Obligations for Advertisers

“All advertising should be legal, decent, honest and truthful.” –icharter.org

What are Advertising and Public Relations specialist responsible for? This is a seemingly simple question that has a not so simple answer. With little to no real world guidelines monitoring companies promoting through advertising and PR, the question of the extent of ethical responsibility on those who create these services is just a guessing game. Is it my fault or yours that his ad is offensive?

I mean really how vague is this? “We recognize that there are areas that are subject to honestly different interpretations and judgment. Nevertheless, we agree not to recommend to an advertiser, and to discourage the use of, advertising that is in poor or questionable taste or that is deliberately irritating through aural or visual content or presentation.”-aaaa.org

Sure, one can say that it is as simple as doing the right thing, but what does that even mean when your service (the service of adverting and PR) has an audience of 100s, 1,000s, even Millions? Wouldn’t those groups of people have 100s, 1,000s and millions of different moral standards?

Put simply, I believe that as the creators of these ads and PR stunts, we have (or should have) an obligation to hold our creations to high ethical standard. Of course, this looks different for each and every person.

So, with so many gray lines, how can the world still look colorful? As creators, we are always taking chances with the material that we produce. In some instances it is obvious that the advertiser did not do their duties in policing themselves on ethical and moral issues; however, shouldn’t it be the responsibility of that company to take ownership of those mistakes? After all, the adverting company is simply providing a service that the company signs off on.

In school, we are always taught to do what we are told. There is an order to authority that we must not breach. If your boss told you to produce an ad that you were not morally oaky with, would you do it? In most instances, you would; unless you enjoy seeking employment. This is a very unfortunate and problematic dilemma that we will all inevitable face in our creative careers. Being an accountant is sounding a lot simpler at this point.

Your job (as told by your boss) is to please the client. After all, they are the ones forking over thousands of dollars on your colorful little poster. Wrong. You should have the capacity to stand behind any of your creations. If you have issues with the way an idea is portrayed and you are involved in the project, you have to speak up and change the direction of the project, because if you don’t no one will. Then your name is on an outlandish ad for Peta that objectifies women and is so offensive and off-putting that your message is mottled and your audience is repelled by it.

Do we have obligations as creatives? Yes. Are we fulfilling them? Eh. That would depend on who you are asking, and on what specific ad. Unfortunately, I think that most of us don’t have a strong enough backbone to stand up to our boss when 150 resumes are ready to fill our position. So, most often I believe that we fail at our ethical responsibilities but maybe that’s because you never hear about the ads ideas that didn’t get produced.

Are you advertising ethically? Probably not.

But there is hope yet!

“But as individuals, communities and cultures mature, so has advertising, and the audiences we advertise to. Today, audiences have well-developed advertising savvy, and we can no longer interrupt people with inane, uninteresting advertising designed to “push product.” This neither captures their attention, nor their purchase decisions.” Pamela Divinsky, Vice President, Ethos, JWT for CNN.

Sources: http://www.aaaa.org/about/association/pages/standardsofpractice.aspx, http://www.icharter.org/standards/eas405/, http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/07/08/jwt.answer/

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