Good Marketing Ethics
12 February 2024
What is ethics in marketing?
When planning marketing strategies, being ethical means authentically representing a brand, product or service transparently. You want to show the product in an appealing way to entice customers, but making exaggerated or outright false claims or aggressively targeting people with ads will only land you in hot water. Appreciating this and walking the line carefully is the foundation of ethical marketing.
Other ethical concerns in marketing relate to the use of AI, environmental concerns and greenwashing, cultural sensitivity and avoidance of stereotypes as well as the use of personal data for marketing purposes.
Why Ethics in Marketing is Important
Of course, taking an ethical approach to marketing is the right thing to do. Consumers are more informed than ever, and eagle-eyed in looking for potentially spurious claims in marketing campaigns. Taking an ethical stance will show that your brand is a trustworthy one that people can depend upon. Ethics don’t just affect public relations; brands have gotten into legal trouble by using unethical marketing tactics. So not only does it not pay off, but you could face serious repercussions too.
Ethical Marketing in The Web3 Space
We have access to some incredible new tech that would have been unimaginable to most just a few years ago. Imagine explaining to someone in 2004 what the blockchain was, or cryptocurrency. And with the rapid advancement of technology, comes new ethical considerations surrounding it. When Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies exploded onto the scene, lots of people and businesses wanted to get involved. This led to some unscrupulous marketing behaviour. The UK Advertising Standards Authority threatened 50 crypto companies with sanctions if they did not cease misleading consumers with their ads.
New technologies like blockchain can also help to improve ethics in marketing. Consumers can verify the sustainability and authenticity of products, which can increase confidence in a brand. The blockchain is a digital ledger which makes it very difficult for anyone to tamper with or falsify transactions or information. This higher level of accountability can ensure brands can back up product claims and verify the ethics of their entire supply chain.
Blockchain tech can also make reward systems for influencers and content creators more equitable. Decentralised Finance (aka DeFi) could address the disparity between brands and influencers they use to promote their products. Influencers could easily verify their leads generated for the brand via the blockchain, reducing fraud, and get paid more easily without losing fees to financial institutions.
Marketing and Data Privacy
When the data of billions of people is easily available, marketers can leverage this data to create highly targeted, granular campaigns and get products in front of the ideal audience. However, the use of people’s data is heavily regulated. In the UK, the GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 state that people must permit their data to be used for marketing purposes.
If you want to send out marketing emails, for example, you must obtain permission from the recipients to send them marketing information. This is separate from the business using people’s email addresses to contact them about their orders or subscriptions.
This affects targeted ads too. Every website that collects cookies (pretty much all of them) has to ask the person browsing if it’s okay to collect cookies, and specifically ask to collect them for marketing purposes. It must also be clear that website visitors can opt out of having their data collected for marketing reasons. In 2022, the non-profit privacy organisation noyb pressured Meta to allow people to use Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp without receiving personalised ads based on their browsing history.
Other businesses have incurred hefty fines for sending out marketing materials without consent. Just this year, recipe box company HelloFresh got fined £140,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for sending out 79 million spam emails and 1 million spam texts without obtaining proper consent.
Ethical Use of AI in Marketing
ChatGPT and other AI platforms have already changed the world of content creation in just a short time. However, several problems with the use of AI have already been exposed. ChatGPT is not secure and even its creators, OpenAI, warn against putting sensitive data into the language model. AI has also been used to make automated decisions based on profiling people. Depending on what the AI was trained on, this could involve unfair bias and prejudice. Data protection laws in the UK and EU stipulate that organisations must have a lawful basis to carry out such profiling and people do have the right to challenge automated decisions that could significantly affect their life, such as credit checks.
Other ethical concerns have been raised about graphical AI programs. These AI programs are trained on artwork and images created by artists who have not consented to their work being used in this way, or provided with compensation. It’s hard to imagine a world where AI could replace human artists and creators entirely, and we should consider whether or not this is a good idea.
Using AI-produced graphics and artwork for marketing is dicey territory in terms of copyright law. It’s hard to reach a consensus on whether AI art can infringe on copyright, but US law at least has said that AI-generated content cannot be copyrighted, so the issue cuts both ways.
Greenwashing in Marketing
Greenwashing refers to brands making vague, exaggerated or unverifiable claims about being ‘eco-friendly’ or sustainable in their manufacturing and general business practices. Greenwashing can also be done using graphics or packaging that implies a product is environmentally friendly when it is not. At the core of it, greenwashing is a form of false or misleading advertising and should be avoided.
Some brands have come under fire for greenwashing – McDonald’s removed plastic straws from their restaurants in 2019, replacing them with paper ones. The new paper straws, however, are still not recyclable. A paper straw might be a little better for the environment but the golden arches still have a long way to go to truly become environmentally friendly.
Volkswagen went a step further and rigged their cars to cheat on emissions tests in 2015. They installed software in their cars which detected when an emissions test was taking place and lowered the vehicle’s emissions to pass the test. This shady behaviour won them a fine of $2.8 billion and cost them a further $33.3 billion in subsequent fines, financial settlements and more.
Ethics is something that all brands should take into consideration when planning their marketing campaigns, as well as in their overall operations. Do you need help planning an ethical marketing strategy? We can help – get in touch today.