When Does Marketing Become Immoral?

On trickery, emotional guilt, and flawed logic

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

If we’re honest with ourselves as marketers, we’ll admit that what we do can border on unethical.

People sell their time and labor in return for money. Marketers convince consumers to select a particular product or service when spending their money. The better we convince consumers to part with their hard-earned coin, the more successful we are.

This means using what we know of human psychology to our favor. The colors we choose. The copy we write. The emails and websites we build. It’s all for consumers. It’s all to get them to take the action we want them to take.

Arguably, it’s an action they want to take too. At least, in most cases, we hope that it is. But not always.

Entire industries are founded on a subtle immorality. Nobody wants to smoke cigarettes. Nobody needs another Snickers bar. Nobody actually, rationally believes that diamonds are worth what they pay for them.

Many, many purchases that consumers make are so heavily influenced by marketing that they may not even realize it.

“I began smoking because it looked cool” is such an excuse since marketers made smoking look cool.