Ethics and Advertising

William M. O'Barr

Fig. 13.1 "It Depends on What You Mean by IS," According to Former President Bill Clinton [Source]

1. Ethics and Culture

Throughout history, famous people have often been cited as exhibiting some of the best and the worst behaviors. Within American history, the very names of some presidents evoke notions of truth and honesty while some warn of the consequences of lying. Abraham Lincoln earned the nickname "Honest Abe" and George Washington "could not tell a lie." On the other hand, Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and Bill Clinton suffered impeachment because they lied.

The world of advertising has its own set of stories about the good and the bad, truth and dishonesty. This unit focuses on truth and deception in advertising and on the ethical dilemmas of those who produce advertising. These stories show that in advertising, just as in the world at large, there are not only clear instances of good and bad behaviors but also a vast grey area that lies between these extremes—an area where ethical decisions must be made on a daily basis.

2. What is Deceptive Advertising?

Claiming that a product can do something that it cannot is a clear-cut case of deception. Saying that a package is one and one-half times bigger than another (if it is!) is a clear-cut case of telling the truth. But in the real world of advertising, the issues are seldom so clearly demarcated. Is it deceptive, for example, to say that Big Macs and Whoppers taste great without also saying that too many of them can make you fat, raise your cholesterol, or increase your sodium intake above healthy levels?

The public wants and expects advertising to be truthful, but exactly what does this mean in practice? Does it mean saying that a new car can get you from New York to California in style is insufficient? For the ad to be truthful, does it also need to say that driving cars adds to environmental pollution and that you might get hurt or killed in an accident along the way? Does "honest" advertising require that some products (like prescription drugs, for example) need to make fuller disclosures about possible side-effects than do ads for hamburgers and cars?

This unit considers the standards that are used to decide whether something is truthful or deceptive. It reviews both industry self-regulation and governmental standards that advertising must meet. It looks at several specific instances of ads that have raised ethical questions about whether they are sufficiently truthful.

There are legendary stories about ad campaigns that have used mock-ups rather than real products in order to simulate the way products work. When some of these practices came to the attention of the public, some people called them "deceptive advertising." For example, shooting a commercial for ice cream topping would normally occur in a studio under hot lights. Under these circumstances, real ice cream would melt quickly. Would it be okay to use a substitute for the ice cream (say, mashed potatoes or shaving cream) that would simulate how the ice cream would behave under ordinary circumstances? Here are some real stories of similar situations that have caused controversy.

FYI…

Portions of the case were later reinstated by a federal appeals court that gave the plaintiffs an opportunity to support their claim by focusing on deceptive advertising. The plaintiffs again failed to convince the judge of McDonald's culpability, and the case was put to rest. The case, however, resulted in a "supersized" amount of bad publicity for McDonald's.

Fig. 13.6 Commercials Like This Appear to Encourage Overeating (1994) [Source]

The McDonald's case raises the issue of how much information is enough in an advertisement. Should it be the responsibility of the food seller to disclose all known health risks associated with consuming the advertised product? How much information needs to be given in an ad? And, more practically, how much information can be given in a 30-second commercial or in a full-page print ad?

In ancient Rome, the Latin expression caveat emptor, "let the buyer beware," warned buyers of unscrupulous sellers. It remains a good dictum today, but it is much less likely that a seller would be telling outright lies about a product than sometimes occurred in the past. As recently as the early 1900s advertising was still largely unregulated (by either government or advertising industry standards), and sellers were pretty much free to make whatever claims they could get away with. Patent medicines were among the worst offenders. The claims in such ads were not only often outrageous but frequently completely false. For example, the claims of the electric belt ad shown below have no basis in fact. Rather, they represent the boastful proclamations of the seller.

Fig. 13.8 This Ad Claims that Electricity Cures Nervous and Chronic Diseases (c. 1890) [Source]

Today, such patently false claims are highly unlikely in national advertising. Not only are there both governmental and industry-based standards that regulate what can be said in ads,² but the force of negative publicity that would surround an outright lie, if discovered, would have severe or fatal repercussions for the company making the claims. Cases like Rapid Shave and McDonald's (discussed above) demonstrate the power of negative publicity.

The large grey area that exists between truth and deception contains ads that people often consider misleading. The ads are misleading because they depart from literal truth and fact. For example, if an ad for Brand X soap claims "You can't buy a better deodorant soap than Brand X," how are consumers to understand this? If asked to paraphrase the meaning of such a claim, how many of them will say that it means Brand X is the best? What if the company made the claim on the basis of its studies that every deodorant soap has about the same germ-killing abilities as all the others? What if the company insists, when scrutinized, that they only meant to imply that "You can't buy a better deodorant soap than Brand X because deodorant soaps are all pretty much the same"? Are those who draw the inference that Brand X is the best being misled because of an inference they made? Where does responsibility lie for how an ad gets interpreted—with the advertiser or with the consumer?

In the 1950s, many advertisements made claims like "4 out of 5 doctors surveyed recommend Brand Y." This became widely known as a half-truth because there was never any indication of how many doctors had been consulted. Did the 80 percent of doctors mean 4 of the 5 doctors consulted, or 4,000 of 5,000 doctors consulted, or some other actual number? The public had no way of knowing. Practices like this that lead consumers to draw false inferences continue into the present. Read the Gerber baby food ad. Then read a Federal Trade Commissioner's comments on deceptive advertising practices.

If a marketer tells consumers that he or she has a particular level of support for a claim, such as surveys of experts or clinical studies, the FTC requires at least that level of substantiation. For instance, we recently settled allegations that Gerber Products Company, a major manufacturer of baby food, deceptively stated in its ads that "4 out of 5 pediatricians recommend Gerber." Here's what one of the ads looked like. [See Figure 9.] Consumers reasonably would think from this ad that Gerber had competent and reliable studies to support that claim. In fact, although the manufacturer had done a survey of nearly 600 pediatricians, only 16 percent of pediatricians who recommended baby food to their patients recommended Gerber's baby food. That was only 12 percent of all the pediatricians surveyed, not the 80 percent claimed by the ad.³

An area where advertisers and marketers must decide what is permissible (and therefore justified and ethical) is impression management. This often involves some manipulation of literal facts to put a better or more favorable face on them. For example, it is well known by visitors to Disney parks all over the world through their own experience that posted waiting times for admission to exhibits and amusements go relatively fast and frequently do not take as long as expected. Is it ethical for Disney to post wait times that are actually longer than are likely because they want to make visitors happy about how fast the lines move? Is this good business strategy intended to satisfy consumers, or is this a misleading practice that actually dupes consumers into believing one thing when something else is true?

Fig. 13.10 A Disney, Tokyo Sign Indicates a 10 Minute Wait, but Is the Time Padded? [Source]

In 1975, a Delta Airlines advertisement⁴ showed a flight leaving Newark, NJ at 7:15 am and arriving in Atlanta, GA at 9:22 am, a total of 2 hours and 7 minutes. In 2007, Delta's online schedule shows a similar flight leaving Newark at 7:15 am and arriving in Atlanta at 9:38 am, a total of 2 hours and 23 minutes. Why the difference? Some years ago, the airlines adjusted their timetables and schedules to show longer times for the same routes in order to account for delays without the appearance of being late. In the 1970s, the timetables sought to convey a different impression to consumers—the swiftness of the flight. Today, the goal of being on time has taken precedence in advertisements over the brevity of the time it takes to travel from one place to another. Does this sort of impression management count as deception?

Fig. 13.11 Contemporary Airline Schedules Now Show Longer Flight Times [Source]

Perhaps more significant is the way that corporations portray their good deeds. According to Chris Moore of Ogilvy & Mather, "In the 1990s, a big company donated a quarter-million dollars in food aid to Bosnians in the wake of the war there. By all accounts, the aid did a lot of good. Later, the company spent over a million dollars to advertise their good deed here in America."⁵ Similarly, Waste Management makes claims about the company's beneficial contributions to the environment, but how much did they spend to make this commercial with its high production values and for air time to inform the public about their "good deeds"?

Fig. 13.12 Waste Management Corporation Promotes Its Environmental Concerns
in a Series of Ads and Commercials [Source]

8. Harmful Products

Should products that can have harmful effects, like tobacco and alcohol, be advertised at all? Many advertising agencies respond in the affirmative. They back up their decision by saying that it is not an agency's responsibility to decide which products should be advertised and which should not. Rather, their reasoning goes: if it's legal to sell it, it's okay to advertise it. By contrast, there are other agencies and a handful of famous advertising men and women who refuse tobacco or alcohol accounts on ethical grounds. They do not want to be associated with the social ills of products that appear to be as harmful as these.

Tobacco and alcohol are a good place to apply the most stringent ethical standards. If the products are to be advertised, what should be said about them? This 1929 ad featured Constance Talmadge, a movie star, proclaiming that she reaches for a Lucky Strike whenever she's hungry and thereby stays thin. This was a powerful model to hold up before society. It offered a promise of beauty, thinness, and fame if you smoked Luckies. Today, the FTC regulates tobacco advertising to the point where famous people cannot be used to endorse tobacco nor can claims like those made in this 1929 ad be made about the benefits of smoking. Rather, there is no tobacco advertising at all on TV and all smoking tobacco ads must carry serious warnings about the health problems the products may cause.

Individuals who work in ad agencies with tobacco and alcohol accounts are typically given the opportunity to decline to work on these accounts if they prefer not to do so. In doing so, they are expressing personal moral and ethical positions. Just because they do not work directly on such accounts, they may nonetheless work for agencies that advertise such products. If they refuse to work on tobacco, does this also extend to all brands owned by the holding company? This is a real question which objectors must face. The Philip Morris Company owns Kraft Foods. If someone objects to working on a tobacco account on ethical grounds, how far would this decision extend into the intertwined corporate world?

Fig. 13.14 The Philip Morris Company Owns Kraft Foods and Kraft Owns These Brands [Source]

Ethical standards in advertising need to take community standards into account. A single set of universal standards about what is good, bad, or just acceptable is difficult to apply everywhere. What may be appreciated in one community may be off limits in another. In addition, local histories and social issues interact with ads to produce unique local interpretations and meanings.

A Benetton ad intended for global use had similar problems in the United States. Using the company's familiar advertising strategy of provoking social commentary, Benetton pictured a black woman nursing a white baby. In the United States, with its history of plantation society, slavery, and racism, the portrayal of a white child drinking a black mother's milk resonated profoundly with American racial issues. Many saw the ad as exploiting the long history of poor black women nursing the children of white slave owners or domestic employers. Benetton pulled the ad in the US but continued to use it elsewhere.

Fig. 13.18 This Benetton Ad Was Not Received Well in America (1989) [Source]

A more contemporary ad that occasioned widespread complaints is the Dolce & Gabbana ad suggesting gang rape. This ad so outraged Spanish consumers that the ad was banned in Spain. D&G responded angrily by withdrawing all its advertising from Spain. Many people considered this to be a clear instance of advertising going too far.

Fig. 13.19 This Recent Dolce & Gabbana Ad Pushed Limits of Acceptability (2007) [Source]

Similar public complaints about the excessive thinness of top fashion models recently resulted in many companies deciding that it is not in their best interest to continue using models who offend consumer sentiments. These decisions, however, have primarily been based on what is good for business rather than on ethical considerations.

Fig. 13.20 Many Consumers Object to Overly Thin Models in Ads [Source]

10. Disguised Ads

Ads that purport to be something else—a letter that looks like it is from the government, an ad in a newspaper or magazine that masquerades as news, or nowadays a blog or website that is packed with ads—are familiar techniques in contemporary marketing and advertising. Consumers know they should be skeptical of suspicious looking letters and unusual printed "stories" set in typeface similar to articles.

The Internet and trade journals are full of advice to companies who want to break through contemporary advertising clutter. The advice is simple: do it online. It does not take long to find a blog on a subject that interests you, but it does take a while to figure out just what is an ad and what is not. Product mentions (like product placement in the movies) are rampant. This new area of advertising is so slick and often so subtle that the ads move in unannounced. Are these online devices merely good business strategy in the digital age, or do they deceive consumers by their lack of disclosure that they are actually commercial announcements and publicity?

Eli Hoddap posted such a "revelation" on You Tube in 2007. It is difficult to assess the evidence without knowing the circumstances under which it was identified and whether, like many things on the Internet, it is simply a hoax by someone who wishes to show advertising in an extremely bad light. However, simple logic suggests that most reputable companies would not hazard this kind of behavior because of the negative publicity it might generate.

Fig. 13.22 A Posting on You Tube Claims that McDonald's Uses Subliminal Techniques [Source]

12. Advertising to Children

Is it ethical to advertise to children? Some people think not, but advertisers continue to do so. The central question here is whether children should be treated like other consumers, or whether they deserve special treatment or should not be advertised to at all. Canada severely restricts advertising to children as do some European countries. Sweden is perhaps the strictest nation, prohibiting any advertising aimed at children under the age of 12.⁶ Luxembourg and Belgium prohibit ads for five minutes before, during, and for five minutes after children's programming.⁷ In Canada, ads cannot exceed four minutes in each half-hour of programming directed to children.⁸ In the United States advertisements continue to be directed to children for cereals, toys, and other commodities.⁹

Fig. 13.24 Many People Believed that the Now-Abandoned Joe Camel Character
Appealed to Children and Adolescents (1993) [Source]

13. Industry and Government Regulation of Advertising

FYI…
Visit the websites of the NARC and the FTC. American advertising today is scrutinized on many levels. Advertising agencies employ lawyers to advise them on what can and what cannot be said in an ad. These lawyers are specialists in the regulation of advertising by government boards and the courts. In addition, the advertising industry in the United States has set up industry-based review boards that function as self-regulators so as to minimize the involvement of the governmental and legal systems in the management of advertising. At the national level, the Federal Trade Commission has the power to regulate some aspects of advertising. Thus, the excesses and outrageous advertising claims of the past are virtually impossible in the contemporary world.

The author wishes to acknowledge the insightful comments and leads provided by Chris Moore (formerly of Ogilvy & Mather, New York) in his published lecture notes on "Ethics in Advertising." Moore's lecture was prepared both for presentation by Moore and as a guide for other speakers in the AEF's Inside Advertising Speaker Series. His original lecture is available at http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/speaker_pres/data/3001.

William M. O'Barr is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University where he has taught since 1969. He holds secondary appointments in the Departments of Sociology and English. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern, Dalhousie, and Oxford Universities. He has been recognized for his outstanding undergraduate teaching by both the Duke University Alumni Association and Trinity College (Duke University). His course, Advertising and Society: Global Perspectives, is one of Duke's most popular undergraduate courses. His many seminar courses include Advertising and Masculinity, Children and Advertising, and The Language of Advertising.

He is author or co-author of ten books, including Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising, Rules versus Relationships, and Just Words: Law, Language and Power. He has conducted anthropological research in East Africa, Japan, and the United States. In addition to his interest in social and cultural aspects of advertising, Professor O'Barr has researched law in a variety of cultural settings.