Is Advertising Ethical or Unethical?
Somebody has said true, “Advertising is an art of persuasion.” Every business relies on advertisements to eloquently communicate with the targeted audience about products and services. Advertising can sometimes be so compelling that it can create the demand for new things among people that they may not need.
Businesses are always looking for creative ways to interact with their audiences to induce them to buy their products and services, but they often cross the line and do not realize that when their advertisement ways turn to unethical.
To find the answer of whether advertising is ethical or not, first you must know the difference between both the terms.
Ethical Advertising and Principles
Ethical advertising demonstrates professionalism by revealing the truth about the product. It neither promotes any deceptions and concealments nor stretches the capability of a product rather it disseminates all terms and conditions on all platforms.
No ambiguous words should be used to communicate with audience as it will become unethical if the product is bought only for that reason. Such advertisements must maintain transparency and credibility
Ethical advertisers treat their consumers fairly and use discretion based on the nature of the product or service. These advertisements never intend to compromise with social conscious. As long as an advertisement is ethical, it will not target human emotions such as lust, fear and greed. Further, these will not revolve around age, religion, gender and race.
There is no particular definition of ethical advertising. Ethics are a matter of philosophy and hence it is open to debate. Ethical practices revolve around internal beliefs that vary from person to person. It is not surprising if you find practices morally wrong that others think are right.
Unethical Advertising and Practices
Many people get baffled by unethical and illegal advertising. You must note that unethical and illegal are not interchangeable. Unethical means not sticking to all rules and regulations. It includes coaxing buyers into buying any product or service by making outlandish claims. This advertising includes exaggerated statements and stretches the capability of a product.
For instance, “We are invincible,” “Avant-garde technology,” “100% customer satisfaction,” etc. These terms are more often than not used to make people believe that the product can 100% resolve their problems.
Further, you can find some grey areas in unethical advertisements like not disclosing all terms and conditions, black-hat link building techniques, using people’s information without consent to send emails, emotional exploitation and so forth. However, these terms are not breaking law and hence cannot be considered illegal.
Unethical advertising means relaxing moral values or ethical codes, but illegal advertising means breaking laws that may harm customers.
Conclusion
It is impossible to be on the one side of the fence. Whether advertising is ethical or unethical has always been a debatable topic. The most common reasons for inviting a debate over this topic is there is no particular definition of ethical behavior as it is driven by internal beliefs.
At last, you can say that an advertisement is ethical as long as it is created with the intention that consumers will comprehend it and be persuaded to act on it to derive positive results. An ad becomes unethical if it is made with the intention to fool customers to only fetch money out of their pockets.
