The need for ethics in media and business decision making
by Charlie Rall

    When I took the SAT in high school I had an interesting essay question. It was something along the lines of whether or not advertisements should be allowed in schools. For example, should a banner ad for a soda company hang in the cafeteria of a middle school? I thought to myself that this is a ridiculous concept and of course the answer is no. My reasoning: “school sucks so bad already- why bombard kids with annoying ads while they’re there?”
    But then I thought back to when I ate in my middle school lunch room and remembered the banner ads for the Got Milk? campaign featuring popular musicians or athletes modeling with their milk mustaches hanging on the walls. So apparently “no” is not the obvious answer. The Got Milk? ads were harmless and probably for the best considering what they were advertising but they were still ads and they were still in schools.
    Reflecting now I see this as as an ethical dilemma. I am taking a college class now called Ethics, Law, and Diversity in Strategic Communications, which is also why I am writing this blog post. School is a place where kids are already very impressionable and sensitive. Their minds are open to learning thus they are more susceptible to things around them like advertisements in the cafeteria. Even as an advertising major I still firmly stand that advertisements should not be allowed in schools because it gives advertisers an unfair advantage over children.
    However, it seems that advertising in schools is just where the line is drawn when it comes to advertising to children. Advertisers target kids all the time. I mean, isn’t that why Ronald McDonald was born? To sell kids on burgers and fries? A psychologist named Allen Kanner once pinned advertising to kids as the “narcissistic wounding of children”. He thought that advertising to kids was making them more materialistic. Raising kids on advertising is raising them in a environment dangerous to their future selves. The article I link to was written back in September of 2000. It hasn’t gotten any better since then. It’s gotten worse. Even Alex Bogusky, one of the ad kings, stood against advertising to kids in general in an incident where a commercial originally shot to target adults was recut to target kids using Spongebob Squarepants for Burger King.
    There are plenty of laws governing advertisers, but there seems to be a taboo on advertising ethics more so than public relations and journalism. Maybe it’s because we have accepted the idea that advertisers are going to feed us lies no matter what. Journalists are supposed to spoon us the truth so they get it much harder when it comes to deceit.
    I had a professor one semester who was still working in the business who said she was allowed to turn down an account at her agency three times in her career. She only did it once and turned down working on an account for a quick cash loan company. So there are ethical people in advertising. They’re not all savages out to make big money like the infamous creative director Dave Trott who even confessed to straight up lying to get his first job, which included plagiarizing someone else’s work. However, advertisers are still targeting kids, selling harmful products like cigarettes, and using sex as a weapon. So why don’t we see more about the ethics of ads in the news? This isn’t a free for all. Advertising without ethics is like a caged wrestling match between ad people and the consumer and the advertiser is the one with the baseball bat. The Public Broadcasting Station has called it out. It even has a website for kids called “Don’t Buy It! Get Media Smart!” featuring a tab labeled “Advertising Tricks”.
    So maybe this is why I’m taking this class. Maybe I’ll be the one to call it out one day when I see it happen. We need ethics in media and advertising because if we don’t call it out then maybe no one will. I think it’s the advertiser’s responsibility to govern their own actions and to make ethical decisions in the business. Whether it’s deciding whether or not to sell a new product directly to kids or just treating a pretty female intern at the office the right way like we discussed in class- we need ethics.
I hope that my generation of advertisers, which includes my classmates and I, will be the one to make the right decisions, the ethical decisions. I hope that we are the ones to make the ads that will not just sell, but also reflect the values of the client and ourselves.