EOC Week 2: Ethics In Advertising

Advertizing seems to be one of the least trusted professions. Jack Neff states in his Advertizing Age article,
"In a 2007 Gallup/USA Today Poll, advertising practitioners ranked third from last among professions in public perception of honesty and ethics, just ahead of lobbyists and car salesmen and below congressmen, state officeholders and business executives." (http://adage.com/article/news/ad-industry-battles-back-bad-reputation/144288/)

Why should anyone want to maintain a high ethical standard when dealing with advertising? Some may consider advertising under a category closer to art and even perhaps giving it license under the guise of “freedom of expression.” But as a webpage from carol.edu plainly states, “This is an interesting point.  Art is good, as are tasty, witty, entertaining things, as opposed to tawdry, superficial things, full of moral squalor.  But can we believe an advertiser has a moral duty to provide such things??  I think so: by this argument.

1. We all have the moral duty to do good when reasonable and to avoid evil when possible.
2. Advertisements (and media in general) that are tasty, witty, entertaining does good for our culture, making it more pleasant and humane, while tawdriness, superficiality, and moral squalor harms the culture.
3. Advertising has a great effect on our culture in general, making this moral duty is all the more serious.

Therefore, advertisers have a moral duty to create tasty, witty, entertaining advertisements when this is reasonable, and to avoid tawdry, superficial and morally squalid advertising when that can be avoided.  The burden of proof would be upon the advertisers to show why in any particular case the demand to make advertising tasty, witty, and entertaining was an unreasonable demand, or why tawdry and superficial advertisings couldn't have been avoided.” (https://www.carroll.edu/msmillie/busethics/ethadvertising.htm)

 
























It's not worth it to lie to the customer. The loss of them, your credibility and respect for your advertizing company is a real possibility. As Chris Moore says in his article for the Advertizing Educational Foundation, "Advertisers know this. Ads for reputable companies almost never lie. The cost of being caught out is simply too high. It can take years to undo the damage. Also, the people inside the company want to be able to look at themselves in the mirror. We often think of business people as belonging to some other, vaguely malevolent species, but remember that most of them are you in a few years." (http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/speaker_pres/data/6000)

Here are three examples of advertising gone awry. Do these seem ethical?

My Voice

Coming from a Business background, I am very interested in the field of Advertising. Also, being a huge fan of the show “Mad Men,” it will be exciting to catch a glimpse into the universe.. Now, I am no designer. Using what I lean from this class will be benefitting my career in Fashion and Entrepreneurship. I am no Fashion Designer, and don’t consider myself “crafty.” But what I may lack in raw creativity, I make up for in drive and ambition in the business world. I have a keen business mentality. That is where I feel like I can truly shine. It gives me a great sense of pride to know that as a business and fashion professional, I can carry on that legacy, and hopefully inspire my future children and my cousins children as well. I realize that the goals I have set for myself seem quite lofty, but you can't make it in the cutthroat business of fashion by setting the bar too low. At the age of 31, after all my experiences thus far and for the first time in my life, I truly and genuinely believe in my capabilities and potential.

Week 1, EOC Volkswagen

Ifenyinwa Anekwe

BUS125

1/17/15

VW “Lemon” Ad

Advertisements of previous generations seemed to focus on being “big.” Coming out of WWII, and a situation where America had to conserve, save and ration, the 1950’s had been about living it up. Bigger homes, bigger families, bigger meals, bigger hair, and bigger cars. The people wanted luxury and decadence; Can you blame them? But with the ushering in of a brand new decade, the 1960’s, there came quite the paradigm shift in the way people thought about their lives. Some might even say this was helped along by a German company by the name of Volkswagen.

Their Beatle car was everything American cars of the 50’s were not. The challenge given to advertising agency BBD was, “To sell a small, basic, ugly , economical, foreign car to a market used to huge, chrome-finned, gadget-stuffed, home-built gas guzzlers.” (http://www.brandstories.net/2012/11/03/vw-beetle-story-lesson-in-brand-persona-development/#sthash.JdBZ4NkZ.dpuf). BBD only took on the project as a means to acquire an account from GM in the future.

Most ads up until that time were fairly straightforward, or leaned on sentimentality, or even exploited consumer fears and anxiety. BBD picked a different strategy. In the words of James Russell, “That’s what Volkswagen’s ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, did 50 years ago in launching a counter-intuitive campaign that poked fun at itself to sell the tiny Beetle. The “Think Small” and “Lemon” ads of 1959 launched a watershed campaign that proved William Bernbach’s “creative revolution” manifesto: “Good taste, good art (and) good writing can be good selling.” (http://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/Articles/2009/11/02/Watershed-VW-campaign-turns-50).

Another key to their success was not bringing to light the German heritage of the car. With people still reeling from the war, that may have spelled disaster. BBD overcame this in a unique way. Marty Bernstien explains, “In a stroke of marketing super-genius … they ignored it! That’s right, not one VW ad from DDB ever spoke of its German heritage, history and association. The brand was literally invented in America in 1960 by the advertising – primarily print – at the time. There was no historical frame of reference ever. Contrast that with today, when German automotive heritage is a highly valued expression of excellence.” (http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-05-09/the-vw-storybusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice). They were able to create this concept by using a creative team of writers and art directors, in tandem with the famous “Ad Men” who would lend the structure, words and the presentation to the project.

Mary Bernstien goes on to say, “By the late ‘60’s, VW was producing over 1 million Beetles a year around the world. In 1968, a great year for VW, the brand had a 5% share of the U.S. new car market.”