How would you feel if you came across the advertisements of dating sites when you are walking in downtown Vancouver? If you visit Shibuya in Tokyo, which has the famous crossing, you can see the trucks advertising that sort of sites with a loud music calling the name of the site. They are called “ad truck” or “ad bus” as you can see below.

Personally, I don’t care about the existence of those sites as they are permitted by law. However, when it comes to advertisement, which is open to public including teenagers, I cannot agree. Advertising by trucks is surely effective in terms of promotion since it can be seen by everybody on the street but this service should be only for adults or teenagers. It is obviously harmful to children and teenagers.
Hence, if we consider ethics marketing and the characteristic of the service, their promotion has to focus more on their target. Advertisement in such way that attracts attention randomly may offend some people because majority of us even never think of using it, unlike consumer goods. Red Bull, for instance, also uses cars for advertisement. I guess few people feel unpleasant when they see Red Bull’s wrap advertising cars.

Therefore, to achieve ethical and effective marketing promotion, we need to take the target of their products or services into consideration and then decide how to promote them. However good quality the products or services we offer has, we could easily lose our potential customers or ultimately could not continue the business if we offend people too much by inappropriate promotion.

photos taken from
http://rimaroom.jugem.jp/?eid=441　（first one）
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/mori44410/46130195.html (second one)