Term Paper on "Ethical and Societal Issues in Marketing"

Term Paper 10 pages (3019 words) Sources: 5 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Ethical and Societal Issues of Marketing

The fundamental business model of advertising is changing drastically as the Internet becomes a much more prevalent communications channel, capable of being specifically targeted to audiences of consumers while also providing the ability to measure the performance of all forms of digital advertising online. This has significantly increased the ability to measure the effectiveness of advertising that includes mention of sex, violent acts, and the use of drugs including cigarettes and alcohol. Traditional advertising on the one hand does not offer these levels of advertising effectiveness measurement, so seeing if sex, violence and the positioning of drugs of all kinds including tobacco and alcohol is left to conjecture and speculation. In light of the fundamental shift in how advertisers are allocating their dollars to primarily digital forms of advertising, the increasing use of sexual references, nudity, allusions to violence and the use of violent acts to capture attention, and the implied peer acceptance and respect from using drugs of all types including tobacco and alcohol is becoming increasingly pervasive in both digital and offline advertising. Advertisers are concerned about how effective their advertisements are in both the online and offline areas of their strategies, and as a result are increasing the use of provocative, suggestive, and borderline content to rise above the messages of their competing advertisers. The result is that the boundaries of ethical marketing and advertising are continually getting crossed more and more often as advertisers look to gain an ever greater share of attention in their target markets. Instead of concentrating on how to better manage their offline and online advertising strategies, advertisers often resort to content and messaging that if left unchecked in the target audiences, can negatively influence the lives of children who may also see the advertising or actually be the target audience for the advertising itself. Joe Camel was specifically created to promote smoking to pre-adolescent and adolescent children (Gilpin, White, Messer, Pierce, 2007). There are many more examples of advertisers focusing on children and adolescents who have trouble distinguishing between who they are relative to who they think they should be, and often look to material items to define who they are (Pechmann, Levine, Loughlin, Leslie, 2005).

The intent of this essay is to illustrate how these unethical practices of advertisers, in seeking to create a higher level of awareness and trial of their products, are harming children and introducing them to products that can significantly impair their ability to mature cognitively, emotionally and ethically. For advertisers the challenge of continually staying relevant in an increasingly competitive and unforgiving commercial landscape that does not tolerate brands becoming "stale" or worse, "old." In seeking to continually and always stay relevant, advertisers are turning increasingly to sex, nudity, violence, and the positioning of all forms of drugs as what makes a person cool and acceptable. Compounding the challenge for advertisers is that with online advertising channels there is more accountability and nearly instantaneous feedback on which advertising works and which doesn't. Yet the implications and impact of children is unmistakable and must be taken into account in evaluating the ethics of advertisers looking to stay relevant and noticed in an increasingly turbulent and challenging selling environment both offline and online.

Sex Sells...Sometimes

Ask any teenage boy what the last three articles he read in the Playboy or Penthouse were and you will get a blank stare but ask him what the name, measurements, hair and eye color of the latest Playmate or model he saw and you will that data and more in a heartbeat. Research showing the influence of sex on advertising effectiveness supports this example with a high level of statistical significance; men typically associate nudity and sexually explicit images as both romantic and sexual in the same perception (Cummins, 2007). Women on the other hand disassociate nudity and sexual innuendoes in advertising with romantic feelings, which make the argument of sex always being a winner in advertising inconclusive (Cummins, 2007) and the studies completed linking this finding to excitation transfer theory as it relates to MTV videos and the purchase of music (Zillmann and Mundorf, 1987). What the researchers found that the excitation transfer theory accounted for higher sales to adolescent and post-adolescent males of musicians' songs that included coital and post-coital relations, yet actually resulted in a lower level of sales to girls in these same two age groups. Further, the girls mentioned that the sexual activity was offensive and often appeared to be in scenarios that featured women being the subservient role in the encounter. Rarely did the women in the videos initiate the sexual contact and activity, yet were seen as more as objects of gratification than being equal partners (Zillmann and Mundorf, 1987). Nonexistent in the use of sexual content both in online video clips on YouTube and throughout the MTV videos included in the analysis was one instance of a woman's pleasure being seen as more important than the man's dominance of the woman sexually (Cummins, 2007). This led the research (Zillmann and Mundorf, 1987) to conclude that highly erotic content that features nudity and coital and post-coital activity was more about males having a sense of conquering and less about bringing pleasure to the woman in the advertisements (Cummins, 2007). As a result, girls in these age groups who were shown these videos and asked to rate them and also define the probability they would purchase the music and the results showed that at an.01 level of confidence, they would not (Cummins, 2007).

The ethics of advertising to children using sexual behavior and sexual innuendo who are pre-teenagers in the 10-12, age group, the 13-19 age groups, and to 20-year-olds is like handing them the keys to a jet aircraft when they haven't learned how to even drive a car yet. It is well documented the pre-adolescent and adolescent children tend to have little tolerance for ambiguity and often find experimentation as a means to both prove to themselves their own worth and sense of competency (Pechmann, Levine, Loughlin, Leslie, 2005). Combining sexual behavior as a means for boys to gain a sense of competency and giving girls this age a chance to rebel through an act that is overwhelming portrayed as having no real consequences directly leads to pre-teen and teen pregnancies, in addition to sexually transmitted diseases (STD)s including AIDS. For many of the producers and directors of these videos they were discovering their sexual freedom during a period when the threat of AIDS and the rampant spread of STDs had not reached its present state. On top of these health reasons which are in and of themselves reason to create guidelines that monitor the ethicacy of sexual content aimed at pre-adolescents and adolescents, there is the fact that girls and young women in these videos are shown to be inferior and not taken into account as equal to men. In short, the use of sex in advertising music completely ignores the health risks and also fuels a complete lack of respect for the women in the scenarios portrayed. Worst of all, the use of sex in all forms of advertising targeted to pre-adolescents and adolescents sets the foundation for the most dangerous kinds of rebellious behavior they can imagine; creating another life and then having to take on more responsibility when they aren't responsible for their own yet. Clearly unethical to use in advertising seen by children, this appealing to the curiosity and rebelliousness of children needs to be legislated against and advertisers who do this sell a few more songs need to be fined.

Selling Violence, Not Products

The use of excessive violence both in advertisements online including the increasing use of this type of content in viral videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites generates significant Web traffic and spikes all the key performance indicators (KPIs) that advertisers evaluate the effectiveness of their advertising strategies on. Ironically however there is significant research that shows while the act of violence is memorable, the product being promoted by the violence is not (Kanti, Smith, 1994). The effects of violence on children and their wanting to act out what they see on television has been conclusively proven in research studies that link aggressive behavior seen both online and on television to acted out aggressive activity in homes and schools. The violent activity, not the product, is the most memorable of aspects from advertisers' approaches to use violence to sell their products. While their advertisements, both online, in print and on television may rise above the noise level created by other advertisers' comparable approaches to gain visibility, it is ultimately not effective in actually selling the products being offered (Pechmann, Levine, Loughlin, Leslie, 2005). Instead, the act of violence becomes the product and the actual product being offered is incidental. (the fact that violence portrayed in advertising is most pronounced in its effects on pre-adolescents and adolescents and in effect sells the violent act over the product… READ MORE

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