The social aspects of advertising typically involves the final two principles: providing complete information and ensuring the absence of externalities. In fact, debates on social issues often highlight instances where advertising violates one or more of these fundamental economic principles. Advertising reflects social life by providing daily updates, making it an internal part of our lives, much like the air we breathe. It offers the latest information about new products, acting like a friend guiding us to make the best purchase decisions.
However, advertising is often criticized for manipulating customers into buying things they do not need. Advertising should focus on providing information such as price, features, quality and uses, rather than exploiting customer emotions.
Strengths of Social Media Ads
Enlightened Society
Advertisement help society become informed about various products, their uses, safe handling of dangerous goods, effective product usage, and price or quality differences between products. However, our society still lacks comprehensive information about many products, as some companies primarily focus on selling rather than educating.
Enhancing Health Education
Advertisements for health drinks, hygiene foods, pollution control products, and their installation raise awareness about health and hygiene. They help society protect itself from unnecessary health issues and promote a healthier, more hygienic lifestyle.
Reduce Disease Prevalence
Many diseases in society spread rapidly, some progress slowly, and others are infectious. Advertising helps inform us about these diseases and raises awareness about how to protect ourselves. A prime example is COVID – 19, which has affected millions of people.
Environmental Protection
Environmental protection is crucial in today’s world. Activities such as deforestation, improper disposal of industrial waste, and increasing urbanization have put the environment in a perilous state. Advertising raises awareness about the importance of environmental protection.
For example, campaign like “Stop Using and Burning Plastics,” “Save Water, save the Planet,” and “Make the World Green Again” highlight the need for such efforts.”
Spearheading social change
Social changes that transform lifestyles and ways of thinking, such as accepting women as equals, empowering women, upgrading transportation, introducing new and better educational technologies, developing public opinion against child labor, promoting girl education, and encouraging cleanliness, are often driven by advertisements.
Downsides of Social Advertising
Untruthful Advertising
Advertising can gain consumer confidence by presenting ads effectively or unethically. Misleading advertising involves misrepresentations, fraudulent presentation of products, or deceptive interpretations in the ads.
Read more : Ad Headlines and their Connotations
Unfavorable Impacts
Advertising can have negative impacts on society. Elements like nudity, bad habits, stereotypes, and surrogate advertising can adversely affect societal norms and values. Many people criticize advertising for negatively influencing social and cultural traditions.
Advertising for Minors
Children are often depicted as cute and happy in advertisements, which are designed to make them pressure their parents into buying the product. Sometimes, parents genuinely need the product for their children, such as diaper that absorbs urine. Ads targeting the middle class often portray the ideal family with a happy child to appeal to this demographic.
Induce Confusion
Advertising can create confusion for customer’s when they’re making product decisions. Multiple and repetitive ads can be irritating. The frequent launch of new, often costly, products each month adds to the confusion, making it difficult to decide which product suits their tastes, offers the best quality, and is most affordable.
Aggressive Product Marketing
Advertising manipulates customer’s emotions. Companies exploit customers’ sentiments and desires, often suggesting that their products will enhance physical strength or mental abilities. Sometimes, they create an emotional attachment to the product, making it more appealing to customers.
Advertising Integrity
Ethics is a set of moral principles, norms, or values and is a branch of social science. It addresses notions of good and bad within a particular culture, referring to the moral duty and obligation an advertiser has towards society. Moral principles are the rules or standards of what is considered “right” or “wrong”.
Every advertisement aims to persuade people. In today’s competitive market, each advertiser strives to outdo their rivals through effective advertising. In this process, there is a risk of concealing the truth and facts to boost sales and profit. However, advertiser’s have a social and moral duty to consumers. They should maintain high ethical standards by presenting facts and truths to consumers.
Read more : Radio and TV Ad Headlines
An advertisement with false claims might succeed in the short term but will ultimately harm the product’s reputation in the long run. As the saying goes, one can fool some people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but one cannot fool all the people all the time.
Misleading Advertising
If misleading practices continue, they will damage the overall image of the business and make advertising itself less effective. Some of the moral codes developed in advertising include:
- Avoiding unfair attacks on competitors.
- Ensuring content is free from anything offensive to public decency.
- Making clear and truthful claims regarding price reductions, guarantees, etc.
Ethics, as a communication tool, plays a crucial role in both business and the advertising profession. Advertisers should follow norms and ideals accepted by society as essential to a good life when promoting any product, service or idea.
Ethics in advertising means that advertisers should engage in honest advertising. This entails presenting only true facts without exaggeration or lies about the product, service, idea, or institution, and stating them clearly in the ad.
Ethics in advertising also means that only good products, services, and ideas should be promoted, and they should be targeted to the right consumers. Advertising harmful products like cigarettes, beer, whisky, rum, gin, tobacco, and pan parag should be avoided.
Advertisements featuring testimonials should be limited to competent individuals who express hones views and choices. Ads that are in poor taste, offensive to public decency, or contain double meanings must be avoided. Furthermore, advertisements should refrain from unfairly attacking competitors. Overall, advertising should be honest, objective, informative, and persuasive in its content.
Importance of ethical advertising
Ethics in advertising is highly significant for several reasons. Firstly, it builds trust between advertisers and consumers. When ads are seen as truthful, transparent, and respectful, consumers are more likely to form positive views of brands and make informed buying choices.
Secondly, ethical advertising enhances the reputation of a company or industry. Advertisers who emphasize ethical practice not only attract loyal customers but also earn credibility and goodwill from the public. Conversely, unethical advertising can harm a brand’s image and result in long-term negative repercussions.
