At the beginning of every year, a common theme advertised in classes is academic honesty, or warnings about infringement. Last year, I myself worked on a very small computer science assignment (worth about 1%) with two other people last year, when we were only allowed to work with one, unaware of the strict regulation. I was accused of academic dishonesty when they discovered that our code looked similar, and we all got “0” for the assignment, as well as having our names taken down.
This experience was traumatic for me and my friends. The event itself is an extreme example; for the majority of students, who have not… well, been caught, the consequences are nonetheless heavily solicited to spread fear.
Interestingly enough, one of the most common dilemmas a business student faces is the dichotomy between school and work expectations. At work, process is much less important than outcome; most corporations do not care about consequences if they have no liability, and regularly get away with small oversteps. Of course, most ethicists would agree that one does not have to stop and consider every individual situation before proceeding with a decision – that is just impractical. “But little things can add up to become big ones,” so then what is ethics good for?
I think the key is that making small decisions, like what colour posters to print, is different from making big decisions about small things, like the subtle messages you are sending in advertisements. What I mean is that adopting a general, ethical policy or drawing fine guidelines is essential to making good choices. If marketing is, in any way, about taking advantage of consumer values through aesthetic manipulation, trust must be preserved in the process. And if you don’t want to risk career-ending consequences (my aforementioned experience in computer science is a good example, or FROSH), or just to feel too guilty from work, it may be useful to operate with defined rather than “Blurred Lines” so to speak.
Speaking with clarity is usually superior to tongue in cheek; questionable claims to parody and subtlety do not usually excuse the mysoginistic messenger in society.
Herman, I couldn’t agree with you more. If you read my blog post, I focus on the idea of consumers being manipulated for the benefit of the business and only the business. And when you mentioned how “trust must be preserved in the process,” it really made me think about how it may not even be possible for a marketer to produce an ad without at least SOME subliminal messaging and exploitation. The final thought your post left me with was “What would happen to the competitive nature of marketing if we were to operate with ‘Defined Lines’?” Any thoughts on how this would work in today’s society?
Sure Gianluca,
I think in large part, this could be about changing our business model. Using solely what we might call a profit-driven paradigm is always going to cause problems that require government regulation, because somebody will want to take advantage of “vulnerable” people (I’m using this term from Dr. Silver’s lecture to be succinct). I think that business is more than that, of course, and that we can find ways to not only encourage people to avoid exploitation, but so that it’s just not something that we do. If you give are willing to give me that, and that social norms and cultures are shaped by education, I would say that in conclusion, we need to change the way we learn in business schools. Money is just paper, and it would not be hard for people to learn that.