Advertising - high-priced information Or Vicious Manipulation?

Kaiser Family Foundation Health Care Reform Video - Advertising - high-priced information Or Vicious Manipulation?

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Is advertising the ultimate means to inform and help us in our daily decision-making or is it just an excessively considerable form of mass deception used by companies to persuade their prospects and customers to buy products and services they do not need? Consumers in the global hamlet are exposed to addition estimate of advertisement messages and spending for advertisements is addition accordingly.

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Kaiser Family Foundation Health Care Reform Video

It will not be exaggerated if we halt that we are 'soaked in this cultural rain of marketing communications' through Tv, press, cinema, Internet, etc. (Hackley and Kitchen, 1999). But if thirty years ago the marketing communication tools were used mainly as a product-centered tactical means, now the promotional mix, and in singular the advertising is focused on signs and semiotics. Some argue that the marketers' efforts eventually are "turning the economy into sticker so that it means something to the consumer" (Williamson, cited in Anonymous, Marketing Communications, 2006: 569). One primary consequence is that many of the contemporary advertisements "are selling us ourselves" (ibid.)

The abovementioned process is influenced by the commoditisation of products and obscuring of consumer's own perceptions of the companies' offering. In order to differentiate and position their products and/or services today's businesses employ advertising which is sometimes carefully not only of bad taste, but also as deliberately intrusive and manipulative. The issue of bad advertising is topical to such extent that organisations like Adbusters have embraced the tactics of subvertising - revealing the real intend behind the contemporary advertising. The Adbusters magazine editor-in-chief Kalle Lason commented on the corporate image construction communication activities of the big companies: "We know that oil companies aren't surely kindly to nature, and tobacco companies don't surely care about ethics" (Arnold, 2001). On the other hand, the "ethics and social accountability are important determinants of such long-term gains as survival, long-term profitability, and competitiveness of the organization" (Singhapakdi, 1999). Without communications strategy that revolves around ethics and social accountability the concepts of total potential and buyer relationships construction become elusive. However, there could be no easy clear-cut ethics method of marketing communications.

Advertising - Prescious information Or Vicious Manipulation?

In order to get insights into the buyer perception about the role of advertising we have reviewed a estimate of articles and conducted four in-depth interviews. A estimate of investigate papers reach opposed conclusions. These vary from the ones stating that "the ethicality of a firm's behavior is an important notice while the buy decision" and that consumers "will repaymen ethical behavior by a willingness to pay higher prices for that firm's product" (Creyer and Ross Jr., 1997) to others stressing that "although consumers may express a desire to retain ethical companies, and punish unethical companies, their actual buy behaviour often remains unaffected by ethical concerns" and that "price, potential and value outweigh ethical criteria in buyer buy behaviour" (Carrigan and Attalla, 2001). Focusing on the advertising as the most important marketing communication tool we have constructed and conducted an interview consisting of four themes and nine questions. The conceptual frame of this paper is built on these four themes.

Theme I. The Ethics in Advertising

The first theme comprises two preliminary questions about the ethics in advertising in general.

I.A. How would you define the ethics in advertising?

The term ethics in business involves "morality, organisational ethics and pro deontology" (Isaac, cited in Bergadaa', 2007). Every commerce has its own guidelines for the ethical requirements. However, the primary four requirements for marketing communications are to be legal, decent, honest and truthful. Unfortunately, in a society where the procedure of action of the companies is carefully by profit targets the use of marketing communications messages "may constitute a form of social pollution through the potentially damaging and unintended effects it may have on buyer decision making" (Hackley and Kitchen, 1999).

One of the interviewed respondents stated that "the most prosperous companies do no need ethics in their activities because they have built empires." someone else view is that "sooner or later whoever is not ethical will face the negative consequences."

I.B. What is your perception of the importance of ethics in advertising?

The second interrogate is about the importance of being moral when communicating with/to your target audiences and the way consumers/customers view it. In separate investigate papers we have found quite opposing conclusions. Ethics of business seems to be evaluated either as very important in the decision manufacture process or as not surely a serious factor in this process. An example of rather ultimate stance is that "disaster awaits any brand that acts cynically" (Odell, 2007).

It may seem inescapable that the accountability should be carried by the advertiser because "his is the key accountability in holding advertising clean and decent" (Bernstein, 1951). On the other hand the companies' actions are defined by the "the canons of social accountability and good taste" (ibid.). One of the interviewees said:

"The only responsible for giving decent advertising is the one who profits at the end. Company's profits should not be at the cost of society."

Another one stated that "our culture and the level of societal awareness rule the good and bad in advertising".

The increased importance of marketing communications ethics is underscored by the need of applying more dialogical, two-way communications approaches. The "demassification technologies have the possible to facilitate dialogue", but the "monologic" attitude is still the celebrated one (Botan, 1997). Arnold (2001) points out the cases of Monsanto and Esso which had to pay "a price for its [theirs] one-way communications strategy". In this train of belief we may enumerate ethics in advertisements from two separate perspectives as suggested by our respondents and separate points of view in the reviewed papers. The first one is that it is imperative to have one tasteless code of ethics imposed by the law. The other affirms the independence and accountability of every commerce for setting its own standards.

Theme Ii. Which type of regulation should be the important one in the field of advertising?

The next theme directs the attention towards the regulation law which should be the customary one. Widely acceptable belief is that both self regulation and legal controls should work in synergy. In other words the codes of convention are meant to complement the laws. However, in inescapable countries there are stronger legal controls over the advertising, e.g. In Scandinavia. On the other hand the industry's self regulation is favorite in the Anglo-Saxon world. Still, not everybody agrees with the laissez-faire concept.

One of our respondents said:

"I believe governments should enforce stricter legal frame and harsher punishment for companies which do not comply with the law."

Needless to say, the social acceptability varies from one culture/country to another. At the end of the day "good taste or bad is largely a matter of the time, the place, and the individual" (Bernstein, 1951). It would be also probably impossible to set clear-cut detailed rules in the era of Internet and interactive Tv. Therefore, both types of regulation should be applied with the ultimate aim of reaching equilibrium between the sacred right of freedom of selection and information and minimizing possible total offence. Put differently, the goal is synchronising the "different ethical frameworks" of marketers and "others in society" in order to fill the "ethics gap" (Hunt and Vitell, 2006).

Theme Iii. Article of Advertisements.

Probably the most controversial issue in the field of marketing communications is the Article of advertisements. Nwachukwu et al. (1997) distinguish three areas of interest in terms of ethical judgment of ads: "individual autonomy, buyer sovereignty, and the nature of the product". The private autonomy is involved with advertising to children. buyer sovereignty deals with the level of knowledge and sophistication of the target audience whereas the ads for harmful products are in the centre of social belief for a long time. We have added two more perspectives to arrive at five questions in the conducted interviews. The first one concerns the advertisement that imply sense of guilt and praise affluence that in the most cases cannot be achieved and the second one is about advertisements stimulating desire and pleasure through acquisition of material goods.

Iii.A. What is your attitude towards the advertisement of harmful products?

A typical example is the advertisement of cigarettes. Nowadays we cannot see slogans like "Camel Agrees with Your Throat" (Chickenhead, accessed 25th September 2007) or "Chesterfield - Packs More pleasure - Because It's More Perfectly Packed!" (Chickenhead, accessed 25th September 2007). The normal advertisement, sponsorship and other marketing communications means are already prohibited to be used by cigarette producers. Surprisingly, most of the answers of the respondents were not against the cigarettes advertisement. One of the respondents said:

"People are well informed about the consequences of smoking so it is a matter of personal choice."

As with many other contemporary products the shift in communications messages for cigarettes is oriented towards sticker and image building. The same can be said for the alcohol ads. A familiar example of emotional advertising is the Absolut Vodka campaign. From Absolut Nectar, through Absolut Fantasy to Absolut World the Swedish drink surely aims to be Absolut... Everything.

Advertising of risky products is even more harshly criticised when it is aimed at audiences with low private autonomy, i.e. Children. Two main issues in this respect are the manipulation of cigarettes and alcohol as "the rite of passage into adulthood" and the fact that "sales of health-hazardous products (alcohol, cigarettes) establish freely without much disapproval" (Bergadaa, 2007).

Iii.B. What is your attitude towards the advertisement to children?

Children are not only customers, but also consumers, influencers and users in the family Decision-Making Unit (Dmu). Supplementary difficulty is that they are too impressionable to be deciders in the Dmu. At the same time it is not a inexpressive that marketers apply "the same basic strategy of trying to sell the parent through the child's insistence on the purchase" (Bernstein, 1951). It is not a surprise then that "spending on advertising for children has increased five-fold in the last ten years and two thirds of commercials while child television programs are for food products" (Bergadaa 2007). In the Us alone children rehearse a direct purchases store of billion worth (McNeal cited in Bergadaa, 2007) which surely is on the top of the agendas of many companies. While exploiting children's decision-making immaturity advertisers often go too far in dematerialising their products and "teleporting children out of the tangible and into the virtual world of brand names" (Bergadaa 2007). Adolescent virtual worlds like Habbo where snack food brands run advertising campaigns are already a fact of life (Goldie, 2007). The imaginative worlds are favorite not only online. Hugely prosperous for creating a fantasy world is Mc Donald's. The business tops the European list of kids' advertisers while more than half of the children's adverts are for junk food.

In some countries there are harsher restrictions to the children advertising.

• "Sweden and Norway do not permit any television advertising to be directed towards children under 12 and no adverts at all are allowed while children's programmes.
• Australia does not allow advertisements while programmes for pre-school children.
• Austria does not permit advertising while children's programmes, and in the Flemish region of Belgium no advertising is permitted 5 minutes before or after programmes for children.
• Sponsorship of children's programmes is not permitted in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden while in Germany and the Netherlands, although it is allowed, it is not used in practice." (McSpotlight, accessed 20th September 2007).

According to a investigate by Roberts and Pettigrew (2007) the most frequent themes in children advertising are "grazing, the denigration of core foods, exaggerated condition claims, and the implied potential of inescapable foods to improve popularity, performance and mood." But the junk food is not the only speculate for parents' preoccupation. Agreeing to a study of Kaiser family Foundation (Dolliver, 2007) parents are involved about the estimate of advertising of the following products (in order of importance): toys, video games, clothing, alcohol/beer, movies, etc.

The interviewed respondents were unanimous: "The advertising to children should be strictly monitored." Similar results were obtained in surveys by Rasmussen Reports and Kaiser family Foundation. Nevertheless, the legal means are just one part of the children's protection. The other part involves "the decision-making accountability of parents and teachers" which is "to support their children in developing a skeptical attitude to the information in advertising" (Bergadaa 2007). The marketers themselves should also be involved in shaping the moral law of our hereafter and "each brand should have its own deontology - a code of convention regarding children - rather than rely on commerce codes" (Horgan, 2007).

Iii.C. Do you think there are many misleading, exaggerating and confusing advertisements. Are many ads promising things that are not possible to achieve?

It will not be exaggerated to state that advertising is in a sense "salesmanship addressed to masses of possible buyers rather than to one buyer at a time" (Bernstein, 1951). Since "salesmanship itself is persuasion" (ibid.) we cannot merely blame advertisers for pursuing their sales goals. However, in the last twenty years or so advertisers have increasingly applied semiotics in their messages and as a consequence ads have begun to function more and more as symbols. One ultimate case in this stream of advertising is the creation of idealised image of a man who uses the advertised product. Bishop (2000) draws our attention to two "typical representatives of self-identity image ads" which entice consumers to project the respective images to themselves through use of the products:

- "The beautiful Woman";
- "The Sexy Teenagers.

Through setting of such stereotypes advertisers not only mislead the social and exaggerate the effects of products but also provoke low self-esteem in consumers. At the same time they promise results that in most cases are plainly impossible to achieve. Instead of promoting "'glamorous' anorexic body images" communication messages should use "varied body types" and should drop the idea of the "impossible corporal body images" (Bishop, 2000).

To interrogate Iii.C one of the respondents commented:

"The customers of these products [the ones advertised through thin models] are mostly population who do not have the same corporal characteristic. For me, this type of advertising is deliberately aimed at population to make them feel not complete, far from fascinating social outsiders."

However, someone else interviewed stated that: "every man has his own way of evaluating what is believable and what is misleading. Consumers are adequate sophisticated to know what is exaggerated."

Similarly, Bishop (2000) concludes that "image ads are not false or misleading", and "whether or not they advocate false values is a matter for subjective reflection." The author argues that image ads do not interfere with our internal autonomy and if population are misled, it is because they want it. It is all about our free selection of behaviour and no advertisement can modify our desires. Perhaps, the truth lies somewhere in-between the two ultimate positions.

Iii.D. What is your attitude towards advertisement that imply sense of guilt, and praise affluence that in the most cases cannot be achieved?

A more definite case of controversial advertising is the one used to "promote not so much self indulgence as self doubt"; the one that "seeks to originate needs, not to fulfill them: to originate new anxieties instead of allaying old ones" (Hackley and Kitchen, 1999). A response of our interviewee reads:

"It is not only a matter of advertising. It has to do with the social inequality and the desire to possess what you can not."

Hackley and Kitchen (1999) refer to this inequity as to "when reality does not match the image of affluence and the consequent is a subjective feeling of dissonance". The issue could be elaborated Supplementary through the next question.

Iii.E. Are advertisements stimulating desire and pleasure through acquisition of material goods moral?

We live in a society which is more or less marked by materialism. Advertisements are often blamed to fuel consumption which is assertedly important to happiness. The role of promoting pleasure through acquisition of material goods has become so important that currently the "media products are characterised by relativism, irony, self referentiality and hedonism" (Hackley and Kitchen, 1999). Is the favorite saying "those who die with most toys win" surely a motivator in consumers' behavior and could consumption be the cure of emotional dissonance? This seems to be the case provided a brand succeeds to enter in the evoked set of buyer choices. This new "kind of materialism" goes hand in hand with "the emergence of individualism via sheer hedonism along with narcissism and selfishness" (Bergadaa 2007).

Theme Iv. Is the quantity of advertisements justified?

Iv.A. Do you think there is too much advertising?

An audit of food advertising aimed at children in Australia by Roberts and Pettigrew (2007) revealed that "28.5 hours of children's television programming sampled contained 950 advertisements." Actually, we all are being bombarded by ads on Tv, Internet, print media, etc. The estimate and Article of marketing communications messages puts the consumer's information processing capacity to a test. The exposure to marketing data overload often leads to diluted consumer's selective perception. either our responses are circumscribed by "confusion, existential despair, and loss of moral identity" or we "adapt constructively to the [communications] Leviathan and become intelligent, cynical, streetwise" (Hackley and Kitchen, 1999) is a interrogate open to debate.

Two opposite streams of attitudes were produced in our research. One stance is involved with the undue quantity of advertisement. The other stream proclaims that "If there is an advertisement, so it is justified by a need." We agree that the communications overload may surely have "pervasive consequent on the social ecology of the advanced world" (Hackley and Kitchen, 1999). If the addition communication pollution is not managed properly by both legal and commerce points of view yet again the advertising will manage "to hoist its foot to its own mouth and kick out a couple of its own front teeth" (Bernstein, 1951).

Conclusion

In preparing of this paper we have used qualitative depth interviews in order to get insights for what actual customers opine. We have also substantiated our presentation with references to a estimate of influential articles in the field of ethics in marketing communications. Generally, our respondents as well as various authors have taken two opposing stances. The first one affirms that ethics in marketing communications matters considerably, whereas the other one downsizes the importance of ethics, thereby stressing the role of other factors in buyer decision-making, i.e. Price, brand loyalty, convenience, etc.

Marketers should understand their "responsibility for the emerging portrait of hereafter society" (Bergadaa 2007). Not only there is a need of legal ethical frame but also pro ethical benchmarks and deontology should be in place. One of the main challenges is to avoid creating "a happy buyer in the short term", because "in the long run both buyer and society may suffer as a direct consequent of the marketer's actions in 'satisfying' the consumer" (Carrigan and Attalla, 2001).

The compel of the advertisement affect exerted on consumers is only one part of the equation. On the other hand we may affirm that consumers are not morally subservient and Agreeing to the information process models there is a natural cognitive defense. The communications tools "offer us a theatre of our own imagination" (Hackley and Kitchen, 1999). Consequently, we accept the reality in terms of our own experiences. In this sense marketers do not originate reality - they are plainly a mirror of the society. We may argue that unfortunately this is not all the time the case.

Advertising is often deservedly seen as the embodiment of buyer freedom and choice. Notwithstanding this important role, when the selection is "between one candy bar and another, the newest savoury snack or sweetened morning meal cereal or fast food restaurant" (McSpotlight, accessed 20th September 2007) it represents anyone else but not an alternative and surely not a healthy one.

The words of Bernstein (1951), said fifty-six years ago are still very much a interrogate of gift interest: "It is not true that if we 'save advertising, we save all,' but it seems inexpensive to assume that if we do not save advertising, we might lose all."

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