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Ethical Challenges in Advertising

Krishna Mohan

ETHICS IS A MATTER OF CROSSING THE THIN LINE

I am going to talk to you about the question of ethics. But I would rather play my blues harp instead. What I want to ask you is whether you know that there is an ethical issue related to the way this blues harp is played? When you suck on it, you get the wail of a blues harp. There is an ethical issue related to it. When you suck on it, you are supposed to have smoked grass. I am not saying that I smoke. But the issue really is that some people say grass has medicinal qualities and some believe it enhances whatever they do. But it is a thin line. That is what I am going to start talking about. Life is all about thin lines. There is a thin line between joy and madness, pain and pleasure, lust and love, courage and stupidity, and people say if you really want to live life to the fullest, then you have to walk over that thin line. But when it comes to the question of ethics, then the line is very clearly drawn and if you cross that line, many people do it for fame, fortune, greed, and every time you put your hand on your heart and ask, you will know you have crossed the line. The line may be a little blurred, but you will know that you have crossed it.

WHAT IS ETHICS ANYWAY?

So, what is ethics? It has a very simple definition: it is what we believe in and how we behave. It's about our values and the way we look at life. What is law and what is ethics? Law and ethics are not coterminus. All the issues discussed here have ethical dimensions but not all of them involve legal realities. Law is confined by limitations on government authority, principally through the constitution, whereas ethics bear no such limitations. Thus, to Jeff Richards, ethics should be subject to a higher standard of expectation than law. I don't know how many of you know that advertising, world over, is defined as commercial free speech and, therefore, as it is free speech in some form or the other, it is not legal to curb advertising. So, we have a whole list of issues in advertising. I was quite surprised that there were so many of them, for instance, racism, using sex to sell, surrogate advertising, and the 12 deadly sins such as taking advantage of children, puffery, deception, invading privacy, and all that. But let me tell you that as we operate in public space, we are aware each and every time we cross this line and some consumer is not pointing it out, we have the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), that has this slogan, ‘If you don’t regulate yourself, someone else will.’

I would like to say a few words about ASCI. It is a regulatory body, and not a legal body. Its main goal is to keep public faith in advertising intact. They seek to ensure that ads maintain the code of self-regulation and be fair to the consumer and competitors within the bounds of generally accepted public decency, and not used indiscriminately for promotion of products hazardous to consumers or society at large. This seems like a lot of hot air but let me tell you that it is a very effective body. For example, in 2006, the Consumer Care Council (CCC) met 11 times, deliberated over 117 ads, out of which 67 were upheld. So, you can't fool around with these guys.

A LOOK AT SOME ETHICAL ISSUES IN ADVERTISING

So let's take a closer look at these issues one by one as listed below.

Puffery Puffery refers to the claims that are an exaggeration or hyperbole, and is therefore not acceptable. It is defined as something which the reasonable people don't believe to be true qualities. Like in the Fewikwik ad where the claim was so exaggerated that you can't get away with it.

Stereotyping Stereotyping means depicting people, particularly women, in denigrating fashion; for example, the ‘Fair and Lovely’ ad which was disallowed.

Deception Deception occurs in the case where the message conveyed is different from the reality of the product advertised. Advertisers need to conduct tests to substantiate the product attributes prior to the product being advertised.

Surrogate advertising This kind of advertising can be seen in cases of tobacco and alcohol ads. Critics have argued that ads for tobacco and alcohol lead to consumption of these products. Others counter that it is the product and not the advertising which leads to the consumption. Central to this debate is the ethical issue of an individual's freedom of choice. Let's take smoking for example. Individuals who smoke know that it can cause cancer. But then there is the whole issue of passive smoking. I once heard a joke. Having a smoking table in a restaurant is like having a pissing corner in a swimming pool. This debate rages. Surrogate advertising and below the line activities continue to educate and inform.

Trademark and copyright These are two aspects, one of which, that is trademark, is seldom spoken of, and the other, that is, copyright, is often infringed upon with little understanding of the consequences. First is how to copyright the work done by the agencies for their clients. Very seldom is the work copyrighted and that causes copyright infringement.

Look-alikes Look-alikes are often used in advertising. You can use look-alikes and get away with it. But if you are using scenes from a movie the actor has acted in, and if you are very close to the original scene, then you can get into trouble, and have your ad removed from public domain.

Sex to sell This needs little explanation. It is often blatantly used. Thus, you can use sex to make a point.

Telemarketing Telemarketing is obviously an invasion of privacy and unwanted interference and annoyance, and causes the customer money. Marketers are using the customer's property, the phone, for their own purposes. Marketers are also required to obtain a list of people who prefer not to get the call, thus making it illegal for them to get a call. So, next time you get a call from ICICI at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday, you know what to do.

ADVERTISING FOR A SOCIAL CAUSE

There is a deep ethical question to this issue. One, should we have used such ads at all, and the other, do the agencies who make such ads really want to help or do they do it to win an award at the Cannes? My answer to that is that at Ogilvy, we work with a non-governmental organization (NGO) called ‘Pathways’, which does a lot of work in education for kids with learning difficulties and we spend time with them, and if I would get to make such an ad for them, I would feel privileged.

ETHICS IS VALUE DRIVEN

So, ethics, the way we know, is driven by values. Our values and business ethics often get derived from corporate values. Often it's a reflection of an individual's sense of value. I will give you two examples. David Ogilvy says, ‘First-class business in first-class way’ and we deal with a company called Sundaram Finance and their slogan is ‘Enduring Values, New Age Thinking’. The wonderful thing about Sundaram Finance is that it just doesn't remain a slogan; they walk the talk. They are in a business which is very tough—Truck Financing. And they have their non-performing assets (NPA) at less than 1 per cent. And people actually want to borrow money from Sundaram Finance because they believe that it brings them good luck. They have a very strong sense of business ethics. So, we are back to where we started. What we believe in and how we behave. So, ethics is really a question of your own values.

MOST VALUES ARE LEARNT RATHER EARLY IN LIFE

We are born with a strong sense of values, often corrupted perhaps in a harsh world but often blurred, as we travel along a pathway called life. So, the message I want to leave you with is this little extract from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.¹

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take around things that aren't yours.

Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint, and sing and dance, and play and work everyday some. Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

And be aware of wonders.

Remember the little seed in the stripe home cup and the plant goes up and the roots go down and nobody really knows why, but we are all like that.