I'm beginning to believe that it's just impossible to do advertising ethically. The hypothesis is that an advertising firm that attempts to do so will perform worse than ones doing unethical things, and eventually lose customers.
I've come to this conclusion a long time ago. If consumers have perfect information about a class of product from different producers then advertising would be completely useless and the market for that product would be completely efficient (on the consumer side). Of course consumers don't have perfect information, and that's what the marketing industry claims their purpose is to address.
But really the role that the marketing industry (at least for typical products and services) actually plays is to selectively give information to consumers to influence their buying decisions against how they would behave in an efficient market. And then it's a very short and slippery slope to just straight up lying about products and manipulating consumers through their insecurities, which we see happening all the time with how the marketing industry has developed for the last few decades especially with online advertisements.
It's corporate behaviour modification and social engineering. Perhaps not a surprise to anyone familiar with Bernays and his Propaganda.
I don't see it as information asymmetry, so much as mostly mediocre products and services designed to a budget trying to look more exciting and life-changing than they could ever hope to be.
The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
>The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
Yes, exactly this right here. It was straight up bizarre to grow up with near 0 advertising in commie Eastern Europe and get hit with a shockwave of fairly disgusting ad bullshit when we moved to the US. I was shocked at people putting up with it as if it is something to be tolerated instead of burned to ashes. I continue to be shocked.
I mean, the Stasi was pretty bad. Soviet political prisons were pretty bad. I'll take advertising as the cost of doing business if that's the alternative.
But is it? Was the Stasi responsible for the lack of advertisements?
I would argue it's completely orthogonal. You can selective adopt other cultural practices.
Resistance to advertising does not imply mass surveillance, it's actually the opposite.
Advertising, the entire industry, exists to convince you to buy something you don't want, hence why you have to be talked into it, through psychological manipulation, preying on your insecurities, repetition via repeat ad exposure, and insane amounts of money and testing to build brand recognition and create biases to certain companies dubbed "brand loyalty"... so, there is no such thing as ethical advertising.
Advertising is psychological manipulation at scale and it's effective. How does one ethically manipulate someone into doing something they wouldn't do if not influenced to do so? Ethical advertising can't exist, the same way two masses can't occupy the same point in space at the same time.
Thats a bit of a pessimistic if realistic take. Advertising in its ideal form is meant to inform you of something that could improve your life (happiness, productivity, health, etc...). It could conceivably be "let the consumer know that our product solves their problems that competitors can't solve or for a cheaper cost." Of course, cutting corners leads to more profits for less effort, so that's what often happens.
Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.
Although, the sharing of useful information is different than an advertisement, entirely, so such a thing wouldn't be called an ad.
Wikipedia exists to share information and inform us of something we might find useful. It doesn't need to be pushed on anyone. It just needs to exist in the open.
Anytime something is brought to you that you didn't ask for, demanding your attention, there is motive behind why it's being done, be it a coworker pitching a tool to you trying to get buy-in and force a decision they want to be made in their favor, a flyer of sales happening at the grocery store that's delivered to your door on Sunday, or the blinking square ad impression telling you that if you just give up some of your money, they will provide you with a service that will make you feel like you're making progress on something (and then you'll convince yourself that's true even if it's not because nobody likes to admit they made a mistake and wasted time and/or money).
Ads are forced upon us, telling us something, and there is so much motive behind why it's being done, people will spend millions to make sure you see it. Even if it's just a tidbit of info, selling no product, whoever is motivated enough to pay a lot of money for you to see it, has motive to push an agenda which you seeing that info stands to benifet from. It's still manipulation. It's not possible to be ethical.
The only example of real world ethical advertising I can think of, would be the million dollar webpage. A webpage of pixels purchased to show an ad, that you have to willingly make the decision to navigate to and look at, and that website no longer exists, which proves my point pretty well imo
That isn't right. When the Wright Brothers went on tour to advertise their new contraption called the airplane, that was advertising, and it wasn't manipulation. Maybe someone could have argued they were just selling snake oil back then, but in retrospect.
Ideally speaking of course, there is room to advertise stuff. Like advertising a vaccine so you don't get sick or die; sure the vaccine maker is also going to make money on giving you that vaccine, but it is still an ad that might be "ehtical."
Sure, no motive or financial incentive to do so at all...
> The brothers contacted the United States Department of War, the British War Office and a French syndicate on October 19, 1905. The U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification replied on October 24, 1905, specifying they would take no further action "until a machine is produced which by actual operation is shown to be able to produce horizontal flight and to carry an operator."
> The brothers turned their attention to Europe, especially France, where enthusiasm for aviation ran high, and journeyed there for the first time in 1907 for face-to-face talks with government officials and businessmen. They also met with aviation representatives in Germany and Britain. Before traveling, Orville shipped a newly built Model A Flyer to France in anticipation of demonstration flights. In France, Wilbur met Frank P. Lahm, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Aeronautical Division. Writing to his superiors, Lahm smoothed the way for Wilbur to give an in-person presentation to the U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification in Washington, DC, when he returned to the U.S. This time, the Board was favorably impressed, in contrast to its previous indifference.
> With further input from the Wrights, the U.S. Army Signal Corps issued Specification 486 in December 1907, inviting bids for construction of a flying machine under military contract.[90] The Wrights submitted their bid in January,[b] and were awarded a contract on February 8, 1908
> In May they went back to Kitty Hawk with their 1905 Flyer to practice for their contracted demonstration flights.
> The brothers' contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, DC.
This whole thread is classic overthinking. Advertising isn’t a binary good/bad morality thing. It is in many ways subjective. There have been times an ad helped me learn about something that solved a problem or need I have. There have been times where an ad was pushing something that I personally (subjectively) consider to be useless junk.
It depends. Ads aren’t inherently good or evil. Step back from dogma for a second.
> Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.
Sure, if that existed in a vacuum, and not in a capitalist economic system where you are rewarded by doing unethical things to generate more profit. In reality, there is no way to successfully deploy ethical advertising. Even if one tried, it could never compete with the ones not being ethical, since they will have higher returns, and infinitely more budget as a result, to make it so your ethical ad is never even shown to a single human eyeball
I agree with you on the large scale, but once I zoom in, my thoughts get murkier. I can't think of any ethical digital advertising, but have a harder time condemning all advertising. How would you evaluate these kind of ads:
- Asking customer to place yard signs on their property
- Small businesses putting physical ads in other small businesses
- Printing shirts, hats, pop sockets, etc. . . and handing them out for free
- sponsoring local events/athletes/scholars
- Parade floats, community bulletein boards, festival/event booths
- wrapping company vehicles
I guess, after typing out this list, none of this is targeted advertising; maybe that's what separates them in my mind.
You're kidding right? Everything you listed is being done with because of a motive where they stand to gain somehow. They are not providing a public service. While the definition of advertisement does include "just telling someone something", in practise in the real world, advertisements exist because someone has motive to make them because they stand to gain from doing so, where as "just telling someone something" is never called an advertisement it's called an announcement or a broadcast.
> - Asking customer to place yard signs on their property
They don't ask the customer to do so out of the kindness of their hearts, they offer a discount on the bill for doing so. Another way to look at that same situation, is, extortion - "run our ad on your lawn for a month or you'll pay more for this work"... And, the discount compared to the length of time they get an ad spot on someone's lawn is probably very much in the favor of the company. Charging someone more money unless they advertise your business, not out of satisfaction, but because the other option is to pay more, isn't very ethical to me, as the customer basically is given a choice that isn't a choice unless they want to knowingly spend more money for nothing.
> - Small businesses putting physical ads in other small businesses
They share ads between each other to try to leach of off each others customers. Maybe even closer to "participate in our shared cartel or we'll send folks to some competitor who does.". Either way, it's not being done to inform folks of something, it's being done to profit and these users are already out, spending money, and close by, so it's the cheapest costing acquisition funnel.
> - Printing shirts, hats, pop sockets, etc. . . and handing them out for free
That merch given out is paid for by the company's marketing budget and that's because what they are buying is ad space with potentially unlimited and extremely cheap display time. You see a nice company giving you a shirt for free. What they see is a sucker who is happy to become a walking billboard that will go to packed concerts, bars, tv shows, friend groups, etc for the price of a cheap t shirt and silk screen, for the life of the tshirt, gaining brand recognition if nothing else the entire time. Manipulating a person into thinking the free shirt they were given is ethical advertising when they are actually being used to freely advertise their brand, not something I'd consider ethical.
> - sponsoring local events/athletes/scholars
All done to get a giant banner on the fence of the field, have your branding stamped on every helmet, bike, bat, glove, shirt, said in every annoucement, etc. They aren't "sponsoring" those things, they are paying for advertising space, and saying it's not that isn't very ethical. They aren't doing anything for the good of the community, they are doing it for mindshare. Redbull on every extreme sport for instance.
> - Parade floats, community bulletein boards, festival/event booths
Parade floats are so the company gets a mention or airtime or mindshare as it passes by people. Festivals and event booths, please see my free tshirt reply. That booth they purchased or conference they sponsored is advertising budget and used to push their product on attendees.
- wrapping company vehicles
> I used to do fleet vehicles for corporations. Company branding applied to company fleets is not advertising. It's so when those service vehicles arrive to a customer, they are recognizable by those expecting them (UPS, FedEX, DHL, Geek Squad, etc). They inevitably get used to advertise, because of course they do, but the only thing they can do is steal mindshare and force through repeat exposure a bias for the company just because you see their name more often. It's manipulation, and hardly ethical.
I'm not going to reply to example after example. No matter the application, no matter they given benifets or percieved value you think they are giving, the end result is for you to give them money, and the fact that so many forms of ads exist that people don't see as exactly that, companies talking you out of your money or otherwise using you to make money (walking billboard), shows that it's not possible to be ethical advertising. Ethical advertising is build a good product, let it speak for itself by being a good product, and let happy customers spread word when they want to, if they want to, and for no other reason than because of the product they are impressed with. If you're not selling garbage, or shit people don't need, you shouldn't have to spend money to manipulate people into thinking they need it.
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98].*
It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
— The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998
It might be possible, were it not for the fact that the advertising industry has their customers so convinced that the stalking they do is truly effective compared to a mix of scatter-gun approaches and simply advertising in relevant places. No one will buy advertising services from a company that says “yeah, we don't do that thing that everyone else says is essential”. It doesn't actually have to be effective, those buying advertising services just have to be somewhat convinced that it might be.
(I'm separating the ethical matters in advertising from those in selling here, even if spreading awareness through advertising was made less unethical by removing the stalking and other irritations, that still leaves a lot of room for unethical sales techniques)
Google ads used to be great. Just include some ads based on the content you’re looking at. Not based on some weird history and cookies.
I don’t mind those ads. But just keep them small, light, non interesting, and don’t sell my data.. be the platform that protects my data when matching up advertisers.
All business is inherently unethical and relies on hiding and externalizing costs of production unto the environment, a vulnerable population, or other forms of legal/tax trickery.
Advertising is no more evil than the for-profit healthcare system in the US, or the food industry, or really any other industry, when you really stop to consider it.
People who think they are operating or working for an "ethical" business are simply unaware or willfully ignorant of its costs. Typically it is the latter, or as Upton Sinclair beautifully put it — "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
My furnace broke after 15 years. I called a business to fix it. They replaced the dead pump motor and it worked again. The repair guy was paid well and I was happy to pay. What exactly is inherently unethical about this?
How about the cost of producing and shipping the new motor pump, and the cost of disposing of the old one?
And do you think the individuals who made the motor pump are treated and compensated fairly, or are they likely exploited in third-world dystopia to bring you (but mostly the business) cost savings?
And this is saying nothing of the actual use of the furnace and all the energy it requires.
And I have yet to see ONE example of a business which does not exploit someone or something, only cognitive dissonance.
So any lack of ethics in the supply chain (which presumably goes back to raw materials) means the entire thing is unethical? I am not sure what definition of ethics this is, but it is so strict as to render everyone and everything unethical, so perhaps not a very useful definition.
If you honestly believe the product is separate from the production and supply chains, you are either woefully misinformed or under the disillusionment of modern capitalist economics.
I didn’t say the product was separate; I merely asked whether you view everything as tainted if its supply chain has any unethical component. Sounds like you do!
What a load of rubbish... Your entire argument hinges on what you consider 'fair compensation' and your value judgement about energy cost. Guess what--living your life and using resources is not unethical
What is incongruous or dishonest about it? You have provided no counter-argument, no alternative theory, only petulance at my recognition of the facts of your sad life.
That is precisely my point though. Just to exist in this world is to have a negative impact on other humans, animals and the environment. The effect is magnified when you live outside of humans' ecological tropical niche as well. While I'm not judging or condemning humanity, I believe it is important to recognize it for what it is.
Ethics are not a law of nature, it's basically an opinion. Your opinion may be that all business is unethical, but most people disagree.
Most people consider it to be ethical to trade money for goods and services at an agreed price, for example.
Similarly I think most people would agree that hiding the truth from people in order to have them do things they wouldn't do if they knew the truth, is unethical. Tracking people's activity without telling them that you are doing it would be unethical by that standard.
what's the ethical alternative? everybody must produce everything they want/need without any sort of trading, and without owning any land? or does the government just force people to work and distribute everything anybody needs?
The ethical alternative is one that balances innovation and entrepreneurship with ecological and social responsibility.
You can use resources, invent stuff, and organise people to work on it, but you only get to do it if Reality-Based Accounting rates the project as a net positive for the planet, and you have to share some of the benefits.
And if you can't make it happen without being consistently cruel and exploitative to some individuals, groups, or locations, you don't get to do it again.
This is not trivial to organise. But it's far more likely to lead to an R&D explosion than the current myopic and manic-depressive comic book version of "the economy" we're all supposed to have irrational faith in.
nothing to spur innovation like panning every idea through a global counsel of magicians who know what's best for the planet.
aside from global consensus on ideas like 'the planet', it'd require mass labor force control and government assignment, two ideas i'm not thrilled about.
I could see it working in a sci-fi novel, but I have a hard time closing the gaps between them and us.
How is aggressive centralized gating supposed to lead to R&D when history shows freedom leads to innovation and prosperity? You don’t need to have faith in anything. The economy exists and is all around us providing great value.
This is so theoretical it will never work in an acceptable way.
Because of who will decide is responsible and on what grounds?
What will come of it will most likely be analogous to the Communist system where just a central committee was in charge of making all the decisions. and to be quite clear: this system failed utterly and completely. Without the capitalist west there would have been famines in DDR and the east.
On what I agree is, that we need a strong state factoring in stuff like ecological consequences via taxation- so the decision to buy or make stuff is distributed.
Fair point, but if we're stretching the definition to the point where nothing can be ethical, then there isn't any meaning to the word "ethical" as it relates to a binary "is" or "is not."
If we agree that nothing can be fully "ethical," there still should be some continuum on which to place the current system, unless you contend that every system and/or action is ethically equal, which I would further contend erases any meaning of the word rendering the premise moot.
So that said, is there any system that is more ethical than the current?
I made a simple assertion: business cannot be ethical, but it is inherently exploitative.
I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case.
Instead of examples, I got back screetching, whining and whataboutism. People would rather bury their head in the sand and think they're acting virtuously in this world. The cognitive dissonance here is frankly alarming, if it weren't so expected for entitled first-world engineers.
But you only quoted the first part of my statement and not the proof, which I did state:
> All business [...] relies on hiding and externalizing costs of production unto the environment, a vulnerable population, or other forms of legal/tax trickery.
Are you aware of a business which does not have any externalized costs of production which have a negative impact on someone or something?
> I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case. Instead of examples, I got back screetching, whining and whataboutism.
Please, point out where I did any of that sort.
And I asked for an example of a system that is more ethical, and got nothing but dodging and bitching. I don't think you have any ground to stand on to demand examples (certainly from me, who if you care to read again I'm not disputing your position that business can't be ethical, so it makes zero sense to ask me for an example). It seems unreasonable to expect of others what you aren't willing to give yourself. Dare I say that's ... unethical?
If you want to complain about the real world, then offer solutions that work in the real world. We can then consider and debate them and maybe get somewhere. If you just want to make philosophical contemplations, I'm actually up for that, but not if you aren't going to even bother getting your arguments straight. You just look like a troll in that case.
Actually I changed my mind. I am disputing your contention and here is my example. Please point out where the unethical parts are.
Person a and person b are stranded on an island in the South Pacific. There are no other humans around. Person A gets pretty good at catching fish, while person b gets pretty good at harvesting coconuts. Individually, person a can catch six fish and harvest two coconuts. Person b can catch one fish and harvest eight coconuts. Person b is concerned about not getting enough protein, so they approach person a and offer to trade two coconuts for one fish. Person a Agrees, and a mutually agreeable business transaction has taken place. Both parties are better off than they were before. What part of this is unethical?
By the way, please don't take offense by any of this. You seem to have thick enough skin to trade barbs, and honestly this has been an interesting discussion (minus some unneeded name calling but that's a minor detail between friends like us)
It is telling the only example of an ethical business is a contrived hypothetical scenario entirely removed from objective reality.
What makes it epically hilarious is it is also based on a completely false assertion "person b" needs protein from fish, because they cannot get it from coconut. Be sure to check the following links before you start clamoring about amino acids, too.
It's not entirely removed from objective reality. Firstly, there is no such thing as objective reality for humans. Secondly, the principles that underpin this scenario are highly active in the world today. Things like specialization, efficiency, division of labor, etc.
Not too long ago my neighbor cleaned the carburetor on my lawn mower, and I fixed his router config in exchange. He would have had to spend tons of time figuring out how to do it himself, but it took me 5 minutes. I could have cleaned my own carburetor, but he already had the cleaner and had freshly done one, so it took him 5 minutes but would have taken me 30 minutes plus a trip to the store. The same principles from the example are at play here.
And whether Person B can get enough protein from coconuts is entirely irrelevant. All that matters in this scenario is that Person B was concerned about it and wanted to trade.
> Firstly, there is no such thing as objective reality for humans
What? This is just silly. You don't know the difference between hypothetical fantasy and real life, or are you just being hyperbolic?
> Secondly, the principles that underpin this scenario are highly active in the world today
Still, it is irrelevant since I asked for a real world example.
> Not too long ago my neighbor cleaned the carburetor on my lawn mower, and I fixed his router config in exchange
Another contrived example which excludes the entire world. Who made the lawn mower? Who made the router? Literal slaves in a third world country. Surely you are not so ignorant you know this?
> whether Person B can get enough protein from coconuts is entirely irrelevant
It is not irrelevant; it is hilarious you don't know this simple nutritional fact.
It does not matter what I think; objectively and indisputably my existence in the world, especially in a first-world country, has an enormously negative impact on the planet. And I'm an individual with a conscience - now imagine a business with diversified shareholders!
Funnily I agree with this. But where you go with it sounds like a stubborn “iam14andthisisdeep”.
Language and values should be useful for us to make decisions on. Saying everything is bad and there’s no alternative can be true in a sense but it is not useful, and in most discussions just sounds inane.
Yet the true mental adolescence and gymnastics through this post is the abject failure to furnish even one example of a business which can be considered ethical, instead choosing to believe the false notion we can live, work and shop without consequence.
Maybe you’re missing the point. This is like having a conversation with a nihilist. Yes objectively there is no meaning in the universe. It’s all made up. Now what? We have to move on from that. We live in fictions and narratives that are useful for our success. Just calling everything unethical isn’t useful beyond a dorm room mental exercise.
I don’t think it does! But you shouldn’t be surprised when people are operating under a different framework when engaging with the world. And discussions won’t go anywhere trying to get different conclusions out of different starting points and motives. If everything is unethical then nothing matters, but people don’t want nothing to matter so they construct shades of grey to make choices and judgements on. Your “um actually everything is unethical” is irrelevant to the game they’re playing.
Not to mention it’s absurd a conversation this long hasn’t pointed out the relativity of ethical judgments or event attempted to define what ethical even means.
> Not to mention it’s absurd a conversation this long hasn’t pointed out the relativity of ethical judgments or event attempted to define what ethical even means.
> But you shouldn’t be surprised when people are operating under a different framework when engaging with the world.
The majory of people are idiots, so this part is almost certainly expected and acceptable.
> If everything is unethical then nothing matters, but people don’t want nothing to matter so they construct shades of grey to make choices and judgements on. Your “um actually everything is unethical” is irrelevant to the game they’re playing.
Where did I say everything is unethical? Where did I say nothing matters? This is the way people want to re-frame the conversation because it is too difficult for them to break through their conditioning to apprehend how the world works.
I can’t be bothered to look back up the convo tree. But I remember you saying or implying all commercial activity is unethical and refusing to discuss alternatives among other comments with similar thrust. Other people are trying to do comparative ethics and you’re not playing the same game so makes me wonder what you’re trying to accomplish with short comment bombs.
It’s like you’re walking onto a baseball field trying to play football. You should either surrender the field or undertake a much more in depth education session on the rules of the game you want to switch to. Else it’s just madness.
