Advertising and ethics
What’s ethical in advertising? Really hard to say especially because it is usually bound to our cultural and social background. An ad involving people in a sauna, is perfectly normal in the Finnish culture but could be found unethical in a more conservative country.
To not like an ad is one thing but, to dislike it so much that you take action against it, is quite another. That’s exactly what’s happening today. A Six Degrees’ article on the topic suggests that the norms are changing. In 2001, the Finnish Advertising Ethics Council reports that they had no complaints whatsoever, but now they are becoming more and more common. This is not only in Finland. Let’s take UK as another example. The Advertising Standards Council received 26,433 complaints about 15,556 ads in 2008 only. They must have had a very busy year! Actually, Guardian published an article this spring featuring The Most Complained-about Ads of 2008. You can view them all here but this one’s my favourite:
And, what’ wrong with giving an extra slice of ham to the little one? The sweetest, most ethical ad I’ve seen in a while.
So, I’m very curious to learn what will be the most complained-about ads of 2009. Will it be Rammstein’s new promotional video or the ring tone featuring Jeff Dunham’s popular act that involves Achmed the Dead Terrorrist? Or, maybe some other ones we’re yet to find out about? Hmm, let’s see.
But, I’m not writing this to tell you what’s ethical and what’s not. My question is: why are people complaining so much? Are our ads not hitting the right audiences? My question is more about how well do we target our advertising today? Probably, we should take a closer look at targeting and use more the elements of social media as part of our communication mix. Use of social media can help companies get more insight and understand their audiences better. Social Media is to Marketing what eye contact is to a handshake my Twitter peeps say.
People are complaining so much because companies intentionally make provocative ads to get complaints, as complaints result in more publicity (some Finnish ads have been ditched without ever being shown, but still got loads of media attention due to being so controversial).
Yes, companies are becoming desperate to get people’s attention, I agree. Provocative ads do get more attention. Tho, same question here as with publicity: is there such a thing as bad attention?
Originally those kind of “ad watch dogs” objective was to focus on tricky ads, the ones that, intentionally or not, were cheating or misleading consumers. But seems that certain conservative audiences found it as an effective way to retire ads they considered against their cultural values, abusing of the resource.
You’re right, sometimes it’s better people talk about my brand, bad or good, but they talk and create buzz. Personally just once I did this, years ago with a soft drink brand which low budget couldn’t compete against Coke.
With noisy burps and “on heat dogs” attacking drinkers in one week we got more buzz and WOM no budget could pay. And yes it was perfectly targeted to young, disruptive urbanites, who got the message, despite the campaign was retired from air one week later
p
BTW which was the official reason that mayo spot was retired? Sex discrimination or explicit guy parents?
That’s so interesting! Which soft drink company was it?
Most of the complaints for mayo spot were about two man kissing but ASA found nothing wrong with the ad so it was not retired.
It was one of PepsiCo minor brands that actually doesn’t exist anymore: Power Punch.
I was less concerned about the men kissing, but for the fact that girl being more pampered than the boy could be read as sexual discrimination mmm…