Ethics education – Would Advertisers benefit from it?
By Dr Bill Robb

There have been a few recent examples of advertisers blatantly trying to fool television viewers. In advertisements for a hair-care product it was revealed that the well-known actress had hair extensions fitted. In an advertisement for mascara to make eyelashes look longer, it was found out that the model was wearing false eyelashes.

My first reaction to this is disbelief that some human beings would so deliberately try to deceive others. Such actions show total disrespect for the dignity of their potential  customers.  The advertisers  are

saying that users of the products will get the benefits shown on the advertisement – and of course that is a lie.

The unethical actions don’t end there. How have the advertisers reacted to complaints about their deception? They have put a subtitle at the bottom of the advertisement saying “Miss Jones is wearing hair extensions”. This would seem to be an honest act but here’s the trick – the subtitle appears so quickly and is so small and is of a weak colour, that most people won’t see it. Again, one must ask – why do this anyway – why not find a model with brilliant hair or eyelashes?

Is advertising inherently dishonest?
When you think about it there are many examples of some advertisers using devious means to convince us to buy. Here are just a few.
 

• When advertising women’s clothes thin young girls are used as the models with the intention of making women think they will look as good as the model.

• To advertise weight-loss products there is usually a before and after photograph. The before picture shows the person looking miserable and is shot in poor light and at an angle to make the person look as fat as possible. The after picture is shot in colour with the person smiling and at a more flattering angle.

• When dental or medical products are advertised, it’s usually a person in a white coat who does the talking – with the intention of making people think the actor is a dentist or doctor.

• It is well known that skin care products use photographs that are “touch-up” to erase any skin blemishers and wrinkles.

• When food products are photographed, a range of artificial tricks is used to make the food look much better than it is. That is why the food one gets out of a box hardly ever looks as good as the photograph on the box.

• Pick up a book on advertising techniques and you’ll probably find a chapter on the use of emotions such as fear and guilt. You’ll find a sentence that says something like “Fear of loss sells more that the joy of gain”. The most blatant use of this technique is when parents are subliminally told they are not good parents because their children go to school without the whitest blouse or the latest cheese snack.

I’m sure you could think of more examples of this kind of low-level unethical practice. Why is it so prevalent and regarded as acceptable by many advertisers? Is advertising and hence advertisers inherently unethical? More research should be done to find answers to this question, but in the meantime it would do no harm for advertisers to undergo some ethics education.

Dr Bill would be delighted to talk at your next conference or event and explore how ethics  education can be applied in practice and lead to more ethical practices in advertising. See Speaking and Postgraduate Education

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