...Code of Ethics – Assignment 2 Andrea Denette March 18, 2015 Integrated Corporate Communication, Comm 3010 Paul Lindsley, M.A., ABC The word ethics has many definitions depending on who you are speaking with and if it is business related. One person may tell you that ethics has to do with what is right and wrong. Another may say it has to do with that law of the land. In fact there are many interpretations and definitions for ethics. In Corporate Communications there is a totally different set of code of ethics. The standards for professional communicators are similar to each other and they also have their differences in relation to their actual profession. I am going to compare and contrast the different codes of the major associations of professional communications. I am going to discuss one from the Journalist profession: The Society of Professional Journalist (SPJ), Public relations and information: Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the business profession: American Advertising Federation (AAF). All three of these have some of the same basic codes for example: respect, truth, accountability, honesty and avoiding conflicts of interest. Any member of The Society of Professional Journalist believe the public has a right to know of any events or issues in the world. They believe that this is the “forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy” (Unit 4). All journalists look for the truth and then let the public know about it. The Society...
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...Ethics in Advertising Abstract Business is about selling something whether that be a service or a product. Advertising that service or product has to be done to get the word out that the service or product is available but at the same time nobody wants their competition to be stronger. Can advertising be done ethically? Advertising applies to anyone that makes purchases and uses products or services. Advertisements are used to capture consumers’ attention and make them want to purchase their products, use their service, or interpret a specific message. Commercial advertising is the means for many corporations to spread the word about their products or services. It is currently the most effective means of getting a message across to a large audience across the world, and advertising aids the link between the actual production of a good or service and its consumption by consumers. Because of the significance of advertising, the average person is exposed to up to 5,000 ad messages per day. (Chan & Shenoy 2009). Advertising is constantly reminding consumers of their brands and the message that they are trying to portray. Any form of space, even the walls in public toilet cubicles, has the potential to be used for advertising. This is especially pertinent coupled with the use of the Internet, making advertisements all the more accessible (illustrated by video-sharing websites like YouTube); regardless of which part in the world the advertisement...
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...Ethics in marketing and advertising Ethics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality; i.e. about concepts, such as good and bad, justice and virtue, right and wrong. In other word, we can say that Ethics are moral principles that govern the actions and decisions of an individual group. It is governed by a set of principles of morality at a given time, at a given place and in a given society. Ethics is closely related to group behavior in ultimate analysis, thus norms for an individual to follow should be set in consistence with the group norms. The mixing of art and facts in advertising communication are submissive to ethical principles. In today’s competitive market, an advertisement has to be truthful and ethical. The credibility of an organization is lost If an advertisement is misleading. To view the truth in advertisement, it has to be seen from the consumer’s point of view and not from the legal point. The advertising industry has been frequently criticized for putting out misleading or exaggerated claims in respect of products, goods and services. It is also alleged as guilty of glorifying certain habits or tendencies regarded as undesirable and encouraging consume rest culture. However, it is very difficult to draw a clear line of difference between what is true and what is untrue. The advertisement is judged by its impact and its acceptance by the consumers. The product must fulfill the claims it’s advertised...
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...Ethics Issues University of Phoenix MGT 216 Organizational Ethics and Social Responsibility 20th July, 2009 Ethics Issues Less than a year ago a regional property supervisor working for California Commercial Investment found an accountant stealing from the company. More specifically, the accountant was posting charges for one of our buildings (i.e. labor and supplies for painting), cutting checks, misleading the owner to sign them and cashing them for himself. He was able to steal a few thousand dollars with his unethical behavior before being caught by the property supervisor. Unethical behaviors like the one previously described are not uncommon in today’s business world. Indeed, workers during the course of their careers can face several ethical issues; therefore, understanding what business ethics is and how to deal with ethics issues can increase the chances to take appropriate actions when ethics issues occur. Bateman & Snell (2008) stated that business ethics “comprises the moral principles and standards that guide in the world business” (p. 181). In today’s business world, every organization has a legal responsibility to obey local, federal, state, and international laws. Further, every organization has an ethical responsibility which means meeting social expectations that are not translated in laws. Finally, every organization has a corporate social responsibility which is “the obligation toward society assumed by business. The socially responsible business maximizes...
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...CONTENTS Sl No Description Page No 1. Acknowledgement 2 2. What is meant by Advertisement 4 3. What is Ethics? 5-7 4. Ethics of Advertisement : Introduction 8-9 5. Ethics & Advertising 10-17 6. Ethics of Advertising 18-21 7. Some Ethical & Moral principles 22-26 8. The Ethics of Behavioral Advertisement 27-30 9. Attention, But at What Cost! 31-38 10. Benefits of Ethical Advertising 39-42 11. Harm done by Unethical Advertising 43-48 12. Conclusion 49 13. Bibliography 50 What do you mean by advertisement? Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. “While now central to the contemporary global economy and the reproduction of global production networks, it is only quite recently that advertising has been more than a marginal influence on patterns of sales and production. The formation of modern advertising was intimately bound up with the emergence of new forms of monopoly capitalism around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century as one element in corporate strategies to create, organize and where possible control markets, especially for mass produced consumer goods. Mass production necessitated mass consumption, and this in turn required a certain homogenization of consumer tastes for final products. At its limit, this involved seeking to create ‘world cultural convergence’, to homogenize consumer tastes and engineer a ‘convergence...
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...Good Advertising or Not? David A. Gatti BUSI 612-Integrated Faith & Learning Report Liberty University November 10, 2015 Abstract This paper will discuss a Bible verse(s) that would guide a marketer as they developed advertisements that would be considered within the boundaries of “good advertising.” Keywords: good advertising, advertising ethics, corporate social responsibility Good Advertising or Not? Advertisements Advertisements are an important vehicle designed to promote or help sell a product, service or idea (Young, 2014, p.35). As a dimension of IMC, advertising is “…most often associated with offenses that attract attention from critics and regulators alike” (Young, 2014, p.34). This can be contributed to the powerful effect whether perceived or not that ads have in persuading, influencing, disputing and or changing. According to Karp (1974), “Advertising can be that magnetic force” (p.1). Ad’s meanings, interpretations, and controversies can have adverse effects on consumers, societies and economies. There are laws, rules and guidelines in place to help protect the interests and rights of consumers, competing firms, affiliations and even the free speech of advertisers. Good Advertising Despite designed preventive measures, of course, the consequences of deceptive and abusive advertising have resulted compensated harm and convicting lawbreakers. But, fortunately, the majority of ads overall, past or present, are considered as positive...
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...definitions: Ethics – the study of whatever is right and good for humans Business ethics – business actions etc in light of some aspect of human value. - it requires the evaluation of business practices. - Goes beyond facts to include the “ought to” of a situation. The two traditional issues involved with ethics: 1. Ethical Relativism – are there universal values that apply to everyone or is everything relative to individual, country, company etc. a. Relates to cultural relativism. This presumes that different peoples reason about morality varies by culture, education and religious traditions. b. Arguments for ER are: i. Empirical evidence of cultural relativism. ii. There is no viable universal standard that can be applied to everyone. c. Arguments against ER are: i. Just because finding universals is hard – that does not imply that ER is correct. ii. Just because a particular issues is not resolved does not imply that it is, in principle, not ever resolvable. iii. Taking ER to its full extent means that you can’t justify any moral judgements at all. d. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977) attempted to legislate that what we say is moral is how we should behave. This Act was driven by the issue that you are being inconsistent with yourself if you say something is immoral yet do it anyway just because you are in a foreign country. 2. Truth telling – can you ever justify not telling the truth? Must we communicate honestly? a. A vigorous defender of truth telling...
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...Luke Piatek Compare and Contrast Codes of Ethics November 5, 2012 The codes of ethics for journalists, broadcasters, advertising industry professionals and public relations professionals are related in that they outline the accepted behavior of media professionals. However, apart from that, each group has its own issues and concerns unique to the branch of the media they work in. And these guidelines are more like suggestions in that they cannot be legally enforced. The First Amendment guarantees freedom for media professionals to stray from the suggestions in each code and they often do. The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics is the most comprehensive and detailed of the four. It covers acceptable behavior for all types of stories and many different subjects. It is also the most idealistic in that it clearly states that the role of a journalist is to be the foundation for democracy and to inform the public in order for citizens to make educated choices. Because the goals of the SPJ code are the most idealistic and high minded, I believe it is also the code that is broken the most. Because the code encourages fair and unbiased reporting and protection of innocent subjects, it can be argued that many journalists’ sole purpose is to break the code or else they would be fired. With news outlets that cater to partisan politics and tabloids that thrive on sensationalist stories, the code is bound to be broken. Even with so called straight news wires, human bias...
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...Business Law and Corporate Ethics Shawn Greiner May13, 2014 Faculty: Jonathan McGovern BUS2112 A05 Argosy University Online Ethical Concerns of False information Ethical lapses and moral indiscretions can occur under the pressures in today’s marketplace to generate profits. In general, business people, students, customers know the difference between right and wrong! Ethics are related to matters of right and wrong or moral conduct pertaining to marketing communications. Central Issues of Ethics * Advocacy * Accuracy * Acquisitiveness Short-term manipulative arguments * Focusing on style of advertising * Targeting Kids, Teens and the Elderly * Long-term macro arguments * Focus on the social or environmental impact of advertising * Complete information * Deception * Absence of externalities * Social costs Deceptive Advertising * False Promises * Incomplete Description * Stating some but not all of the product’s contents * Solid oak furniture (only desktop solid) * Misleading Comparisons, visual distortions * False Testimonials, false demos * Partial Disclosures * Kraft cheese slices made with 5 oz. of milk but omit the processing loses about 2 oz. of the milk * Small-Print Qualifications * Bait and Switch Guidelines to Ethical Advertising * Truthful * Substantiate Claims * Refrain from False Comparisons * No bait! * Explicit guarantees * No false price...
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...for their advertising Advertising heavily influences the customers’ decision-making process as it puts people in touch with the latest products and technology available. With the help of advertising, there are more chances for cutting-edge products to be understood by the target customers. Thus, the companies always stand in a positive position and that means they should assume the responsibility for the information provided and should be brought to justice if they don’t live up to their promises. With respect to advertising, both the company and customer seek benefits. There are some convincing reasons for why all business have a legal responsibility to ensure that advertising is truthful and not deceptive, and no matter where advertising appears, the same truth-in-advertising standard applies. To start with, the Federal Trade Commission has taken action against dozens of companies that claimed to safeguard the privacy or security of users’ information, but didn’t live up to their promises in the day-to-day operation of their business (Federal Trade Commission). Therefore, if the products provide benefits, such as for health, safety, or performance, the company should attach competent and reliable scientific evidence. Moreover, there have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the influence of advertising. Specifically, in countries like New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and many European countries; their advertising industry...
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...Student Name Ethics in Information Technology Deceptive Advertising Deceptive Advertising Marketers spend lots of time in designing advertisements. As part of this process, they are required to make ethical choices. The advertisements consists the choices. Telling the truth in advertisement is a pretty ethical standard. However, like we are aware in todays world, there is pure truth and there is useful truth. Mostly we will see or notice useful truth on advertisement instead of pure truth. Marketers make unethical decisions when creating deceptive advertisements. That creates huge impact on customers and their experiences with the company. Moreover, there is an impact with the companies creating deceptive advertisements as well, such as either growing customer inquiries or legal issues with government regulations. Deceptive advertising is a global ethical issue. Several airline companies in United States have faced huge fines from Department of Transportation in regards to deceptive advertising. One of the airlines was Southwest. Southwest airlines have been charged for deceptive advertising for numerous times. Most recent was in early 2014, the company paid $200,000 for advertising inaccurate information on the air. Moreover, they were charged additional $100,000 for being repeated offender. Department of Transportation stays proactive and monitors the information that companies put out there for customers. Anthony Foxx, US transportation secretary stated that consumer...
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...introduction to the book, the author laid the ground work for what the book is about – ethics. He felt that the code and practice of advertising calls for at the very minimum, a respect for the ideals of advertising which are truth, honesty, decency and legality. Advertising should also show respect for cultural values and prepared with a high sense of social responsibility. Having been a member of Rotary International for years, he could not resist the temptation to depict Advertising Guidelines along the lines of the Rotary 4-Way Test thus: Is it the truth? Is it decent? Is it honest? Is it legal? Under the heading, Understanding Advertising in the integrated marketing mix, the author correctly categorized advertising as a communication tool. He further broke down Marketing Communication into Journalism, Advertising, Public Relation Sales Promotions. He quoted Peter Davies definition of marketing as: “A series of activities, culminating in satisfying customer needs and doing so making a profit”. He went further to make the point that advertising can be appropriately employed to advance social causes. Examples he gave are quite interesting For instance in the US, there was this campaign: ‘5 Ways to Prevent Being Mugged’. Other examples given are campaigns to promote farming to strengthen the economy and another to promote low gasoline consumption. He summarised by saying advertising can be used to develop human resources, promote citizens awareness, preserve...
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...Current Ethical Issues Noah Morrison Organizational Ethics and Social Responsibility/XMGT 216 4/29/12 Lisa Henry Axia College University of Phoenix Current Ethical Issues This paper will explore the ethical issues that may become involved when dealing with my chosen theoretical organization. The organization that I choose was Riordan Manufacturing. This company is a plastics manufacturer that creates beverage containers and other plastic containers for soft drink and snack food manufacturers. The company employs over 550 people in various positions and is completely owned by Riordan Industries, which is a fortune 1000 company. The plastics business in todays’ world is a lucrative one; almost everything that we use, consume, or transport in is made at least partially of plastic. In the case of Riordan Manufacturing the focus is on creating durable and attractive looking beverage bottles for soft drink manufacturers. While at first glance one might think of this as being an ethically straightforward business with little controversy, this is not always the case. The scope of this paper will include exploring the ethical issues surrounding the environment, truth in advertising, employee organization and Riordan’s ethical commitment to the community. One of the first things that a businessman would notice when examining the plastics industry is that the oil-based substance is not a renewable resource. One cannot continue to create new plastic...
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...Marketing ethics is the area of applied ethics which deals with the moral principles behind the operation and regulation of marketing. Some areas of marketing ethics (ethics of advertising and promotion) overlap with media ethics. Contents 1 Fundamental issues in the ethics of marketing 1.1 Frameworks of analysis for marketing Possible frameworks 1.2 Power-based analysis 1.3 Is marketing inherently evil? 2 Specific issues in marketing ethics 2.1 Market research 2.2 Market audience 2.3 Pricing ethics 2.4 Ethics in advertising and promotion 2.4.1 Content 2.4.2 Delivery channels 2.4.3 Deceptive Advertising and Ethics 2.5 The use of ethics as a marketing tactic 2.6 Neuromarketing ethics 2.7 Marketing strategy 2.8 Further issues in marketing ethics 3 Regulation and enforcement 4 See also 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 External links Fundamental issues in the ethics of marketing[edit] Frameworks of analysis for marketing Possible frameworks[edit] Value-oriented framework, analyzing ethical problems on the basis of the values which they infringe (e.g. honesty, autonomy, privacy, transparency). An example of such an approach is the AMA Statement of Ethics.[1] Stakeholder-oriented framework, analyzing ethical problems on the basis of whom they affect (e.g. consumers, competitors, society as a whole). Process-oriented framework, analyzing ethical problems in terms of the categories used by marketing specialists (e.g. research, price, promotion, placement). None...
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...photo manipulation and enhancement has always been my strength. Being part of the creatives team of a school organization and my internship for Styles Entertainment Group allowed me to practice and improve my skill. I want to stay a “creatives person” and I plan on entering the advertising industry. A dilemma one might run into in the industry would be whether it is okay to alter a photo or not. Editing photos challenge one to recognize the difference between ethics, which is the judgement of what is right or wrong, and aesthetics, which is the judgment of personal approval or disapproval based on senses , and choose which to keep among the two. A question that would always be at the back of one’s mind when altering a photo might be “To what extent is it okay to edit a photo for the sake of promoting and advertising”? If we are striving for truth in advertising, should photos even be “doctored” at all? Photo enhancing and manipulation can be used for many things,...
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