Advertising

Advertising is providing information, calling attention to, and making known

something that you want to sell or promote. It is a message designed to promote
or sell a product, a service, or an idea. Advertising reaches people through
varied types of mass communication. In everyday life, people come into contact
with many different kinds of advertising. It includes the name of a product or
service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer. These
messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various media.
Advertising can also serve to communicate an idea to a large number of people
in an attempt to convince them to take a certain action.

Types of Advertising

 Print Advertising – Newspapers, Magazines, Brochures, Fliers

The print media have always been a popular advertising medium. It is

aimed for those who read the newspapers, magazine, etc. which most of
them does. Advertising products via newspapers or magazines is a
common practice.

 Outdoor Advertising – Billboards, Kiosks, Tradeshows and Events

Outdoor advertising is also a very popular form of advertising, which

makes use of several tools and techniques to attract the customers
outdoors. The billboard advertising is very popular however has to be
really terse and catchy in order to grab the attention of the passers by. The
kiosks not only provide an easy outlet for the company products but also
 make for an effective advertising tool to promote the company’s
products. Organizing several events or sponsoring them makes for an
excellent advertising opportunity.

 Broadcast advertising – Television, Radio and the Internet

Broadcast advertising is a very popular advertising medium. Television

advertisements have been very popular ever since they have been
introduced. The radio might have lost its charm owing to the new age
media however the radio remains to be the choice of small-scale
advertisers.

 Covert Advertising – Advertising in Movies

Covert advertising is a unique kind of advertising in which a product or a

particular brand is incorporated in some entertainment and media
channels like movies, television shows or even sports.

 Public Service Advertising – Advertising for Social Causes

Public service advertising is a technique that makes use of advertising as

an effective communication medium to convey socially relevant
messaged about important matters and social welfare causes like AIDS,
energy conservation, political integrity, deforestation, illiteracy, poverty
and so on.

Ethical Advertising

Ethics in advertising to most sounds like the definition for irony. However, the
practice of truthful advertising is commonplace in today’s society. Advertisers
are held accountable for the messages they produce. So too are the
manufacturers, whom are held accountable for their products meeting the
standards set forth by the advertisement. For the most part this is a self-
regulated practice. Once an advertised product is called out for not living up to
expectation, recovery of reputation and overall positive brand imaging are
rarely had. The added fear of civil lawsuits pertaining to deceptive advertising
coupled with penal laws which prohibit such dishonest acts, make for an
industry centered on truthful intent. Meaning false or misleading information in
advertising media is punishable by judicial law.

Factors for judging an advertising as ethical

Honesty

The area of perhaps the most concern in advertising ethics is honesty.

With the strong incentives to sell a product at any cost, an advertiser may
feel pressure to not only exaggerate to make a sale but to make claims
that are entirely false. Though the short-term gains of dishonesty may
make it seem worthwhile from a purely opportunistic standpoint, if a
company gets a reputation for dishonesty it may damage its brand image.

Manipulation

Ethical concerns over manipulation in advertising are similar to those

over dishonesty. It is possible, in theory, for an advertiser to sell a product
through manipulative techniques that play on a consumer’s baser
emotions and reactions. Again, though this sort of strategy may work well
with consumers in the short term, it may damage brand names.
 Reason

An advertiser who wishes to achieve the highest ethical standards will try
to appeal to consumers through their reason and intelligence. Though this
is an ideal that might not be completely reached, it is one that many
marketers do often strive for. Honesty and integrity actually have very
valued places in the advertising industry. Highly ethical advertising is
usually the best route, both short-term and long-term, for high quality
products.

Unethical Advertising

Using advertising in a way that is misleading and uses false claims to get the
public to buy the product they are trying to sell is unethical, because of its
misuse of the information that is presented to the public. Ads that are used in the
political realm can sometimes be misleading and use false information or bend
the truth to get the public to sway their votes towards them. An ad in the
campaign for the election between McCain and Obama used an ad with
misleading information. Such as, saying that a developer received $20 million
in tax payers money, but the truth was there was no money received. This can
be considered unethical as they are giving false information to the public, which
is done a lot in political advertisement.

An advertisement that is made should be able to identify what the targeted

audience is. But, sometimes this is not always done. Just like advertisements in
commercial or billboards, the internet has its own issues in advertising as well.
As they can sometimes promote untrue claims and when this happens it can
have a negative impact on their product and brand. There are ethical guidelines
for problematic ads that can look an article, on the internet. Those ads can be
misinterpreted with editorial content needs to be labeled, that is an
advertisement. Otherwise it is unethical when this isn't displayed. Using
advertising in this way is misleading and it shows that view the consumer as
naive, which is unethical.

By not putting the right amount of information makes the public believe
something in a different way because of what has been said. This may lead them
into a wrong direction and buying a product that is not right for them.

Using out right lies in advertising is part of unethical advertising and doesn't
follow the guideline practices that they have to follow when demonstrating a
product to the consumer. Lying about what the product, gives false information
and makes them believe that something is true when it is not. Which should be
avoided in advertising as it will eventually give them a bad reputation, because
of its misuse of information.

Major Unethical practices in Advertising

Criticizing the Competitor

One of the main forms of unethical advertising is of criticising the

products of the competitors in plain, through their advertisements.
Advertisements are meant for promoting one’s products or services and
not for teasing the competitor’s products. Those kinds of advertisements
cannot be justified in any way. These kinds of practices were readily seen
through the ads of Pepsi and Coca-Cola. They were openly criticising
another’s products.
Logo Plagiarism

Plagiarism has become a widespread problem. Be it the education field or

the corporate world, the curse of plagiarism is prevalent. The same
nuisance is existent the logo design industry. One of the reasons for logo
plagiarism is for marketing the brand value of the other company’s logo
by means of advertising. It can be treated as an unethical advertising as
well. Therefore, you take a look at some of the most identical logo
designs below and decide which of these seems to be a “copy or
coincidence?”
  Volvo and QuickTime
 Google and Gojje
 Pepsi and Korean Airline
 NBC and Nebraska ETV Network
 BMW and BYD
 Unilever and Swiat Zdrowia
 Toyota and Jincheng
 Bacardi and Swiss air force
 Sun Microsystems and Columbia Sportswear

Cigarette and liquor

Children

Advertising has influenced children to a large extent. When you go to any

toy department you can see how. Whether it's the new Wii gadget or the
new Xbox, children are clamouring to be first in line. Another area which
influenced the children is the FMCG sector. For e.g.: Children used to
buy many “CHEETOS” massively, to collect the surprise gifts inside the
packet.

 Children are Defenceless: Children are innocent and not so mature.

When a marketer advertises a product on television, they do not
understand that it is a business and their main aim is to sell.
Advertisements are made in such a way as to attract the attention of
children. Children do not understand it to be marketing strategy.
Children are an extremely vulnerable target audience and get easily
carried away.
 Junk Food Advertising and
Children: Research has shown
that junk food advertisements
influence children greatly
leading to an increased demand
for junk food by children.
When children watch young
adults in good shape eating
junk foods in the
advertisements they assume
that it is good for the health.
They are unaware of the fact
 that junk food does not contain nutritional value. They are seen to be
so influenced by these ads that they almost doubled their consumption
of these unhealthy snacks and softdrinks. It is not a surprise to know
that childhood diabetes is also on the rise.

Conditions apply

You will come to know of the conditions only when you are about to buy
the commodity. There are hardly any ads in the news papers which do not
come with the star
mark somewhere
in the ad. And we
all know what that
star means
(Conditions
Apply). And there
is also one more
way of
representing it.
They will say
these conditions at
the end of the ad
as 'Terms and
Conditions'. And
these terms and
conditions are there with such a small font so that it is unable to read.
Was it only done to fool the potential buyers? Not clear yet. Ok when one
has to market a product he boosts of its good features but other thing like
 these 'conditions apply' should not be hidden from customers. Perhaps
only in the radio ads they explicitly have to say 'Conditions Apply'
(which is not the case in newspaper ads as you may miss while glancing
the ad in the news paper) and you become more aware of that.

Hospitals

Hospitals generally are not-for-profit but still face financial pressures to

attract patients and stay afloat. Hospital advertising began about 20 years
ago and grew as managed care increased competition among hospitals.

Hospitals now start to advertise massively to attract patients to them. But

the point to consider is that, they play with the fears of the people and
give an unnecessary fear in the minds of people and provoke them to visit
the hospital. When they are into the hospital, the hospitals, through their
various measures and treatment will provide a huge bill to the so called
“patients”. Hospitals responded to this situation by saying that, hospital’s
ads are ethical, intended to create awareness about health.

Advertising for the hospital is not an unethical practise since it is meant

for publicizing the facilities in a hospital to the people. But if the ad is
focusing on the fears of the people, it said to be an unethical practice.
Woman

Advertising is a very powerful and influential medium therefore it plays

an important and great role in shaping society's views of women by how
it portrays them. Unfortunately, most of the images of women in
advertisements are unjust to the nature of women, negative and
misrepresentative of women and their roles in society. The women in
advertisements and ads usually are in their mid twenties wearing
provocative and revealing clothes. Some of those models in
advertisements have a pose and facial expression that are daring and
sexually explicit which will surely offend women because these women
are not conservative dress-wise and even in emotional communication
and relationships. Generally, when women are seen as sexual objects,
they are treated as such in society. Our society is supposed to be an
enlightened and human society where everybody, especially women and
girls, are treated with decency and respect.