CHAPTER 10

Ethics in Marketing Communications—Emerging Issues in Digital Media

Ogechi Adeola¹

Lagos Business School

Introduction

Marketing communications is a subset of the marketing mix (the “promotion” part). According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), “Marketing Communications (MarCom) are coordinated promotional messages and related media used to communicate with a market.” The message is usually delivered through five major promotional tools: advertising, sales promotion, public relations (PR), direct marketing, personal selling (the communications mix). The media is the channel of communication that conveys the message. Traditional media channels include broadcast, print, outdoor, and in-store while emerging media channels include digital and other media.² Marketing communications helps to develop brand awareness, shorten the sale process, and sustain demand and preference for a product or brand.

Just as any other business function, marketing communications has its own ethics problems ranging from exploitation and targeting of children to promotion of unhealthy products. However, it is vital that both the media used to propagate marketing communication and the transmitted messages adhere to ethical standards as provided in existing regulations and uphold a high moral quality where the regulations are wanting or deficient. Such adherence is necessary for the sustainability of businesses and the integrity of marketing communications in the long run. According to the AMA declaration regarding ethics:³

Marketers must acquire for themselves the highest ethical regulations and values regarding the professional practices implied by the responsibility toward the interested parts (consumers, employees, investors, members of the media, host communities), regulations being directing standards awaited and maintained at a level of professional organizations and/or society, and the values representing the people’s collective conception about what they consider suitable, desirable, important and fair from a moral point of view, serving as evaluation criteria for the action of others.

Description of Digital Marketing Discipline

The marketing communications landscape has been through much transformation and is continually evolving. Traditional broadcast and print media can be considered fragmented with myriads of TV and radio stations as well as newspapers and magazines. Although the proliferation of traditional media vehicles provides customers more options, it makes it more difficult and complex for brands to reach them. On the other hand, in terms of media consumption, press circulation is declining while digital media is exploding with billions of users and a bourgeoning number of websites and social media channels.

Microsoft TechNet Library (2014) defines digital media as texts, graphics, audio, and video content converted into a format that can be easily manipulated and transmitted over computer networks. Digital media platforms are the tools and devices used for viewing and transmitting digital media and include computers, digital outdoor, mobile devices, digital cameras, and so on. According to Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick,⁴ marketing communications via digital media is carried out through six key digital media channels, namely:

1. Display advertising

2. Social media marketing

3. Search marketing—paid search and search engine optimization (SEO)

4. Email marketing

5. Online PR—media alerting and publisher outreach

6. Online partnership—affiliate marketing, sponsorship, and co-branding

The rise of digital media as a marketing communications channel has contributed significantly to the ongoing transformation of the marketing communications landscape. In turn, this rise has been driven by the emergence of Web 2.0 over the last two decades. Unlike one-way messaging via traditional media that is basically pushed to viewers, marketing communication is now more interactive and dynamic. Advertisers now engage customers in a two-way flow of communication via emails, the Internet, and social media. According to Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick,⁵ time and space, which used to be expensive commodities when communicating with the market via traditional media, is now cheap and unlimited. Brands have unlimited time to communicate with target audiences on digital media, with the only limitation being the amount of time the consumer has to spend. The pricing for space on digital media pales compared to that of traditional media. With digital media also, location is becoming increasingly irrelevant as messages can now reach global markets in an instant. At the same time, clients are becoming more complex and demanding. They now demand more dialogue and personalized communication and can make more informed purchase decisions as well as do much more online.

In the midst of all of the positives, however, the rise in the use of digital media has also added a new layer of ethical considerations for both individuals and businesses. Hence, the old saying that every revolution brings with it new possibilities, as well as challenges, rings very true.

Typical Ethical Issues

Ethics has been a challenge across societies for generations. According to Peter Singer,⁶ it deals with the fundamental issues of practical decision making. Business ethics, which is a balancing act between making profit and doing the right thing further compounds the problem,⁷ and treating business ethics in a totally new field such as this one has its own unique challenges. It is the ethical challenges in this largely uncharted terrain that we shall be discussing in marketing communications via digital media.

Information can spread very quickly on digital media. The sheer number of digital conversations and interactions that take place potentially limits one’s ability to effectively carry out damage control in case of an ethical disaster. It becomes vital therefore to understand the issues surrounding ethics via this medium and to take all measures available to prevent ethical disasters that can be damaging to a brand’s image.

Regulations specific to digital media are almost nonexistent given the novelty of digital media as a channel for marketing communication. Existing regulations and policies governing marketing communication do not, for the most part, apply to digital media. This gap in itself creates some problems. First, there are likely several perfectly well-intentioned businesses that might be engaging in one unethical practice or the other without knowing it. Second, there is an ever-growing gulf between what marketers and consumers think is acceptable. For instance, according to the survey by pollstar YouGov, more marketers (66 percent) than consumers (48 percent) think it is acceptable to give products away for free to encourage positive online reviews. Likewise, more consumers (41 percent) than marketers (15 percent) feel it is misleading for businesses to encourage their employees to like and share positive brand messages on social media.⁸ Formulating a holistic regulation for digital media will take a while but will go a long way in giving all involved parties in the space a sense of direction.

Marketing communications via digital media is fraught with a lot of unethical practices ranging from the sly to the outrageous. The following however are the key ethical issues associated with digital media, that should be emphasized when teaching ethics in marketing communications.

Privacy Issues

Most people like to keep their online activities private and become alarmed when their privacy is breached. Breach of privacy can be considered prevalent in the digital world. According to Jim Barry:⁹

Actions by marketers that infringe on the privacy of individuals can be considered unethical, especially if they potentially harm the individual’s personal and professional credibility. This would include any non-permissive approaches taken by a marketer to disclose profile information as well as the sharing of sensitive personal information through channels that could exploit or otherwise harm an individual’s standing.

There are three major ways marketers violate users’ privacy on digital media: spamming, unwelcomed interruptions, and data profiling.

Spamming

Spam is unsolicited commercial electronic messages sent in bulk. Such messages could be sent via mobile telephony systems or electronic mail (e-mail). Spam typically advertises or promotes goods or services, land, business opportunities, or investment opportunities.¹⁰ For a long while, spamming has been an email issue; however, it is becoming common on other digital media channels. There is a rising concern with SMS blasts and automated calls (outbound dialer) on mobile phones while social media platforms today are inundated with unsolicited postings, both sponsored and unsponsored. Mobile phones, email accounts, and social media accounts are considered very private by most individuals that own them. Therefore, brands must obtain their consent before sending any form of communication. Spamming can hurt a company’s brand image as consumers may look down on brands that engage in it. This situation is even worse for unknown brands, as consumers tend to be more tolerant to spamming from known brands.

Unwelcomed Interruptions

Online marketing can be intrusive and unwelcomed, in certain circumstances. According to Rust et al.

... marketing approach has changed. It used to be about persuading consumers to buy products by “bombarding” customers with numerous advertisements. Today, marketing is about building relationships and trust through effective two-way communications (e.g. talk about something that customers are interested in), and creating products that will help to solve customers’ problems.¹¹

However, most online marketing activities today still follow the traditional interruption marketing approach. Sometimes, brands cleverly and dishonestly try to inject their advertising messages into consumer online conversations in an intrusive manner instead of trying to add real and authentic value to such conversation.¹² In fact, a new technique in digital marketing¹³ called real-time marketing (RTM) injects advertising simultaneously into consumers’ conversations on blogs, social media platforms, and even websites. RTM used this way irks most consumers, who see it as invasive and obtrusive.

Data Profiling

According to Karl,¹⁴

data profiling is the term used to denote the gathering, assembling, and collating of data about individuals in databases which can be used to identify, segregate, categorize and generally make decisions about individuals known to the decision maker only through their computerized profile.

Most brands acquire such information to gain more insight about potential consumers. Facebook is one such platform that gathers users’ information, which it then shares with advertisers for a fee. It becomes a win–win scenario if properly utilized, as the consumers obtain more relevant and better offerings while brands save time on more targeted advertising.¹⁵ However, there are three basic ethical concerns involved here.

First, what is the limit to the amount of personal data or information that can be used for business purposes? For how long should this information be held? Even if a provider is allowed to gather such information, is it ethical to share them, and with whom? In an ideal world, people have control over the amount of information that can be shared and used about them.

The second ethical concern is that creating profiles based solely on users’ online activities can sometimes be wrong and probably damaging to an individual’s image. A perfect example of this issue is culled from Jim Barry’s¹⁶ blog where a commentator narrated his personal experience while conducting research on medical marijuana for a certain project. After his research, YouTube always suggested the research video to the audience on how to grow the marijuana plant. This can be quite damaging as other people may erroneously mistake him for a drug addict.

A third ethical issue arises with the techniques used by digital media platforms and marketers to gather user data. One such technique is to offer new users of a website that requires registration the option to sign-in with their existing social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) account names and passwords instead of creating a separate account. Logging into websites using Facebook or LinkedIn is an easy way to avoid managing multiple login credentials. However, it gives an unprecedented amount of users’ personal information—such as one’s birthday, friends list, email address, employment, colleges attended, as well as one’s likes and dislikes—to websites that may not be secure. This is very unethical as well as risky as it invades not just the privacy of the particular user but that of everyone else connected to him.¹⁷

Another technique used to gather user data that raises ethical concerns is the use of cookies. Cookies are small files that websites put on a user’s computer or mobile device to store information about them and their preferences. Cookies used for tracking page views and registration might come from the website visited. These are termed first-party cookies. There are also third-party cookies from providers of advertising on a particular webpage visited. These can follow users off sites “re-targeting” them with adverts after they have left. Hence, one might visit an online store to purchase a particular item and discover that similar products are being advertised on every other website visited afterward. This is what is called behavioral targeting. Although this kind of marketing where people are tracked all over the Internet is commonplace, most people consider it a violation of trust and privacy.

Because cookies act stealthily and without the consent of users, some countries have now introduced strict regulation on their use. According to the EU legislation on cookies, “EUROPA websites must follow the Commission’s guidelines on privacy and data protection and inform users that cookies are not being used to gather information unnecessarily.” More specifically, the EU ePrivacy Directive (2002) requires

prior informed consent for storage of or access to information stored on a user’s terminal equipment. In other words, users must be asked if they agree to most cookies and similar technologies (e.g. web beacons, Flash cookies, and so on) before the site starts to use them. For consent to be valid, it must be informed, specific, freely given and must constitute a real indication of the individual’s wishes.

While this initiative by the European Union can be lauded as a step in the right direction, most countries, especially in emerging markets, are yet to acknowledge the threat of using cookies let alone fashioning legislation to put it in check.

Yet another means of gathering user information is via mobile apps. Most people are attracted by the fact that some apps are offered free and download a great many of them on their mobile phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. There are certain risks involved in downloading and installing mobile apps. Most apps collect data about users and their activities on their mobile devices. According to Sanchez:¹⁸

Some data collection is straightforward. Users fill in their contact information, which will be used for marketing purposes, and then is allowed to download the app. But other data collection can happen without the user’s knowledge through an app running in the background, capturing information like credit card numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and other information useful in the pursuit of identity theft or account access.

This does not only pose a serious security risk to the individual but to their employers as well if these mobile devices are allowed to connect to the employer’s network. Combofix¹⁹ cautions that though the collection and tracking of user data are important for mobile app operations, many app developers however gather more data than is required and in some cases, may share such data with third parties.

Appthority’s Winter 2014 App Reputation Report reveals the following statistics:

• 70 percent of the free apps enable the tracking of a user’s location.

• 56 percent detect the user’s ID.

• 31 percent access user’s address book or contact list.

• 53 percent of the free apps share their data with ad networks.

• 51 percent have in-app purchasing functionality.

• 80 percent of the top-paid mobile apps were discovered to show at least one of the risky behaviors mentioned earlier.²⁰

Exaggeration and Deception

Most people do not believe that the claims made in advertisements featured in recent times. According to a 2012 study of 500 consumers by Lab42, a market research company, 57.4 percent of the consumers surveyed believe most of the claims that brands make in various advertisements are somewhat exaggerated, 19 percent say they are very exaggerated, 20.8 percent state they are somewhat accurate, and only 2.8 percent believe the claims to be very accurate.²¹ Although puffery or commercial exaggeration in this case has long been associated with traditional marketing media channels, it has been taken to the extreme with the rise of digital media and e-commerce, with a number of consumers across industries surprised by the disparity between what they see online and what eventually gets delivered to them or what is reality.²² Figure 10.1 from Business Insider encapsulates this point.

Puffery is not considered unethical as long as claims are kept in general terms. However, deception, making false or misleading statements, is not ethical.²³ In the long run, the market will punish such dishonest businesses when customers eventually discover their dishonesty and this would lead to loss of sale.²⁴ Wilson²⁵ contends that businesses must maintain general standards such as trust, stewardship, investment, and attention to consumer satisfaction to be prosperous in the long run.

Figure 10.1  Exaggeration in advertising

Source: Business Insider. Fast Food Ads versus The Real Thing.

According to Saied,²⁶ the role of advertising is to create a lift in the positive attitude a consumer has toward a brand but it cannot rescue a terrible product or a company with bad customer service. For lasting impact, brand communication cannot be delinked from the basics: building good products and providing great customer service.²⁷ With the rise of digital media and the explosion in the usage of social media, Hanna²⁸ postulates that users are beginning to demand authenticity over exaggeration. Consumers are using technology to learn about companies, including their products and services, and exaggerated advertising campaigns can be self-parodying and spark discussions rather than blatantly sell products.

Distorted Endorsements and Improper Anonymity

There is growing concern over the authenticity of online reviews.²⁹ The problem appears to be that some companies pay individuals to fabricate reviews in order to either boost their own reputation, or to undermine competing businesses.³⁰ Instead of working hard to organically grow a genuine and engaged online audience, some firms and their agents resort to artificially farming endorsement and followership. There are lots of instances where people are paid or given some form of reward to like certain pages on Facebook, share a post on LinkedIn, follow a company on Twitter, or post a positive review on a blog. Some companies go to the extent of as creating fake independent blogs that post positive reviews on their company. Some ask their employees to leave positive reviews on social media without disclosing their identity as employees. Others go as far as asking their agencies to constantly click a sponsored advert (Google/Facebook) to use up a competitor’s budget with the result of no sales. Today, social media is fraught with a lot of unethical practices that undermine trust and integrity. As Ray³¹ succinctly puts it:

We set larger fan counts as a goal above authentic advocacy, and when meaningful engagement became difficult to achieve, we settled for anything that would earn a like, reply or retweet rather than striving for content that fostered relationships and created value.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines, under disclosure of material connections, the requirement for full disclosure is stipulated as follows:

When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed. (FTC, 16 CFR Part 255)

In 2006, Walmart suffered some negative publicity on the discovery that the company’s PR agency, Edelman covered expenses of two bloggers who embarked on a road trip across the United States, giving positive reviews on Walmart.³²

Inappropriate Newsjacking

Newsjacking is the practice of riding on trending news to promote a brand or business. It is the act of meshing marketing communication efforts with breaking news. Done well, it is a brilliant way to instantly tap into a wider audience. On the other hand, badly done, it can destroy a brand’s integrity, and make people feel uncomfortable. For instance, it can be unethical and bad for a brand’s image to be seen as benefitting from a major disaster or tragedy that adversely affects peoples’ lives. A case in point is Epicurious’ newsjacking the Boston Marathon terrorist attack in 2013. Instead of offering their condolences after the attack, Epicurious rather seized the opportunity to promote themselves with the following posts (Figure 10.2). The company subsequently apologized for the food tweet.³³

Many people are of the view that such acts generally draw the ire of the wider public and may damage brand image and even impact the bottom line permanently.

Figure 10.2  Newsjacking example

Source: MrMediaTraining. Tragedy in Boston: What the Hell Was Epicurious Thinking?

Black Hat SEO

According to Dover and Dafforn,³⁴ “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of creating, formatting and promoting web pages in a manner that ensures that they are ranked highly for chosen keyword phrases after a user performs a Web search.” However, some people use certain techniques that game search engine rules by placing undeserving or unsolicited sites at the top of search results. Such techniques are referred to as black hat SEO techniques.³⁵ Some examples of black hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing,³⁶ using invisible texts on a webpage, adding unrelated keywords to the content of a webpage, and entirely changing a webpage after it has been ranked by search engines.

The use of black hat SEO is considered unethical by most people since these techniques focus on gaming search engines and not on creating useful content that will benefit consumers. Search engines usually blacklist sites caught using black hat SEO techniques. Some big companies that have been penalized for the use of black hat SEO include Forbes and OverStock.com in 2011, Newsday in 2007, and BMW in 2006.³⁷

Subterfuge Advertising

It is a widely accepted marketing communication standard to clearly separate advertising from editorial content so that consumers are not taken undue advantage of. Disguising advertising as editorial content is unethical and generally frowned upon. However, some digital media publishers contravene this rule in a bid to manipulate user opinion. One of the ways publishers contravene this rule is through the use of sponsored content. Sponsored content is not produced directly by a brand; rather a brand pays a publisher to have its name associated with the content. Ideally, sponsored content should primarily serve the reader since it is meant to be an editorial content. However, brands mostly use it to covertly promote their interest. Sometimes brands resort to the use of contextual link ads, wherein hyperlinks are concealed within editorial content. This is a huge concern as the goal of educating consumers is compromised if the contents are doctored, biased, or manipulated by brands.

Another form of subterfuge advertising involves the use of unethical and underhand tactics to get visitors to accidentally click on adverts. For most digital marketers, the standard for measuring performance is the click through rate (CTR), which is simply the ratio of visitors to a webpage that clicks on an ad or link. The use of CTR as the main measure of performance encourages marketers to resort to all sorts of unethical practices in order to get higher rates. Some adverts would re-direct a user to a different site merely by moving a cursor over them even without clicking on them. Sometimes pop-ups and dialog boxes are intentionally designed like warning text from the computer with the aim of misleading people to click on them. While such practices can earn marketers more income, it is unethical, undermines brand image, and degrades the user experience.

Advice for Teachers/Practitioners

Teaching strategies should encourage discussions on the appropriateness of consumer and corporate actions especially in engagement on social media or use of consumer information, taking culture and regulatory context into consideration. Beyond prevention of harm and compliance to regulations, most people will agree that many ethical issues that arise in marketing communications border on value systems and personal opinions, both on the part of the brand and the consumer. In determining acceptable practice, there appears to be a gulf between what marketers and consumers think is acceptable.³⁸ Hence, in being ethical when communicating with the market, as well as observing basic and universal ethical principles such as the golden rule, brands must take into consideration individual and societal value systems.

The goal of teaching ethics in marketing communication in the classroom is to provide an environment for students to confidently engage in ethical dialogue, encounter a diversity of opinion they did not realize existed, and probably become less dogmatic, more tolerant, and clearer about their own and others’ value commitments. Using case studies, lecture methods, and videos, discussions should focus on tactics that brands and businesses can implement if they want to adopt an ethical approach to their marketing communications via digital media. Teaching suggestions include the following.

Case Study

Providing a case study of a company and its marketing communication might be an excellent way to engage students. After reviewing the company’s products or services, several copies of the firm’s communication over different digital marketing channels should be presented and analyzed with the students:

• Does the entire communication sent out by the company reveal any coherent strategy on how the company tries to relate with its customers?

• Does any of the communication seem to cross the ethical line? If so, which of the ethical issues highlighted in this text do they fall into?

• Which of the highlighted ethical issues appear to be breached more often than the others? Is there a pattern?

Assignments

Students can be given an assignment to write an advert copy for a particular product of a specific company. These can then be collated and analyzed together in class to elicit the views of students on their ethical standpoint.

Brainstorming Sessions

Students can be split into groups and asked to come up with a set of policies and tactics, which brands and businesses can implement if they want to adopt an ethical approach to their marketing communication using digital media. All unique ideas can then be compiled into one list and discussed in class. Some of these tactics would include:

Having a Specific Digital Media Policy

The more digital media becomes an important channel for marketing communication, the more imperative it becomes for brands to have specific policies for digital media separate from the general marketing communication policies. This helps to set the baseline behavior the brand expects from its employees and agents alike.

Sensitizing and Educating Employees

Having a specific digital media policy is just a first step and does not by itself solve the problem. Brands need to continually educate and sensitize their staff to ensure compliance. As Ray³⁹ puts it:

It is not sufficient to assume your employees and partners know how to act with integrity, nor is it satisfactory to set expectations and assume adherence. Other organizations have a policy but fail to educate employees on the risks and ramifications of their actions in social media. Honesty requires a commitment to education and engagement around ethics, and it demands that your brand supervises and monitors activities to ensure policies and regulations are followed.

Monitoring All Digital Content

Even after sensitizing employees, it is still necessary for a brand or business to monitor its digital properties (websites, blogs, social media accounts, etc.) as a form of quality control against ethical violation.

Appointing an Ethical Ambassador

If the drive for growth in corporate integrity and ethical compliance is to be effective, then someone has to take full responsibility for it. Apart from being a custodian of the policy as well as being responsible for the education of employees, the ethical ambassador can also take up the responsibility of monitoring the ethical stance of all digital content and communications of the brand or business.

Making “Codes of Conduct” Public

It might be necessary for brands to make their code of conduct for digital media public. This helps to send a strong signal to the brands’ audience of their commitment to using digital media ethically.

Developing Versus Developed Country Perspectives

Cultural diversity is an important determinant of people’s attitude to certain digital media practices. Cultural differences may attenuate some unethical practices, reduce the impact of some, or even raise dilemmas that are unique to a particular culture or environment. For example, in some developing countries where phishing schemes are rampant and there is little trust in doing business online, the use of behavioral targeting might actually put off prospective customers as they might think they are being targeted by scammers. At the same time, customers in such markets might not be too bothered by distorted endorsements on social media platforms as they have already learned not to trust claims made online. This might be in sharp contrast to their counterparts in developed markets for whom such undisclosed distortion is a critical issue as it impairs their ability to correctly make informed buying decisions about products or services. Likewise, in most developing markets, digital marketing is still a new concept and related regulations are virtually absent. As such, brands and their agencies have more leeway and are prone to exploit customers with impunity. Such practices, however, might not be condoned in developed countries where some forms of regulation specific to digital marketing are beginning to appear.

While a responsible brand should maintain high ethical standards even when playing in less regulated markets, there may be situations where some practices that are not inherently unethical are permissible. In cases of the latter, both ethical robustness and flexibility come into play. Thus, brands that operate in global markets might encounter more stringent legal standards in their foreign markets, which might well be very different from those in their home country. Firms facing such situations must develop the ability to tweak certain products, activities, and processes to accommodate geographical and cultural differences while remaining ethical toward their customers and the general public. For instance, some companies have different websites, commercials, and branding for each of their markets.

Finally, the task of understanding ethical challenges is no less important in developing countries. Although most developing countries might have fewer restrictions with weaker legal systems to enforce regulations, brands cannot afford any laxness if they wish to be responsible companies, as they might easily miss simple details that might offend and ultimately hurt the business.

Summary and Conclusion

Maintaining high ethical standards may seem burdensome until a firm gets embroiled in an ethical disaster. The chapter presents an in-depth review of ethical issues raised in digital marketing and teaching suggestions on how to deal with issues of ethical concerns using case studies, assignments, and brainstorming sessions. In teaching ethics in marketing communications, it should be stressed that maintaining high ethical standards pays in the long run for all stakeholders.

Unethical practices by businesses pose the threat of brand boycott by consumers in the long term. Nearly half of the consumers would boycott a brand or change their purchasing behavior if they discovered that the brand was found to be manipulating or behaving dishonestly or unethically through their social media engagement.⁴⁰

Maintaining high ethical standards in business eventually feeds into a company’s reputation, and a favorable reputation plays an important role in attracting the best talent, suppliers, and investment.⁴¹

Marketers and advertising agencies also have a big role to play. By contracting the services of agencies, brands and businesses abdicate some ethical judgment to them. Hence, agencies need to be teachers to brands especially those that are new to digital marketing. Most especially in crisis management, agencies should clearly advise their clients on what they would not do from a policy standpoint. Things such as getting rid of nasty links for a client or blocking a user’s account. Education of clients should be a major component of the code of ethics of agencies.⁴²

How seriously a brand or business takes matters of ethics is a reflection of the value they place on their customers above making profit in the short term. Ideally, businesses should be long-term driven and should not place too much focus on driving up metrics such as number of clicks, fans, followers, and Facebook Likes without regard to the quality of those numbers and their impact on the business. According to Ray:⁴³

Fans and engagement are not business metrics, but these are common line items on many social media scorecards and are used by social media agencies and vendors to validate performance. Any brand can count new fans, but how many are measuring the value delivered to the brand via social media? Instead of turning to the metrics that are easiest to collect, social media marketers must determine the metrics that best validate that their social media investments deliver upon the objectives (and if one of your goals is merely to collect fans, then the problem is not the metric but the goal).

Success in marketing communication goes far beyond the increase in business metrics; brands must act ethically and create value for customers. In teaching ethics in business communications, the creation of real long-term value that is transparent, beneficial, and rewarding to customers and stakeholders must be emphasized.

Suggested Exercises and Projects

Companies must have high ethical standards in the conduct of their businesses. How does a company ensure that marketing ethics is given due consideration when crafting strategy in today’s online world? Your team has been given a task to put in place a digital strategy for a designated company to communicate effectively with their target market. Craft a digital strategy that will include policies on the following:

• Mobile (usage of apps, supported platforms, security maintenance)

• Social media (supported platforms, responsible officers, reputation management)

• Email marketing (content, appropriateness of language, list generation, privacy protection)

• Digital marketing (SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), banner advertising)

• Websites (supported features on the site, design content, security, maintenance)⁴⁴

Discuss potential ethical issues at each stage:

• Advertising and honesty (avoiding false/misleading statements)

• Testimonials, endorsements, and recommendation

• Accessibility

• Acceptable behavior

• Content removal

• Plagiarism

• Crisis and reputation management

• Ethical approach to informed consent

Case Study

• The Wal-Mart Fake Blog Controversy case (see box below).

• Outline and discuss the ethical issues in marketing communications arising from this case.

• Where exactly did Laura and Jim go wrong? Did Wal-Mart specifically instruct them not to disclose the sponsorship of the Wal-Marting trip?

• From Wal-Mart’s perspective, is it wrong for companies to carry out PR campaigns? If not, what exactly could Wal-Mart have done to prevent this ethical disaster while still achieving its goal of building a better public image?

 

¹ Ogechi Adeola would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Emeka Enwere toward the development of this book chapter.

² Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2012); Fill (2009).

³ AMA (2004), cited in Muhcina and Popovici (2008, 70).

⁴ Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2012).

⁵ Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2012).

⁶ Singer (1985).

⁷ Jensen (2011).

⁸ Gallivan (2014).

⁹ Barry (2014).

¹⁰ iDA (2014).

¹¹ Rust et al. (2010), cited in Pradiptarini (2011, 5).

¹² Ray (2013a).

¹³ Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services via one or more forms of digital technologies.

¹⁴ Karl (1999).

¹⁵ Vinjamuri (2011).

¹⁶ Barry (2014).

¹⁷ Gatto (2013).

¹⁸ Sanchez (2012).

¹⁹ Combofix (2014).

²⁰ Appthority (2014), cited in Combofix (2014).

²¹ Garibian (2013).

²² Garibian (2013).

²³ Ashe-Edmunds (n.d.).

²⁴ Econedlink (2015).

²⁵ Wilson (1990).

²⁶ Saied (2013).

²⁷ Saied (2013).

²⁸ Hanna (2007).

²⁹ Zehrer et al. (2011), cited in Seargeant and Tagg (2014).

³⁰ Scott (2009), cited in Seargeant and Tagg (2014, 87).

³¹ Ray (2013a).

³² Vinjamuri (2011).

³³ Paul (2013).

³⁴ Dover and Dafforn (2011).

³⁵ Patil, Pawar, and Patil (2013).

³⁶ Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking.

³⁷ Krush (2011).

³⁸ Brown (2014).

³⁹ Ray (2013a).

⁴⁰ Brown (2014), citing a 2014 YouGov survey of over 3,000 UK consumers.

⁴¹ Ettenson and Knowles (2008).

⁴² Guglielmetti (2010).

⁴³ Ray (2013b).

⁴⁴ Boag (2013).

⁴⁵ Working Families for Wal-Mart is an organization that was formed by Wal-Mart’s public relations firm, Edelman, to counter criticism from union-funded groups such as Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart.

References

Ashe-Edmunds, S. n.d. “Ethics in Marketing Communication.” Chron. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/ethics-marketing-communication-40554.html (accessed August 19, 2015).

Barry, J. 2014. “7 Ethical Dilemmas Faced in Content Marketing.” Social Content Marketing. http://blog.socialcontentmarketing.com/7-ethical-dilemmas-faced-in-social-media-marketing/ (accessed December 18, 2015).

Boag, P. 2013. “So You Want to Write A Digital Strategy?” Smashing Magazine. www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/07/you-want-to-write-a-digital-strategy/ (accessed September 9, 2015).

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