Marketing Ethics
Jan 19th, 2013 by WendyS
An interesting article from Marketing Week addressed several ethical issues in the marketing industry in 2012. These include: sexism in marketing, gender marketing, tax avoidance, badly behaved celebrity ambassadors and social gambling.
Companies such as Supermarket Asda, Morrisons and Barclaycard were surprisingly accused of sexism in their campaigns. Supermarket Asda’s advertisement of focusing on mother’s roles during Christmas has “prompted more than 180 complaints for being ‘sexist’ on Christmas”. This example has shown the significance of “equality” during marketing campaigns. Since marketing builds the image of the company in public, the choice of marketing strategy becomes essentially critical. Therefore, companies should avoid targeting on particular customers only.
Similarly, gender-specific marketing has caused some concerns. In particular, toy retailers often use gender-specific marketing to sell their products. As well, a 13 year old girl in the US, McKenna Pope, expressed, “I feel that this sends a clear message: women cook, men work.” I believe that toys should not be specialized into different “gender”. Children should choose the products that they like, instead of being “suggested” to what they should play with.
Another issue that caught my eyes was Facebook being involved in social gambling. Facebook has decided to offer “Las Vegas-style slot machines and other games for bets up to £500 using a credit or debit card.” Although Facebook says it will not promote gambling to those under 18, the impact of its action is still indispensable. As children and teenagers spend more and more time on Facebook, these online gambling games will become a threat to develop gambling problems for them in the future.
Marketing ethics is not only crucial in developing company brands; it also greatly affects our society. Therefore, companies must choose appropriate and ethic marketing strategies in order to become successful in the long run.
Hey Wendy,
Great article. I read the marketing week post too, some shocking cases in 2012.
I completely agree with your final point about having marketing ethics if you want to be successful in the long run. With social media, every business can be exposed so the truth will always come out. However if you’re ethical consumers will support you.
Good read!
Stu