the basis of irrational motives ("brand loyalty," status,
fashion, "sex appeal," etc.) instead of presenting
differences in product quality and price as bases for
rational choice.
It makes consumers forget abt there needs n only think
abt their wants, which makes them spend more
b) Harms of Political Advertising
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for example, the costs of advertising limit political
competition to wealthy candidates or groups, or require
that office-seekers compromise their integrity and
independence by over-dependence on special interests
for funds.
instead of being a vehicle for honest expositions of
candidates' views and records,political advertising seeks
to distort the views and records of opponents and
unjustly attacks their reputations.
c) Cultural Harms of Advertising
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In the competition to attract ever larger audiences and
deliver them to advertisers, communicators can find
themselves tempted — in fact pressured, subtly or not so
subtly — to set aside high artistic and moral standards
and lapse into superficiality, tawdriness and moral
squalor
Communicators also can find themselves tempted to
ignore the educational and social needs of certain
segments of the audience — the very young, the very
old, the poor — who do not match the demographic
patterns (age, education, income, habits of buying and
consuming, etc.) of the kinds of audiences advertisers
want to reach
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Exploitation of women by advertisements:objects whose purpose is to satisfy others'
appetite for pleasure or for power
the role of woman as wife and mother
undervalued or even ridiculed
the role of women in business or professional
life depicted as a masculine caricature
d) Moral and Religious Harms of Advertising
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it deliberately appeals to such motives such as envy,
status seeking and lust.
some advertisers consciously seek to shock and titillate
by exploiting content of a morbid, perverse, pornographic
nature.
the communications media have made pornography and
violence accessible to a vastly expanded audience,
including young people and even children, and a
problem which at one time was confined mainly to
wealthy countries has now begun, via the
communications media, to corrupt moral values in
developing nations.
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commercial advertisers sometimes include religious
themes or use religious images or personages to sell
products. It is possible to do this in tasteful, acceptable
ways, but the practice is obnoxious and offensive way.
EXAMPLES
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companies try all sorts of tactics to get our attention and
money.
Some examples of illegal tricks involve the old bait and
switch. This tactic requires placing an ad for an item at
tremendous value. Upon reaching the store, the
shoppers finds that the item is "no longer available" and
in order to alleviate their sorrow at missing the deal they
are directed to a similar item that, while not as good of a
bargain (sometimes no bargain at all) closely matches
what they came in for.
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An example would be an ad for a brand new
computer with DVD, cd-writer and free software
for only $600. What a bargain! As soon as you
inquire: "I'm sorry, we're all sold out of that
amazing deal, but since you need a computer, I
can show you this one. It only has half as much
processing power, ram or hard drive. If you need
the DVD, I can have one installed for only $99..."
and off you go being sold an item that you didn't
initially want
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Children who are enticed through advertising to believe
that Pokemon Cereal is something they must have. The
advertisers’ claim that this sugar-laden, almost nonnutrient product is “part of a nutritious breakfast” is
misleading. Children who are allowed to consume
sugary foods usually do so at the expense of eating
other, more nutritious foods (Zoll, 2001). As such, their
health suffers. This applies to advertising for chips, soda
pop, and numerous other “junk foods”. Children simply
can’t differentiate between healthy foods and those that
have little nutritional value, but they are pushed by the
media to see those foods as “the best choice”. This is
truly unethical.
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Alltel also hired people to go into public
chat rooms on the Internet and ask about
the new Alltel product Boomerang. Once
again the large corporation used human
nature of curiosity to sell the product
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the collective, experiential and logical
evidence makes it more likely that
advertising and promotional activities do
stimulate cigarette consumption
Encourages children and young adults to
experiment tobacco
Conclusion
Advertising is an important element in
today's society, especially in the
functioning of a market economy, which is
becoming more and more widespread.
 Yet it also can do, and often does, grave
harm to individuals and to the common
good
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