Transcript Comm 2041 Creative Industries and Ethics 2007

Comm 2041
Creative Industries &
Ethics 2008
Ethics in advertising?
Some quotes to start us off:

“…Advertising is the ‘lubricant of the free-enterprise system…”
(Kelmenson in McKenna, 1983, p11)
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“…Advertising is essential to the look and feel of modern
societies…In their images and phrases, these advertisements give
public form to changing social desires, moods and ideals: they are
the official art or modern capitalist society…” (Williams, in
Sinclair, 1997, p267)

“…Salesmanship, advertising, the telephone…are all really just
ways of mediating human interaction…these and most other
media…have turned into avenues of behaviour and thought
control…The art of manipulation has become…prevalent…We are
living through end-stage propaganda, a culture which has been
subjected to so much…programming – that it exhibits pathological
symptoms…” (Rushkoff, 1999, pp25-26)

“…Advertising is legalised lying…” (Wells in Jackman, 1982, p2)
Some ad text groundwork:
I’d like us all to recognise that:
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ads are texts just like novels or films (but texts
that have ‘promotional intent’)
ads are public texts that circulate freely (but
they have preferred readings, and that
preference is commercial)
as a first principal all these texts in circulation
in a ‘free society’ should be subject to the
ethical scrutiny of its citizens
Some ad text groundwork:
2) I’d like us to also consider the ethics of advertising in three
‘ranges’, in much the same way as you have been doing in
analysing ethical dilemmas. So we might consider:

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‘Micro range’. This deals with the everyday issues of
‘problematic’ advertisements that interact with the broad
sweep of changing individual moral norms
Mid range. Here we enter the area that Elspeth Probyn and
Catherine Lumby cover in this week’s reading. I call it
‘boundary blurring’ and it has to do with our increasing
inability to distinguish between ads and non ads in media
content
Macro. This final area deals with the biggest issues, the
notion of a mental landscape, our imagination effectively,
completely ‘colonised’, at both an individual and a collective
level by promotional rhetoric
Some ethical framework
revision

1) ‘Teleological’ philosophies determine the moral worth
of a behaviour by its consequences or end point. Two
common teleological theories are egoism, in which
individuals focus only on the consequences to
themselves when evaluating an ethical situation, and
utilitarianism, where the consequences of an ethical
situation to the whole of society are more important than
the consequences to an individual (the good of the many
outweighs the good of the one)

2) Aretaic or ‘virtue’ philosophies, where it is the actor
that is important, not necessarily the outcome. In virtue
ethics a ‘good person’ has personal qualities such as
courage, wisdom, loyalty and fairness. These virtues
should be used ‘in balance’ between extremes of
possible conduct (This is the ‘golden mean’)
Some ethical framework
revision

3) ‘Deontological’ philosophies on the other hand
emphasises the act. Duty ethics posit an ethics not
based on ‘fuzzy’ ideas of individual virtue, but on the
idea that some things are ‘universally right or wrong’
and that these ‘laws’ should compel us to do the
right thing because it becomes our ‘duty’ to do so.
Kant is at the extreme end of Duty ethics, Ross’
‘pluralistic theory of value’ is less so because it
allows multiple duties

4) ‘Relativist’ philosophies would have us believe
that no universal ethical rules can exist that apply to
everyone in every situation because all beliefs are
culturally generated - not timeless and ‘handed to us
from above’
Some of the most persistent ‘micro’
& ‘midrange’ criticisms of
advertising ethics include:

That it takes advantage of ‘innocent’ and ‘defenceless’
children - either by utilising the ‘pester power’ effect to
control purchases through their parents, or by marketing
goods and services to children considered by many to be to
young to either understand the ‘persuasive intent’ of the ad
or too young to actually need the good or service (i.e. the
selling of cosmetics or high end lingerie to young girls)

That it uses sex to sell, more specifically that it reduces
women (and increasingly men) to sex objects
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That it uses ‘shock’ (cruelty, violence, disgust, pornography
etc etc) to sell = Benetton. i.e. it trivialises very serious
aspects of the human condition
Some of the most persistent
‘micro’ & ‘midrange’ criticisms of
advertising include:

That it promotes unhealthy and unrealistic body image
expectations in young women and young men, and the
idea that the solution to these ‘problems’ can be found
in the marketplace
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That it sells and glamorises harmful (but legal)
substances like alcohol, tobacco, and certain ‘lifestyle’
drugs - and encourages/normalises unhealthy eating
habits
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That it is reactive, rather than proactive, in its depiction
of racial/ethnic/religious/gender and age stereotypes.
For instance - how many Aboriginal faces or aged
people are there in Australian advertising?
Some of the most persistent
‘micro’ & ‘midrange’ criticisms of
advertising include:

That it commodifies aspects of life that should be part of
a person’s basic human rights (i.e. the ‘right’ to medical
treatment gets replaced by luxury private health cover)
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That, particularly in the age of the internet and the mobile
phone, it invades people’s privacy by collecting data
about them without their knowledge or express consent
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That in the age of convergence, advertisers are
increasingly ‘hiding’ their persuasive message behind a
mask of ‘journalism’ or celebrity (i.e. Advertorials, cash
for comment), or entertainment (magalogs, infomercials,
product placement), or just mediums that are considered
to be part of the realm of everyday speech (blog-ads)
Some of the most persistent
criticisms of the ad industry as a
whole include:

That it is ‘designed’ to be deceptive, and moreover,
that it less and less serves to inform us believably
about logical ‘basic product information’ such as
price, place and performance (is ‘fat’ free really fat
free?), and inserts emotionality - dreams, hopes,
fears in their place (‘be what you want to be’)

That it ‘dumbs down’ civil discourse by
transforming complex issues (like politics and the
environmental crisis) into celebrity contests and
‘greenwash’ respectively
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That it sets up a regime of success, luxury and
desire that poor people can see but never attain
Some of the most persistent
criticisms of the ad industry as a
whole include:

That it is not subject to enough government regulation
and that the industry’s attempt to ‘self regulate’ is a selfcontradictory joke
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That it disguises human suffering and inequality behind
its ‘brilliant disguise’ (i.e. exploitation of coffee workers)
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That the political/economic thrust of the industry is to
dismantle public limits to unregulated promotionality (by
lobbying to weaken legislative restrictions on ads) and
replace them with individual/ familial ‘self regulation’ (i.e.
to ‘discipline the parent’ into feeling that they alone are
responsible for supervising their child’s ‘ad exposure’
and that if they fail to do that they are bad parents)
At a simple level of ‘deception’, Davis
(1994, p381) lists four types of
practises that all promotional texts
could be accused of to some extent:
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‘Puffery’ - use of hyperbole or unbelievable exaggeration
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Use of generalisations about products where specific details
are required, leading to false expectations about utility
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Use of qualifiers and vague quantifiers
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Use of small or fleeting fine print, or ads that don’t include
crucial information
And I will add another, overriding ethical objection:
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Advertising too often doesn’t ‘respect’ people as fully
developed individuals and citizens with goals beyond the
immediate purchase
One final observation:
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In a digital, interactive world of:
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‘viral’ messages spread ‘voluntarily’ by users,
of micro-targeted SMS campaigns,
of multiple product placements in reality TV shows that are
themselves ads for the contestants,
and where individuals can increasingly ‘advertise
themselves’ online via blogs
What is persuasion, what is deception, what is
truth, and how do we hold people to it???
Remember - advertising industry workers are customers too!
Dilemmas faced by advertising professionals potentially
impact on their own children!
Example case study issues
Example case study issues
Example case study issues
And now for something
completely different:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/watch/default.h
tm?program=mediawatch&pres=20081013_2120&
story=4
‘Micro’ case study 1 - Shock and fear in
advertising
‘Micro’ case study 2 - Advertising to
children
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtJMdXM5oIk
‘Micro’ case study 3 - Greenwash
‘Mid-macro’ case study 1 - can
advertising disguise exploitation?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhVNZt1aOc8
‘Mid-macro’ case study 2 - ‘Boundary
blurring’
A Micro-mid ‘Conclusion’:
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How do we proceed from here at the
practical level of individual ad texts and the
industries that create, sell and are funded by
them? Patterson and Wilkins mention Baker
and Martinson’s ‘TARES’ test, which has
become an influential tool in the study of
advertising ethics

In the tutes it would be useful to look at this
test and evaluate its usefulness, perhaps
test it against some ‘real world ads’, and
consider whether adherence to this test is a
realistic expectation in the harsh light of
coalface industry
…And a ‘Macro’ Question:

At the macro level the question is whether
marketers should have access to every corner of
the media and every corner of our creative brain
space - is the world really, as Douglas Rushkoff
has stated, now just “…made of marketing…”?

There is “…an increasingly desperate need to
preserve a space for other forms of thinking, other
shades of feeling and other ways of being in the
world…” (p148) “…so conditioned are we to expect
advertising and almost no other form of address in our
public spaces that we naturally assume that a printed,
mass produced image must be there to sell us
something…” (Poyner, R, p180)
Conclusions?

Are there absolute standards of right and
wrong that individuals, advertising industry
professionals and societies should adhere
to?
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Does the ‘pleasure’ produced by adverts
outweigh the damage they cause?
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Or is it all a relativist ‘free for all’ where the
‘viewer/buyer’ beware holds true
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Where do ‘virtue ethics’ notions like
obligation, responsibility, accountability and
‘excellence of character’ come into this?
Conclusions?

Are there ‘special interest groups’ of
especially vulnerable people out there
that deserve ethical (and legal)
protection form this marketing ‘free
for all’?
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If so, who are they and why?
Conclusions?
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Does self regulation by advertising peak
bodies (as seen in the AFA and AANA
Codes of Ethics, which I have put up on the
CI&E website) work?
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Can we trust for profit organisations that
answer to shareholders first to behave
responsibly?
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What kind of legislation would you pass to
legally oversee ad standards, or would you
take a hands off approach and let the
industry ‘self regulate’?
Conclusions?
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Is the ethical crux of a potentially
controversial admaking decision today especially in a digital, interactive, ‘boundary
blurring’ world where it is increasingly hard
to tell what is and isn’t an ad - seated with
the actor, the act, the outcome, the ‘rules’,
or is it just all relative?
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Is ‘any publicity good publicity’? Have YOU
ever been shocked or disgusted or
saddened by an ad enough to want it
changed, restricted or banned? What was
the ad?
Why ‘TARES’?
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“…Whereas professional persuasion is a means to
an immediate and instrumental end (such as
increased sales or enhanced corporate image),
ethical persuasion must rest on or serve a deeper,
morally based final (or relative last) end. Among
the moral final ends of journalism, for example, are
truth and freedom…
…There is a very real danger that advertisers and
public relations practitioners will play an
increasingly dysfunctional role in the
communications process if means continue to be
confused with ends in professional persuasive
communications. …” (Baker & Martinson, 2001)
Ethical Questions Derived from the
5 point TARES test (adapted from Lieber 2003)
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TRUTHFULNESS (of the message)
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1. The accuracy of the content 2. Whether the communicator’s own honesty and integrity may be
questioned as a result of this communication decision 3. Whether the communicator would feel
deceived if this communication was related to him/her in the same context.
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AUTHENTICITY (of the persuader)
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1. That the communicator would personally advocate the view he/she is presenting 2. People
receiving the information will benefit from it 3. That the communicator would openly assume
personal responsibility for the communication.
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RESPECT (for the persuadee)
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1. That the target audience is viewed by the communicator with respect 2. Self-interest is being
promoted at the expense of those being persuaded.
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EQUITY (of the appeal)
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1. Whether the target audience was unfairly selected due to their vulnerability to the content 2.
The context of the communication is fair 3. The target audience can completely understand the
information being presented to them.
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SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (for the common good)
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1. The view being advocated might cause harm to individuals or society 2. That the content of the
communication promoted the principles the communicator personally believes in 3. Certain
groups might be unfairly stereotyped by this communication
Useful Websites
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Australian Communications and Media
Authority http://www.acma.gov.au/
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Commercial television Code of Practice
http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/p
c=PC_90096
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Australian Association of National
Advertisers (AANA)
http://www.aana.com.au/
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Advertising Federation of Australia (AFA)
http://www.afa.org.au/