Advertising Ethics

Ethical advertising are marketing strategies from companies to promote their products in a way that is beneficial for their customers, community, and the environment. Consumers value the company’s beliefs and values with high expectations. Advertising ethics includes everything in regards to making sure that ads are ethically sound to build a relevant relationship with consumers. This is all based upon five factors that are important to ethical marketing: empathy, honesty, sustainability, transparency, and promise-keeping (wisepops).

ETHICAL ADVERTISING EXAMPLES

As listed below, here’s a list of examples that effectively represent ethical marketing based on their allegiance and achievement.

Allbirds - Fashion pollutes the planet

This brand commits to selling eco-friendly products that contribute to its carbon footprint with sustainable reporting. Their practices in marketing strategies are based on their practices that are environmentally friendly as they have grown much awareness of their new supply chain, including renewable materials, energy, and renewing cultivation. The brand also advertises their carbon footprint of every product, for example, Wool Dasher Mizzle shoes generate 12.9kg of carbon dioxide that’s later reimbursed.

Patagonia - “Don’t buy this jacket”

Patagonia’s ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ campaign is one example of ethical advertising. The brand asked customers to take a pledge to reduce consumption on Black Friday instead of encouraging them to buy more. This campaign - shown below - raised awareness about the environmental impacts of consumerism, encouraging all to think more about the effect of what they are buying.

TOMS Shoes - “One Day Without Shoes”

This campaign began with a video, advertising the brand’s aims to promote awareness of the lack of footwear accessible to children in developing countries. The campaign was offered to all who shared the hashtag #WithoutShoes on Instagram. From this, TOMS achieved their goal, improving customer relationships as well as awareness, and lowered marketing costs. It was also cited in academic journals on marketing as an example of successful advert campaigns on social media.

UNETHICAL ADVERTISING

There are cases where unethical advertising plays a role. This includes any form of advertisement that manipulates a service, merchandise, or brand by embellishing the asset or making false statements to take advantage of potential buyers’ interest and trust. This type of marketing, oftentimes, is done intentionally to increase sales, but sometimes companies are truthfully unaware of the ethical error in their marketing ad. Unethical advertising is one of the biggest reasons why many people don’t trust certain brands anymore.

UNETHICAL ADVERTISING EXAMPLES

Types of unethical advertising are misleading ads and images, hidden fees, false endorsements, exaggerated results, false information, plagiarism, and twisting facts and research. But wait, there’s more. Here’s a list of examples of unethical advertising:

Twiggy’s Olay Ad

Olay issued an advertisement in 2009, featuring Twiggy supposedly aging naturally - when, in reality, the image had been retouched to make it seem as so. This ad plays an example of misleading images in unethical advertising. (theGuardian)

McDonald’s Dead Dad Advert

McDonald’s ‘dead dad’ advertisement was revealed to be scandalous as it used a touching topic - death of a father - to sell its own products. Though this appealed in an emotional way that is acceptable to attract attention to ads, it went a bit too far in a way that played as its downfall in reverse. (Insider)

Coca-Cola’s Vitamin Water Misleading Ad

Another misleading advert is Coca-Cola's Vitamin Water, which has been widely condemned in the past. The ad made claims that the beverage was a healthy substitute to soda, but it was revealed that the drink - Vitamin Water - contained a lot of sugar. Based on the BBC article, this is one popular example of unethical advertising as it twisted actuality and made untrue health claims. (BBC)

Advertising Ethics