Ethics in Advertising

Twelve years ago the Pontifical Council for Social Communications published a document that attempts to apply Catholic teaching to the world of advertising. Entitled, Ethics in Advertising, this document celebrates the benefits advertising brings to the world as well as the harm advertising can do when used unethically. The Council outlined three principals it believes advertising practitioners should consider as they practice their craft.

Truthfulness in Advertising

To be sure, advertising, like other forms of expression, has its own conventions and forms of stylization, and these must be taken into account when discussing truthfulness. People take for granted some rhetorical and symbolic exaggeration in advertising; within the limits of recognized and accepted practice, this can be allowable.

But it is a fundamental principle that advertising may not deliberately seek to deceive, whether it does that by what it says, by what it implies, or by what it fails to say. “The proper exercise of the right to information demands that the content of what is communicated be true and, within the limits set by justice and charity, complete. … Included here is the obligation to avoid any manipulation of truth for any reason.”

The Dignity of the Human Person

Much advertising directed at children apparently tries to exploit their credulity and suggestibility, in the hope that they will put pressure on their parents to buy products of no real benefit to them. Advertising like this offends against the dignity and rights of both children and parents; it intrudes upon the parent-child relationship and seeks to manipulate it to its own base ends. Also, some of the comparatively little advertising directed specifically to the elderly or culturally disadvantaged seems designed to play upon their fears so as to persuade them to allocate some of their limited resources to goods or services of dubious value.

Advertising and Social Responsibility

As this suggests, something more fundamental is at issue here: authentic and integral human development. Advertising that reduces human progress to acquiring material goods and cultivating a lavish life style expresses a false, destructive vision of the human person harmful to individuals and society alike.

Recommendations

The Council also recommended the development of Codes of Ethics as well as promote the compliance with them.

It is up to the directors and managers of the media which carry advertising to make known to the public, to subscribe to and to apply the codes of professional ethics which already have been opportunely established so as to have the cooperation of the public in making these codes still better and in enforcing their observance.

As advertisers become more creative with product placement, advertorial marketing, and other vehicles which blur the lines between entertainment and advertising, it is critical to have a vigorous set of guidelines on how these techniques are used and disclosed to the public.

What are your thoughts? Do marketers have an ethical obligation to communicate to the public content with is advertisement shrouded as entertainment, news, or clandestine marketing?

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