Name - Soumit Ghosh

Roll No 38

PGDRM
Subject : Advertising and Brand Management

Session 2013 15

What do we mean by Ethics ?
Some years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, "What do ethics
mean to you?" Among their replies were the following:
"Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong."
"Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs."
"Being ethical is doing what the law requires."
"Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts."
"I don't know what the word means."
These replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin down, and
the views many people have about ethics are shaky.
Like Baumhart's first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their feelings.
But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's feelings. A person following his
or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from
what is ethical. So in other words, Ethics are nothing but moral principles that govern a
person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity.
It is the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles. Ethics, sometimes known as
philosophical ethics, ethical theory, moral theory, and moral philosophy, is a branch of
philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and
wrong conduct, often addressing disputes of diversity. The term comes from the Greek
word ethikos from ethos, which means "custom, habit". The super field within philosophy
known as axiology includes both ethics and aesthetics and is unified by each sub-branch's
concern with value. Philosophical ethics investigates what is the best way for humans to
live, and what kinds of actions are right or wrong in particular circumstances. Ethics may
be divided into three major areas of study. Ethics can be of 3 types: --
Meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and
how their truth values (if any) may be determined
Normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action
Applied ethics draws upon ethical theory in order to ask what a person is obligated
to do in some very specific situation, or within some particular domain of action
(such as business).
Key Points -
Ethical behavior is based on written and unwritten codes of principles and values
held in society.
Ethical principles and values serve as a guide to behaviors on a personal level,
within professions, and at the collective organizational level.
Business ethics involves personal, professional, and corporate behaviors.
Benefits of Ethical Behaviour
The main benefits for a business of behaving ethically are:
1. Avoidance of expensive and embarrassing PR disasters.
2. Better image with consumers and better sales.
3. Better recruitment.
4. Better employee motivation because employees are proud of their jobs.
Effects of Ethical Behaviour
1. Increased costs as businesses try to do what is expected e.g. not pay bottom wages, or
dump pollution cheaply at sea.
2. Conflict between profit and ethical standards.
3. Business practice and organisational culture will have to be changed.
4. Changes in relations with suppliers. This may mean passing the same standards down
the supply chain, and severing relations with suppliers not prepared to meet the same
standards. Alternative suppliers may be more expensive. For example, the export of
Brazilian mahogany is illegal for reasons of conservation, but it is very difficult (and
expensive) to buy mahogany that is absolutely guaranteed to come from an officially
recognized sustainable source.
Should Businesses Be Expected to Behave Ethically?
One argument is that businesses are products of the society in which they operate, in which
they sell their products, and in which they hire their employees. So businesses should be
expected to reflect the ethical standards of the surrounding society. One problem with this
view is that society doesnt always have clear ethical standards to which businesses can
stick. For example, some people care passionately about animal experiments, and argue it
is deeply unethical, whereas many other people say such experiments are justified if real
people benefit medically from the research. What is a business supposed to do?
The opposite argument is that businesses are supposed to make a profit for their owners,
to create jobs for employees, and to create wealth for society as a whole. Anything else is at
best an irrelevance and at worst simply gets in the way of profitable business.
The middle argument is that businesses in the real world (or most of them, at least) would
like to do both, if possible. But there will always be conflicts. What then happens? Does the
business stick with the ethical behaviour? Usually the business will go for the profits and it
is this which upsets many people, although perhaps people sometimes expect too much
and havent really thought through the consequences of their own opinions.
Are Businesses Behaving More Ethically?
Research suggests middle and junior managers care quite a lot about ethical behaviour, but
that senior managers still care mainly about profit. To the extent that it is senior managers
that make the decisions, then little has changed, but middle managers can gradually shift
the climate of opinion in a business.
Ethics in Advertising
Ethics in advertising means a set of well defined principles which govern the ways of
communication taking place between the seller and the buyer. Ethics is the most important
feature of the advertising industry. Though there are many benefits of advertising but then
there are some points which dont match the ethical norms of advertising. Ethics in
Advertising is directly related to the purpose of advertising and the nature of
advertising. Sometimes exaggerating the ad becomes necessary to prove the benefit of the
product. For e.g. a sanitary napkin ad which shows that when the napkin was dropped in a
river by some girls, the napkin soaked whole water of the river. Thus, the purpose of
advertising was only to inform women about the product quality. Obviously, every woman
knows that this cannot practically happen but the ad was accepted. This doesnt show that
the ad was unethical.
Ethics also depends on what we believe. If the advertisers make the ads on the belief
that the customers will understand, persuade them to think, and then act on their ads, then
this will lead to positive results and the ad may not be called unethical. But at the same
time, if advertisers believe that they can fool their customers by showing any impractical
things like just clicking fingers will make your home or office fully furnished or just buying
a lottery ticket will make me a millionaire, then this is not going to work out for them and
will be called as unethical.
Recently, the Vatican issued an article which says ads should follow three moral principles -
Truthfulness, Social Responsibility and Upholding Human Dignity.
Generally, big companies never lie as they have to prove their points to various ad
regulating bodies. Truth is always said but not completely. Sometimes its better not to
reveal the whole truth in the ad but at times truth has to be shown for betterment.
An ethical ad is the one which doesnt lie, doesnt make fake or false claims and is in
the limit of decency.
Nowadays, ads are more exaggerated and a lot of puffing is used. It seems like the
advertisers lack knowledge of ethical norms and principles. They just dont understand and
are unable to decide what is correct and what is wrong.
Ethical Principles especially relevant to Advertising
General
Principles of the moral order must be applied to the domain of media
Human freedom has a purpose: making an authentic moral response. All
attempts to inform and persuade must respect the purposes of human
freedom if they are to be moral.
Morally good advertising therefore is that advertising that seeks to move
people to choose and act rationally in morally good ways; morally evil
advertising seeks to move people to do evil deeds that are self-destructive
and destructive of authentic community
Means and techniques of advertising must also be considered: manipulative,
exploitative, corrupt and corrupting methods of persuasion and motivation
Three Specific Moral Principles
RESPECT TRUTHFULNESS (deception objection)
Never directly intend to deceive
Never use simply untrue advertising
Do not distort the truth by implying things that are not so or withholding
relevant facts
"Puffery" is acceptable where it is consonant with recognized and accepted
rhetorical and symbolic practice
RESPECT THE DIGNITY OF EACH HUMAN PERSON (attacks autonomy objection)
Do not exploit our "lower inclinations" to compromise our capacity to reflect
or decide either through its content or through its impact: using appeals to
lust, vanity, envy and greed, and other human weakness.
Give special care to the weak and vulnerable: children, young people, the
elderly, the poor, and the culturally disadvantaged
RESPECT SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES (promotes consumption, empties
communication, objections)
Example: Concern for the ecologyadvertising should not favor a lavish
lifestyle which wastes resources and despoils the environment
Example: Advertising should not reduce human progress to acquiring
material goods and cultivating a lavish lifestyle
Ethical issues in Advertising
Ethical issues in advertising occur on a regular basis. Advertising techniques such as
newspaper ads, magazine ads, television ads, and billboards can raise conflict because
everyone in the world can see them and not everyone in the world has the same moral
beliefs. This can be tricky for those working in the advertising business because it is nearly
impossible to make an advertisement that every single person will agree with. An example
of an ethical issue in advertising is an advertisement for a new video game system that
shows young kids playing games that many people consider being very violent.
As Advertising now has become a social being, it has an influence that can be persuasive,
pervasive and influential that it is important that the right message is sent across.
Additionally messages sent should harbour people's thoughts, feelings and religion and
avoid nudity, language and any offensive context because of the multicultural society that
the world has.
The advertising industry operates within strict federal regulations and is monitored by the
Federal Trade Commission. Even with truth-in-advertising laws in place, advertisers have
significant leeway to violate the ethical standards of a wide range of consumers.
Advertisers have to be especially careful to act ethically at all times, taking extra care when
advertising to children, advertising potentially harmful products and using psychological
tactics to stimulate demand. Having a list of ethical and legal issues at hand when creating
advertisements can help Ito craft legal, responsible ad messages.
Puffery & Hype or rather false advertisements: In ancient Rome, the Latin
expression caveat emptor, "let the buyer beware," warned buyers of unscrupulous sellers.
It remains a good dictum today, but it is much less likely that a seller would be telling
outright lies about a product than sometimes occurred in the past. As recently as the early
1900s advertising was still largely unregulated (by either government or advertising
industry standards), and sellers were pretty much free to make whatever claims they could
get away with. Patent medicines were among the worst offenders. The claims in such ads
were not only often outrageous but frequently completely false. Today, such patently false
claims are highly unlikely in national advertising. Not only are there both governmental
and industry-based standards that regulate what can be said in ads, but the force of
negative publicity that would surround an outright lie, if discovered, would have severe or
fatal repercussions for the company making the claims. Exaggerated by legal claims
(Hallmark cards: When you want to send the very best. Everready Batteries: Nothing
outlasts an Eveready battery. Examples of Advertisements in Indian economy - When an
edible oil advertisement gives you the impression that you are free of heart problems so
long as you are using that particular oil, then it is misrepresenting facts. Another example is
when an advertisement of a water purifier that filters only bacteria (and not viruses)
claims that it gives 100 per cent safe water, then it is a false statement. When a mobile
operator promises STD calls for 40 paise per minute, but omits to say that this rate is
applicable only when calls are made to another mobile of the same company, then it
constitutes misrepresentation. Similarly, when an advertiser or a manufacturer makes a
claim about a product, he should be able to prove it. Or else, it becomes a false statement.
Similarly, if an advertisement for a detergent says that it can remove grease in just one
wash- it should be able to do just that and the manufacturer should be able to prove this. Or
else, it is an incorrect statement or a false advertisement.
Good Taste: Stereotyping (gender, race, ethnicity, age, lifestyle, handicaps, and religion).
Not very long ago, insurance companies sold policies for son's education and daughter's
wedding, and jewellers pitched their products primarily for the brides-to-be. In
advertisements, woman would always be the showpiece mom, daughter, wife and sister, a
mere reflection of how society viewed her. As many as 4,430 complaints poured in against
784 advertisements telecast between 2007 and 2012 on television channels, and 54% of
them were upheld as they showed women in poor light. Again, in 19 July 2006 the ad for a
certain shampoo on the television portraying two of the most sensuous and physically
attractive star models, (who are also an off-screen pair in real life) is an indicator of how
sex roles have changed in Indian advertising. Cinematographed in monochrome with the
right shades of darkness and mood lighting, the word 'hot' recurs like a double-edged
metaphor in the ad, an adjective that has no direct relationship with the product being
advertised. This and other contemporary ads raise pertinent questions about perspectives
on gender in media representations of men and women. The Bipasha Basu-John
Abraham ad mentioned above for instance, underscores how men in Indian ads are being
presented in a much more macho-dominant manner than they were before. Another ad for
male underwear shows a number of females with pseudo-coy expressions on their faces
coming out of a toilet. Again, the product advertised does not really bear a direct
relationship with the message or the script since few Indian males would be caught dead
before females catch them in their underwear inside what appears to be a public toilet!
These are Western concepts imposed on Indian ad scripts and prove that visuals need not
necessarily represent the social norms of a society.
Stealth Advertising or Subliminal Advertising : - Promotional messages
embedded in a story line but not explicitly presented as advertising is known as Stealth
Advertising. For over half a century, many people have believed that advertisers secretly
embed covert messages into print advertisements and TV commercials. These embeddings
are believed to communicate secret messages to consumers that cause them to act
irrationally in the marketplace. A variety of Internet sites purport to be constantly
uncovering such messages and alerting consumers to such unethical advertising practices.
Some Examples are Kurkure s Subliminal advertisingThe advertisement depicts the
lines "Tedha Hai par mera Hai" and translated the same into English which goes
something like this " He's NOT STRAIGHT but he's mine".
Advertising to Children : - Is it ethical to advertise to children? Some people think
not, but advertisers continue to do so. The central question here is whether children should
be treated like other consumers, or whether they deserve special treatment or should not
be advertised to at all. Canada severely restricts advertising to children as do some
European countries. Sweden is perhaps the strictest nation, prohibiting any advertising
aimed at children under the age of 12.Controversial products such as alcohol, tobacco,
gambling is mainly harmful for a child psychology and initiates mental trauma. For e.g.
Vodafones recent campaign shows some 11-12 year teens getting attracted to each other
and the pup is helping them out. Such ads do affect the innocent minds of children and they
start believing that theyre also supposed to behave in the same manner. Of course kids are
an important part of a family and they do influence the buying decisions. And in fact they
themselves are future customers for the advertisers. But the marketers should not cross
their limits and not practice such advertising which may be harmful to these naive minds.
All the children have a right to grow up in a sound environment. Another example is
Tobacco and liquor manufacturers are openly advertising their products with the help of
surrogate advertising. For example, Royal Stag Music CDs, Kingfisher Mineral Water,
Haywards 5000 Soda, 502 Pataka Chai, Wills Lifestyle and many more.
Gratuitous Sexual Content : - Using nudity, sexual imagery, and sex appeal, both
explicitly and by innuendo, for the purpose of attracting attention, despite little or no
inherent sexual aspects of the product/service/idea being advertised. For example: - Calida
Underwear (Featuring Dino Morea and Bipasha Basu) in the year 1990. If the Ad makers of
this one thought they would get away with Dino Morea tugging Bipasha Basu's knickers
with his teeth, they were everything but correct! Like the picture didnt have enough
ingredients to stir up a controversy, the tag line- "And you thought your appetite for
indulgence could only be whetted by Swiss chocolates", as one would say added the right
amount of fuel to the fire!
Negative Content : - Fear appeals, guilt appeals, and threats. Ethical standards in
advertising need to take community standards into account. A single set of universal
standards about what is good, bad, or just acceptable is difficult to apply everywhere. What
may be appreciated in one community may be off limits in another. In addition, local
histories and social issues interact with ads to produce unique local interpretations and
meanings. A more contemporary ad that occasioned widespread complaints is the Dolce &
Gabbana ad suggesting gang rape. This ad so outraged Spanish consumers that the ad was
banned in Spain. D&G responded angrily by withdrawing all its advertising from Spain.
Many people considered this to be a clear instance of advertising going too far. An easy
example of this is of TUFF shoes (Featuring Milind Soman and Madhu Sapre) in the year
1995. This one has to be one of the most controversial print ad's India has ever seen! In
1995 when Milind Soman and Madhu Sapre posed nude for the Tuff Shoes Ad campaign,
they probably never saw a 14 year long court case ahead of them. 2 bad pairs of shoes, a
python and 2 nude models got various women's groups fuming ,the models slapped with a
case of obscenity and the ad deemed unfit for public consumption!14 years later in
2009,the models and the others involved were finally acquitted and all charges against
them dropped.
Advertising Harmful Products - Different countries look differently on the
advertising of vice products and services, striking a balance between placing personal
responsibility on citizens and regulating what citizens are allowed to indulge in. The United
States highly regulates some forms of vice, prohibits others and gives still others a free
hand. For example, cigarette advertising is only permitted on specific media, excluding
television and radio, while alcohol advertising is allowed on all media.
Companies have to take a good look at the true nature of their product lines when deciding
whether they are acting ethically as advertisers. Television ads for fast food hamburgers
are completely legal and effective at building demand, for example, but doctors in the 21st
century are beginning to find links between fast food and a national obesity epidemic.
Pharmaceutical ads with lists of side effects, as another example, are often followed 10
years later by attorneys' ads for class-action lawsuits against the companies for wrongful
injury. One example is - AC Black Whisky - Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai in the year 2002. Most
companies believe in the "Sex Sells" mantra and so did Jagjit Industries in the early 2000's.
A woman with her neckline diminishing and a man with his shirt coming off together with
the tagline "Kuch Bhi ho sakta hai", was not only the perfect combination for a steamy and
cheeky ad but also a perfect calling for a controversy that had some serious financial
impact on the company. The commercial was instantly banned and the company's plans of
boosting sales during the World Cup, when this ad was aired at regular intervals, were not
quite met.
Conclusion
After reading all this in details what I have come to at the end is that advertisers should not cross
their limit in making the advertisements make acceptable to the public. They should not forget
the limits that our society follows and must comply with the norms and regulations. Advertising
should be such so that it must be acceptable and must me soothing in the eyes of the consumers.
Advertisers should not forget the core purpose of advertising for the sake of monetary rewards
and should not make it unethical or that simply does not go with the society and that does harm
innocent minds. Advertising should be done in a simple, logical and in an aesthetic way so that it
must not look displeasing in the eyes of others. Cores of rupees are incurred in carrying out an
advertisement and at the end of the day it is of no use. The advertisements that came across now
days are more of the same type and nature. Using sex appeals in advertisements like deodorants,
cars, common household products put before us a big question and points out the loopholes that
an advertisement carries. For this reasons many ads were banned for public viewing.
Advertisements should be such so that it does not make false promises or dupe innocent
customers by luring them with some colorful illustrations rather it must keep the interest and
dignity of the customer. The ultimate point is not money but customer reaction towards a brand.
What the advertisement does it makes a favourable image in the minds of the customer but that is
not always true. Nobody thinks of the negative consequences that an advertisement carries that
affects a companys goodwill and public image. Now there may be many controversial issues in
this case. Just like an advertisement that may look negative in ones eyes may be perfectly OK
with another person and this is where the problem lies. So being going into details about this, the
advertiser must play the role of an effective manager, controller and coordinator in making the
advertisement successful in the market. One recent ad proves it all. It is the Google reunion ad
which conceptualizes to show easy-to-use Google search services, this simple story
complemented by brilliant music, brings smiles and tears to everyone who has watched it. The ad
does a brilliant job in showing how easy it is to use Google products on mobiles and PCs.
It also brings emotions into a category which has been very rational (Google it) and brings a
fresh take on Nokias brand promise "connecting people".
And for most Indians, there was always a family member or a friend who had migrated from
Pakistan after partition. The ad brings back fond memories of our grandparents, the fun times we
had with them as kids listening to stories and the undivided attention they showered on us. This
is the way any advertisement should communicate with people. The essence should be there with
it always.