ABSTRACT
Advertising is not an easy context for ethics. Clients are demanding. Deadlines are never-ending. Short-term results are mandatory. Creative content must push the limits of what is familiar and acceptable to compete for attention. Media must interject itself into the crowded lives of message recipients, and ever-new devices provide recipients more and more opportunities to opt out of or otherwise control advertising messages. With the advent of new media, recipients, once passive, now create messages that can wreak havoc on corporate communication strategies. A common reaction is simply to avoid the topic of ethics. In such a context, having theory to guide practice and research is especially important, and yet there is little to none. Citing from Nan and Faber (2004), Thorson and Rodgers assert in Chapter 1 of this text that advertising is a variable field in that it borrows theories from other fields and applies them to the unique context of advertising. Advertising ethics is no different. At times, some of the same theories from psychology and social psychology that are used to address other areas of advertising can be borrowed profitably to address advertising ethics (e.g., theories related to biases and heuristics in decision making). At other times, theories from areas that are not typically drawn on to study issues of advertising, such as philosophy and organizational studies, must be adopted to study issues of advertising ethics. Because advertising ethics is a variable field, if we are going to borrow theory for it profitably, we must understand what advertising ethics is and what we know about it. If we look at theory and research in advertising generallywhether managerial or psychological1-such efforts focus primarily on questions of effectiveness. In contrast, ethics raises fundamentally different questions related not to what will be effective in advertising but to “what is right and good in the conduct of the advertising function. It is concerned with questions of what ought to be done, not just what legally must be done” (Cunningham, 1999, p. 500). Advertising ethics typically encompasses issues in two broad areas-(1) those related to “message ethics,” the ethical issues involved in the creation and dissemination of the advertising message, and (2) those related to
“business ethics,” the ethics of the advertising business and the organizations that conduct or influence it (Drumwright & Murphy, 2009). As such, theory and research examining issues of advertising effectiveness often do not address issues of ethics directly. To borrow theory profitably for advertising ethics, one must understand how ethics fits into Thorson and Rodgers’ model presented in Figure 1.1 at the beginning of this text, and the role it plays in the advertising field more generally. Ethics is one of multiple broad contexts of the model, and, as such, it pervades every component of the model. In traditional media advertising, the onus of ethical decision making is primarily on three parties: (1) the creator of the advertising (e.g., the advertising practitioner), (2) the message sponsor or source (e.g., the client), and (3) the channel, the conveyor of the message (e.g., the mass media). The fact that the onus is on these three parties does not mean that ethical decision making necessarily occurs. For example, this trio has been referred to as the “unholy trinity” because of the tendency of ethics to sink to the lowest common denominator (Murphy, 1998), and some advertising practitioners have been characterized as having moral myopia, a distortion of moral vision that prevents ethical issues from coming clearly into focus (Drumwright & Murphy, 2004). As creators and disseminators of messages through new media, recipients are now subject to many of the same ethical issues related to messages as the traditional three parties. Individual decision makers are affected not only by their own character and values but also by the culture and climate of the organizations in which they work-the “advertising organizations” in the model. All parties are affected by the culture and trends of the larger society. For example, social norms regarding new media currently are relatively undeveloped as compared to traditional media, which has been described by advertising practitioners as a “Wild West” in which anything goes from an ethical perspective (Drumwright & Murphy, 2009). The effects that advertising ethics is typically most concerned with are the ones that Thorson and Rodgers’ Figure 1.1 refers to as the “unintended effects,” i.e., the side effects of advertising that are potentially harmful, and these effects often are manifest at the societal level. As such, the ethical and social contexts of the model often overlap at the macro level when the unintended social consequences of advertising are examined through the lenses of ethical analysis. The ethical context also overlaps with the legal context of the model, and these two contexts must be differentiated. Laws are ultimately a reflection of ethical judgments, and we often make illegal what we consider most unethical (see also Chapter 31). A fundamental mistake, however, is to assume that because something is legal, it is ethical, or if something is unethical, it will be made illegal (Drumwright, 1993). Advertising law is a subset of the domain of advertising ethics. It does not and cannot encompass all of advertising ethics. Preston (1994)
observed that for advertisers who believe that the law is sufficient, “ethics never really starts” (p. 128). As the above discussion indicates, if one is to borrow theory profitably, advertising ethics must be examined at three different levels: (1) the micro level that focuses on the individual-individual consumers, individual advertising practitioners, individual ads or campaigns, and specific advertising practices, (2) the meso level of the organization or groups of organizations that conduct or influence the advertising business-whether agencies, clients, media, industry associations, or regulators, and (3) the macro level of advertising’s effects on society or society’s effects on advertising. We now turn to an examination of what we know about advertising ethics so that we can consider which theories have been or could be borrowed at each of the three levels-micro, meso, and macro. The theories discussed are not intended to be exhaustive but merely to highlight some possibilities for enriching advertising research and practice.
