Corporate Responsibility in Advertising

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 Corporate Responsibility in
Advertising
• The purposes of advertising include:
• Inform customers about products and
services
• Persuade customers to make purchases

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Unethical advertising

• Advertisements are
• Deceptive/misleading
• Manipulative
• Puffery
• Untruthful/half truth
• Targeted to vulnerable buyers like children, youth or minorities
• Use of harmful ingredients without disclosure
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 Corporate Responsibility in
Advertising
• Advertising on the Internet presents new opportunities and
problems for consumers.
• At issue ethically is the unlimited availability of and exposure
to explicit and other questionable content on ads and
Websites.
PEMRA provides regulatory guidelines for
on-line advertising

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 Corporate Responsibility in
Advertising
• Moral responsibility for consumers in advertising can be
viewed along a continuum.
• Paternalism
• free choice
• Enforcement of advertising
• Bans on ads

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 Corporate Responsibility in
Advertising
• Arguments for advertising:
• Introduces people to and influences
them to buy goods and services
• Enables companies to be competitive
• Helps nations maintain a prosperous
economy

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• Helps a nation’s balance of trade and
debt payments
• Enriches consumers’ lives
• Consumers are not ignorant and do
know the difference

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 Corporate Responsibility in
Advertising
• Arguments against advertising:
• Cross the thin line between deception
and puffery
• Tells half-truths
• Conceals facts
• Intentionally deceive with a profit goal
in mind

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• Fast food industry advertising
• McNuggets have twice as much fat per once as hamburgers.
• Tobacco and alcohol advertising
• Lucky Strike Force promotes the brands while offering smokers
roses and coffee.

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• Ethics and advertising
1.Is consumer being treated as a means to an end or as an end?
2.Whose rights are being protected or violated intentionally and
inadvertently?
3.Are consumers being justly and fairly treated?
4.Has anyone been harmed and can this harm be proven?

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