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ADVERTISING ETHICS

Commercial advertising is sometimes defined as a from of “information” and an advertiser as “one who gives information.” The implication is that the definition of advertising is to provide information to consumers. This definition of adverting, however, fails to distinguish advertisements from, say, articles in publications like Consumer Reports, which compare, test, and objectively evaluate the durability, safety, defects, and usefulness of various products. One study found that more than half of all television ads contained no consumer information whatsoever about the advertised product, and they only half of all magazine ads contained more than one information cue. Consider how much information is conveyed by the following advertisements:

“Got Milk” (America’s dairy farmers and milk processors) “Be late” (Neiman Marcus watches) “Embrace you demons” (Cinnamon Flavored Altoids) “For the way it’s made” (KitchenAid home appliances) “Connect with style” (Nokia cell phone) “Inside every woman is a glow just waiting to come out” ( Dove soap) “It is, in the end, the simple idea that one plus one can, and must, equal more than two”

(Chrysler cars)

Advertisements often do not include much objective information for the simple reason that their primary function is not that of providing unbiased information. The primary function of commercial advertisements, rather, is to sell a product to prospective buyers, and whatever information they happen to carry is subsidiary to this basic function and usually determined by it.

Advertising’s critics point out that it has several harmful effects on society. First, its psychological effects are damaging in that it debases the tastes of consumers by inculcating materialistic values about how to achieve happiness. Whether or not advertising has such effects is still uncertain. Indeed, the success of advertising may depend on consumers already having the values that the advertisements focus upon.

Another major criticism of advertising is that it is wasteful. Those who make this type of objection point to the distinction between production costs and selling costs.

Production costs are the costs of the resources consumed in producing a product.

Selling costs are the additional costs of resources that do not go into the product itself, but rather are incurred as a result of persuading consumers to purchase it. The resources consumed by advertising, according to this theory, add nothing to the utility of the product.

Advertisers counter that advertisements do add information to the product, but of course, the information could be supplied more directly and inexpensively. They also say, however, that advertising creates desire and thus is responsible for a gradually expanding economy.

There is considerable controversy over whether advertising is responsible for the growing economy, however. Advertising appears to be most successful at shifting consumption from one producer to another, not at expanding consumption generally. Even if it could expand consumption, theorists do not agree that this would be good: increased consumption leads, among other things, to increased pollution and depletion of resources. Though some critics have also blamed advertising for monopolies, there is no conclusive evidence that advertising and monopolistic markets are connected.

John Kenneth Galbraith and other critics have long argued that advertising merely manipulates consumers, creating desires solely to absorb industrial output. Physical desires, such as the desire for food and shelter, are perfectly normal. But the psychological desires that are inspired by advertising are not under the consumer’s control in the same way that physical desires are, which puts the firm (instead of the individual) in control. If Galbraith’s view is correct, then advertising violates the individual’s right to choose freely for him or herself. It is not clear, however, that this view is correct, and theorists such as F. A. von Hayek have pointed out that psychic wants have been around longer than advertising in any case.

The most common criticism of advertising concerns is its effect on the consumer’s beliefs. Because advertising is a form of communication, it can be as truthful or deceptive as any other form of communication. Most criticisms of advertising focus on the deceptive aspects of modern advertising. Nevertheless, even if advertising as a whole is not manipulative, there are clearly some advertisements that are intended to manipulate. Such advertisements do clearly violate the consumer’s right to be treated as a free and equal rational being.

Deceptive advertising takes many forms: the “bait and switch,” untrue paid testimonials, or simulating brand names are all forms of deception. There is no controversy over whether or not deceptive advertising is immoral: it clearly is. The problem is to understand how advertising becomes deceptive.

All communication involves three things: the author or originator of the message, the medium that carries the message, and the audience who receives it.

Deception involves three necessary conditions in the author:

1.  The author must intend to have the audience believe something false.

2.  The author must know it to be false.

3.  The author must knowingly do something to bring about this false belief.

Thus, an advertiser cannot be held responsible for an audience having misinterpreted a message when the misinterpretation is unintended, unforeseen, or the result of carelessness on the part of the audience.

The media carrying the message also has a responsibility to ensure the truth of what it carries to the audience. Both the author and the media must take into account the interpretive skills of the audience as well. To determine the ethical nature of an advertisement, the following points are relevant: the intended and actual social effects of the advertisement; the informing or persuasive character of the advertisement, and whether it creates irrational or injurious desires; and the whether the advertisement’s content is truthful or tends to mislead.

The Benefits of Advertising

Enormous human and material resources are devoted to advertising. Advertising is everywhere in today’s world, so that, as Pope Paul VI remarked, “No one now can escape the influence of advertising.”6 Even people who are not themselves exposed to particular forms of advertising confront a society, a culture — other people — affected for good or ill by advertising messages and techniques of every sort.

Some critics view this state of affairs in un-relievedly negative terms. They condemn advertising as a waste of time, talent and money — an essentially parasitic activity. In this view, not only does advertising have no value of its own, but its influence is entirely harmful and corrupting for individuals and society.

We do not agree. There is truth to the criticisms, and we shall make criticisms of our own. But advertising also has significant potential for good, and sometimes it is realized. Here are some of the ways that happens.

A) Economic Benefits of Advertising

5. Advertising can play an important role in the process by which an economic system guided by moral norms and responsive to the common good contributes to human development. It is a necessary part of the functioning of modern market economies, which today either exist or are emerging in many parts of the world and which — provided they conform to moral standards based upon integral human development and the common good — currently seem to be “the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs” of a socio-economic kind.7

In such a system, advertising can be a useful tool for sustaining honest and ethically responsible competition that contributes to economic growth in the service of authentic human development. “The Church looks with favor on the growth of man’s productive capacity, and also on the ever widening network of relationships and exchanges between persons and social groups….[F]rom this point of view she encourages advertising, which can become a wholesome and efficacious instrument for reciprocal help among men.”8

Advertising does this, among other ways, by informing people about the availability of rationally desirable new products and services and improvements in existing ones, helping them to make informed, prudent consumer decisions, contributing to efficiency and the lowering of prices, and stimulating economic progress through the expansion of business and trade. All of this can contribute to the creation of new jobs, higher incomes and a more decent and humane way of life for all. It also helps pay for publications, programming and productions

— including those of the Church — that bring information, entertainment and inspiration to people around the world.

B) Benefits of Political Advertising

“The Church values the democratic system inasmuch as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility both of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate.”

Political advertising can make a contribution to democracy analogous to its contribution to economic well being in a market system guided by moral norms. As free and responsible media in a democratic system help to counteract tendencies toward the monopolization of power on the part of oligarchies and special interests, so political advertising can make its contribution by informing people about the ideas and policy proposals of parties and candidates, including new candidates not previously known to the public.

C) Cultural Benefits of Advertising

Because of the impact advertising has on media that depend on it for revenue; advertisers have an opportunity to exert a positive influence on decisions about media content. This they do by supporting material of excellent intellectual, aesthetic and moral quality presented with the public interest in view, and particularly by encouraging and making possible media presentations which are oriented to minorities whose needs might otherwise go un-served.

Moreover, advertising can itself contribute to the betterment of society by uplifting and inspiring people and motivating them to act in ways that benefit themselves and others. Advertising can brighten lives simply by being witty, tasteful and entertaining. Some advertisements are instances of popular art, with a vivacity and elan all their own.

D) Moral and Religious Benefits of Advertising

In many cases, too, benevolent social institutions, including those of a religious nature, use advertising to communicate their messages — messages of faith, of patriotism, of tolerance, compassion and neighborly service, of charity toward the needy, messages concerning health and education, constructive and helpful messages that educate and motivate people in a variety of beneficial ways.

For the Church, involvement in media-related activities, including advertising, is today a necessary part of a comprehensive pastoral strategy. This includes both the Church’s own media

— Catholic press and publishing, television and radio broadcasting, film and audiovisual production, and the rest — and also her participation in secular media. The media “can and should be instruments in the Church’s program of re-evangelization and new evangelization in the contemporary world.”11 While much remains to be done, many positive efforts of this kind already are underway. With reference to advertising itself, Pope Paul VI once said that it is desirable that Catholic institutions “follow with constant attention the development of the modern techniques of advertising and… know how to make opportune use of them in order to spread the Gospel message in a manner which answers the expectations and needs of contemporary man.”

The harm done by advertising

There is nothing intrinsically good or intrinsically evil about advertising. It is a tool, an instrument: it can be used well, and it can be used badly. If it can have, and sometimes does have, beneficial results such as those just described, it also can, and often does, have a negative, harmful impact on individuals and society.

Communio et Progressio contains this summary statement of the problem: “If harmful or utterly useless goods are touted to the public, if false assertions are made about goods for sale, if less than admirable human tendencies are exploited, those responsible for such advertising harm society and forfeit their good name and credibility. More than this, unremitting pressure to buy articles of luxury can arouse false wants that hurt both individuals and families by making them ignore what they really need. And those forms of advertising which, without shame, exploit the sexual instincts simply to make money or which seek to penetrate into the subconscious recesses of the mind in a way that threatens the freedom of the individual … must be shunned.”

A) Economic Harms of Advertising

Advertising can betray its role as a source of information by misrepresentation and by withholding relevant facts. Sometimes, too, the information function of media can be subverted by advertisers’ pressure upon publications or programs not to treat of questions that might prove embarrassing or inconvenient. More often, though, advertising is used not simply to inform but to persuade and motivate — to convince people to act in certain ways: buy certain products or services, patronize certain institutions, and the like. This is where particular abuses can occur.

The practice of “brand”-related advertising can raise serious problems. Often there are only negligible differences among similar products of different brands, and advertising may attempt to move people to act on the basis of irrational motives (“brand loyalty,” status, fashion, “sex appeal,” etc.) instead of presenting differences in product quality and price as bases for rational choice.

Advertising also can be, and often is, a tool of the “phenomenon of consumerism,” as Pope John Paul II delineated it when he said: “It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed toward ?having’ rather than ? being’, and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself. “Sometimes advertisers speak of it as part of their task to “create” needs for products and services — that is, to cause people to feel and act upon cravings for items and services they do not need. “If … a direct appeal is made to his instincts — while ignoring in various ways the reality of the person as intelligent and free — then consumer attitudes and life-styles can be created which are objectively improper and often damaging to his physical and spiritual health.”

This is a serious abuse, an affront to human dignity and the common good when it occurs in affluent societies. But the abuse is still more grave when consumerist attitudes and values are transmitted by communications media and advertising to developing countries, where they exacerbate socio-economic problems and harm the poor. “It is true that a judicious use of advertising can stimulate developing countries to improve their standard of living. But serious harm can be done them if advertising and commercial pressure become so irresponsible that communities seeking to rise from poverty to a reasonable standard of living are persuaded to seek this progress by satisfying wants that have been artificially created. The result of this is that they waste their resources and neglect their real needs, and genuine development falls behind.”

Similarly, the task of countries attempting to develop types of market economies that serve human needs and interests after decades under centralized, state-controlled systems is made more difficult by advertising that promotes consumerist attitudes and values offensive to human dignity and the common good. The problem is particularly acute when, as often happens, the dignity and welfare of society’s poorer and weaker members are at stake. It is necessary always to bear in mind that there are “goods which by their very nature cannot and must not be bought or sold” and to avoid “an? Idolatry’ of the market” that, aided and abetted by advertising, ignores this crucial fact.

B) Harms of Political Advertising

Political advertising can support and assist the working of the democratic process, but it also can obstruct it. This happens when, for example, the costs of advertising limit political competition to wealthy candidates or groups, or require that office-seekers compromise their integrity and independence by over-dependence on special interests for funds.

Such obstruction of the democratic process also happens when, instead of being a vehicle for honest expositions of candidates’ views and records, political advertising seeks to distort the views and records of opponents and unjustly attacks their reputations. It happens when advertising appeals more to people’s emotions and base instincts — to selfishness, bias and hostility toward others, to racial and ethnic prejudice and the like — rather than to a reasoned sense of justice and the good of all.

C) Cultural Harms of Advertising

Advertising also can have a corrupting influence upon culture and cultural values. We have spoken of the economic harm that can be done to developing nations by advertising that fosters consumerism and destructive patterns of consumption. Consider also the cultural injury done to these nations and their peoples by advertising whose content and methods, reflecting those prevalent in the first world, are at war with sound traditional values in indigenous cultures. Today this kind of “domination and manipulation” via media rightly is “a concern of developing nations in relation to developed ones,” as well as a “concern of minorities within particular nations.”

The indirect but powerful influence exerted by advertising upon the media of social communications that depend on revenues from this source points to another sort of cultural concern. In the competition to attract ever larger audiences and deliver them to advertisers, communicators can find themselves tempted — in fact pressured, subtly or not so subtly — to set aside high artistic and moral standards and lapse into superficiality, tawdriness and moral squalor.

Communicators also can find themselves tempted to ignore the educational and social needs of certain segments of the audience — the very young, the very old, the poor — who do not match the demographic patterns (age, education, income, habits of buying and consuming, etc.) of the kinds of audiences advertisers want to reach. In this way the tone and indeed the level of moral responsibility of the communications media in general are lowered.

All too often, advertising contributes to the invidious stereotyping of particular groups that places them at a disadvantage in relation to others. This often is true of the way advertising treats women; and the exploitation of women, both in and by advertising, is a frequent, deplorable abuse. “How often are they treated not as persons with an inviolable dignity but as objects whose purpose is to satisfy others’ appetite for pleasure or for power? How often the role of woman as wife and mother is undervalued or even ridiculed? How often is the role of women in business or professional life depicted as a masculine caricature, a denial of the specific gifts of feminine insight, compassion, and understanding, which so greatly contribute to the ?civilization of love’?”

D) Moral and Religious Harms of Advertising

Advertising can be tasteful and in conformity with high moral standards, and occasionally even morally uplifting, but it also can be vulgar and morally degrading. Frequently it deliberately appeals to such motives as envy, status seeking and lust. Today, too, some advertisers consciously seek to shock and titillate by exploiting content of a morbid, perverse, pornographic nature. What this Pontifical Council said several years ago about pornography and violence in the media is no less true of certain forms of advertising:

“As reflections of the dark side of human nature marred by sin, pornography and the exaltation of violence are age-old realities of the human condition. In the past quarter century, however, they have taken on new dimensions and have become serious social problems. At a time of widespread and unfortunate confusion about moral norms, the communications media have made pornography and violence accessible to a vastly expanded audience, including young people and even children, and a problem which at one time was confined mainly to wealthy countries has now begun, via the communications media, to corrupt moral values in developing nations.” We note, too, certain special problems relating to advertising that treats of religion or pertains to specific issues with a moral dimension.

In cases of the first sort, commercial advertisers sometimes include religious themes or use religious images or personages to sell products. It is possible to do this in tasteful, acceptable ways, but the practice is obnoxious and offensive when it involves exploiting religion or treating it flippantly.

In cases of the second sort, advertising sometimes is used to promote products and inculcate attitudes and forms of behavior contrary to moral norms. That is the case, for instance, with the advertising of contraceptives, abortifacients and products harmful to health, and with government-sponsored advertising campaigns for artificial birth control, so-called “safe sex”, and similar practices.