Ethics and Strategic Communications

“People I meet at parties, once they discover how I make my living, feel compelled to tell me about the low regard in which they hold advertising. But in return for my listening to their complaints, they have to answer some questions too…”

- John O'Toole, The Trouble with Advertising

Questioning the Critic

• Learning New Info• Choice Among Options• Engine for Economy• Voice for Political Views• Artistic/Creative• Public Service Messages• Underwrites the Cost of Media

"Advertising is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, and advertising agencies are stabbing in

the dark much more than they are practicing precision microsurgery on the

public consciousness."

- Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion

Rise of The Database

• Much more precise• Vast amounts of information• More pronounced effects• Much less stabbing in the dark

Ethical Challenges

• Branding Parity Products• Fostering Consumerism• Fostering Cultural Imperialism• Distort Differences • Attack Reputations• Stereotyping Groups• Distasteful and Vulgar

Some Responses

• Truthfulness in Advertising• Dignity of Human Beings• Advertising and Social Responsibility

– Ecological– Health– Politics– Social Comparison

Ethics and Media Planning

• Three major issues:

– Targeting – Vulnerable Populations

– Placement – Restrict Locations

– Privacy – Technological Boundaries

"Advertising is not the noblest creation of man's mind, as so many of its advocates would like

the public to think. It does not, single-handedly, sustain the whole structure of

capitalism and democracy in the Free World. It is just as nonsensical to suggest that we are superhuman as to accept the indictment that

we are subhuman. We are merely human, trying to do a necessary human job with

dignity, with decency and with competence."

- Leo Burnett, quoted in Ogilvy on Advertising