A634.5.4.RB - Is Marketing Evil?

Marketing should have ethical standards just like any other business function. In the Article “Marketing Ethics” by Dr. Linda Ferrell provided a couple examples of where executives intentionally mislead the sale of their product or services. Dr. Ferrell talks about Sarbanes Oxley requires reporting of misconduct. I remember this regulation because my own company violated Sarbanes Oxley when an employee was retaliated against for being a whistleblower about fraud. If you ever violate Sarbanes Oxley there is a huge risk in ruining the reputation and credibility of your company, which does not account for all the additional attention you receive in the future years when you report annual financials. My reflection blog this week will Reflect on Dr. Farrell’s article about marketing ethics to discuss if guidelines make a difference to marketers, the need to win verses being ethical, marketers tracking buyer behavior, and how I would manage ethical standards as a leader. (Ferrell, 2017)

Marketing Ethical Guidelines

Every company, whether they are offering a product or service, there is marketing campaign designed in order to solicit a consumer to engage. Marketing format can be anything from pamphlets, televisions and internet adds, telemarketers, billboards, or the annoying little announcements that you find on your windshield when you leave your favorite store. There are good marketing strategies such as home good stores such as Kirkland’s where you walk in the store the store is full of home decorations and burning candles, it a warm setting so their products natural sell because consumers want to provide that same warm feel in their homes. Their marketing could be considered to be misleading because there is no reality that your home will smell or look as good at the store. There are larger consumers such as Microsoft who recently fired two of their Bing executives for violating the company policy of mismanagement of their equipment. Microsoft personally has a vested interest in ensuring their employees do not violate their ethics guidelines.  (Rosoff, 2012)

The marketing ethical guidelines and violation of them is a big deal. In researching companies who violate ethics is was much bigger of a deal than I thought it was going to be. Some of the ethical violations tend to be centered on deceptive practices, invasion of privacy, objectivity, and confidentiality breaches. The two areas that I feel are really important as a consumer is invasion of privacy and confidentiality breaches. There should be some time of guideline to protect personal information and ensure we do not break ethics rules of engagement in the competitive market as a company. From my perspective, there should be ethical guidelines for marketing programs because there is a required level credibility that is required and if you break the trust you are no longer credible and it can ruin your reputation. I feel guidelines for marketers is sporadic and it is about winning not so much about what is right or wrong, however there should be some guidelines if they are working for companies who have guidelines set in place. I think the stakes or risks are higher if you do not have some type of ethical standards in your work and if it does not matter to the marketer they are not very considerate of others, but that is my opinion.  (Masters, 2017)

Winning verses ethical

The profits and Return of Investments (ROI) is very important to any company, or they would not be in business. Companies have the social responsibility of making good on bad products or services, at least from my perspective. Consumers have the power to determine whether a company fails or succeeds so the real question is why would a company need to put winning above their ethics in marketing. Ethics should focus on being honest, fair, and a level of responsibility to the consumer. The Sketcher shoe company had to pay over $40 million dollars claiming their toning shoes would tone the consumer. They sold a lot of shoes based on their unethical advertisement but lost million in the end. Companies take a big risk by putting the win before their unethical advertisements that can or will jeopardize their profits. From my perspective, companies can balance their need to win by being honest and responsible for the products or service they provided. If they make a mistake, learn from it and make sure that you instill processes and procedures that keep your teams honest.  (Forer, 2012)

Tracking Buying Habits

Tracking my buying habits as a consumer is being a big deal and sometimes it is annoying. For example, I can shop for a product on my phone or MacBook computer and when I logon to the social media giant Facebook I am saturated with new adds that are aligned to a product I was just researching. I have always known that anything you do on the internet is not secret. Being a very busy person I buy pretty much everything outside of groceries from amazon, even my cat food. For marketers to watch my buying habits is clever but it feels like an invasion to my personal privacy. If I was purchasing person items such as underwear, I do not think it is awesome to let all my friends and family on Facebook know I bought underwear online or the type of product purchased.  Recently I was doing research on a vacation trip for my husband I in Ireland and within a week I get telemarketers wanting to sell a cruise package. I was not looking for a cruise, so again marketing behavior of tracking my habits was annoying. I did work for a small estate planning company where we used market research database to pull names who met a particular criteria and we would send them invitation flyers. On the reverse, I did feel this was bad unless I sent a package to a young person who was not really the right age group who needs to worry about long term care and wills. My fear is if a company can track your behavior what keeps that company from selling your personal information? I am not so concerned with what type of product I buy but more about if I apply for a home or auto loan, that is more personal information that requires additional protection. I was a victim of identity theft in 2012 and now every time I file my taxes I have to have a special issued identification from the Internal Revenue System (IRS) and this could have been from my online habits. I am more selective of who I buy from based on my individual experience and I feel companies need to have a bit more responsibility of information online. I do have to give them props on being creative and finding ways to boost their performance. (Traders, 2011)

Managing Marketing Efforts

As a leader in managing marketing efforts you should ensure there is some type of social responsibility of owning the tasks of marketing products or services that are fair, not negative and is protected by some type of Corporate Governance or accountability. Leaders and employees need to own the risks associated with being ethical and unethical, basically when it is wrong, do not do it.  Leaders do have the responsibility to ensure that employees know what is right or wrong before they do it by providing ethics training. I also think there needs to be a lot of communication to make sure everyone feels what they are doing is not violation peoples personal space or represents the company negative, or worst case a lot of money. As shortly discussed in the introduction, my own company had an employee who filed an anonymous complaint to ethics and was later retaliated against for being a whistleblower. Leaders owe it to make sure acts are not unethical but take the step to protect employees who make the ethics violations known. (Foti, 2013)

Conclusion

The ethics in marketing is very interesting and I did not realize how bit it was until I started reading some articles about misleading marketing campaigns. I was aware of the Sarbanes Oxley and how it is there to ensure companies are socially responsible to their shareholders, employees, and the consumer.  Just this month banking institution had a whistleblower outlining more fraudulent activity by the company making things even worse for them when their only employee was stealing money. I do not bank with this company but time and time again there appears to be more issues with unethical behavior, therefore I do not think I would bank with them. The blog is about marketing but to me their ability to mislead is just as critically important as someone who steals people’s money at a bank.  From my perspective, every employee at the company is accountable for ethics in the workplace. I wouldn't say marketing is intentionally evil, however, they can be intentionally irresponsible.

References:

Ferrell, L. (2017). Marketing Ethics. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from University of Wyoming: http://college.cengage.com/business/modules/marktngethics.pdf

Forer, B. (2012, May 16). Sketchers to Pay $40 Million Over Toning Shoe Claims. Retrieved April 20, 2017, from ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/skechers-pay-40-million-toning-shoe-claims/story?id=16359254

Foti, C. (2013, June 13). SOX And Whistleblowers - Any Fraud Will Do. Retrieved April 20, 2017, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/insider/2013/06/13/sox-and-whistleblowers-any-fraud-will-do/#2051018444f0

Masters, T. (2017). Ethical Considerations of Marketing Research. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from Chron: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/ethical-considerations-marketing-research-43621.html

Rosoff, M. (2012, March 19). Microsoft Fires Bing Marketing Execs After Investigation. Retrieved April 20, 2017, from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-fires-bing-marketing-execs-after-investigation-2012-3

Traders, A. (2011, October 31). The Ethical Issues with 3rd Party Behavioral Tracking. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from Ad Traders Exchange: https://adexchanger.com/the-debate/3rd-party-behavioral-tracking/