Archive for the ‘ethics’ Category

Can Responsible Marketing help fight childhood obesity?

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation - White House

From the The Wall Street Journal:

The White House is calling on food makers to curb marketing of unhealthy foods to children, part of a broad assault against childhood obesity.

The recommendation is part of a 120-page report released Tuesday that outlines steps to fight the national epidemic. One in every three children ages 2-19 is overweight or obese, the report says. First Lady Michelle Obama has taken up childhood obesity as her signature cause.

The recommendations are for the food and beverage industry, media and entertainment companies and food retailers. Recommendations from the report urge these parties to:

  • Extend their self-regulatory program to cover all forms of marketing to children
  • Avoid in-store marketing that promotes unhealthy products to children
  • Limit the licensing of popular characters to food and beverage products that are healthy and consistent with science-based nutrition standards
  • Adopt meaningful, uniform nutrition standards for marketing food and beverages to children
  • Develop a uniform standard for what constitutes marketing to children
  • Set uniform guidelines to ensure that a higher proportion of advertisements shown on their networks and platforms are for healthy foods and beverages
  • Introduce an on-air labeling system that helps consumers easily distinguish between advertising for healthy and unhealthy foods
  • Develop and deploy technology to block unhealthy food and beverage advertising

And if the above doesn’t work, the FCC will be called in to revisit and modernize children’s programming rules.

Click here to download the 120-page report[3.3 MB].

This is a step in the right direction, but is it enough? Self-regulation hasn’t worked well on Wall Street. Will this be enough to rein-in Madison Avenue?

I doubt it, but what do you think?

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. . .

Inspired by this tweet by Hank Wasiak.

Responsible or not? Nike resurrects Earl Woods

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Just in time for Tiger Woods’ return to golf at The Masters, Nike has released the following ad featuring the voice of Tiger’s deceased father, Earl:

Here’s what Earl is saying:

Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?

On the surface it may seem like a bit of a head-scratcher for Nike: Woods’ father wasn’t faithful, either.

But consider this: Most of Tiger’s sponsors have bailed except Nike and it’s in their best interest to see him restored. This video shows a remorseful Woods looking his fans straight in the eye. By approving and participating in this ad, he’s showing he hasn’t forgotten his roots. That he knows his father wouldn’t approve. And that he’s learned something.

Opinions are polarized from the general public. Here are two from YouTube:

This is brilliant, Nike’s invested too much time and money into Tiger Woods to not do something like this. I give this a thumbs up with the reasoning that it isn’t often a sponsor will put money into saving a sports figure. And I think Tiger approving of it means he’s really showing the amount of change he’s willing to make to appear as an honourable sports figure again. I LIKE THIS. ~nboysis

Corporate damage control and a well-orchestrated PR campaign. And who really knows what Earl would say? He’s DEAD. Now? Tiger and Nike are bringing him back from the dead to pimp him out for greed. Poor taste Tiger….you would come across better by keeping a low profile in my opinion and working on your marriage to save your image, not your corporate whores. ~zenstate

So, is Nike’s new Tiger ad responsible or not? What say you?

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Marketing puffery never pays

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Seems we’ve been up to our eyeballs in positioning and message strategy work at Outsource Marketing lately. Of course, positioning should be the cornerstone of all your marketing communications—without meaningful differentiation, you’ve got nothin’, after all.

But your positioning has to be more than simply unique and matter to your prospects. It has to be true, too.

With that in mind, watch this:

View on YouTube

If you are selling “the world’s toughest phone” that’s “virtually unbreakable,” perhaps it should be.

While Sonim XP1 CEO Bob Plaschke handled this with an amazing amount of grace, the fact is it would appear to some that this is nothing more than another hollow marketing claim.

Persuasion, good.
Puffery, bad.

Not just because you might get caught. It’s because it doesn’t respect the people that ultimately pay the bills—your customers.

Is Sonim guilty of the age-old marketer’s practice of marketing puffery? Considering their “unbreakable” phone broke, does it really matter?

What do you think?

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A-Rod and Kobe and Phelps, oh my!

Friday, February 20th, 2009

It was a risk when Activision cast four of the world’s most recognized athletes to dance in their underwear for a video game that that wasn’t sports-related.

Imagine it: The greatest Olympian of all time (at least by medal count), the best basketball and baseball player today, and the person that has almost single-handedly popularized skateboarding and extreme sports—all in the same ad.

Wow.

Here’s Activision’s Guitar Hero ad featuring Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriguez, Michael Phelps and Tony Hawk:

Of course, now the ad features a basketball player accused of rape, an Olympian caught smoking dope and a baseball player that has admitted to using steroids.

For most products, this ad would be pulled immediately. Not so with Activision.

In an interview in the New York Daily News, sports business consultant Marc Ganis said these controversies won’t necessarily hurt sales, stating that “the target market for Guitar Hero is younger counterculture youth for whom this kind of behavior is not considered very negative.”

That raises so many questions, doesn’t it?

Considering the Guitar Hero target, have the A-Rod and Phelps revelations actually helped Activision?

Do you believe the associated PR is hurting or helping?

Is Activision marketing responsibly?

How should they respond?

Comment below to weigh in.

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A-Rod deals another blow to the MLB brand

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009


View this video on YouTube

Few professional athletes have ever been bigger than George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

His achievements on the baseball field were epic, garnering him the nicknames “The Sultan of Swat,” “The Colossus of Clout,” “The Titan of Terror,” “The King of Crash,” and of course, “The Great Bambino.”

Arguably, the greatest player in the game today is Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod has a few nicknames, too:

  • After leaving Seattle for a “contender,” he signed the largest contract in baseball history to play with the Texas Rangers—a team that has never contended—he became “Pay-Rod”
  • He’s known as the “The Cooler,” since teams go cold when he joins them and hot when he leaves
  • Several nicknames I won’t repeat due to his philandering, most notably with Madonna
  • In light of the recent steroid revelations, he’ll forever be known as “A-Roid,” “A-Fraud” and “Alex Roidriguez”

Still, prior to the steroids news, baseball fans held out Rodriguez as the one person that might be able to remove the asterisk from Barry Bond’s home run record.

What does all this have to do with Responsible Marketing?

Baseball has a trust problem, and last April I asked the question, Can Responsible Marketing save baseball?

In it, I was hopeful that some of the things the MLB was doing might be able to help baseball regain its footing.

But as the highest paid player in the game, A-Rod’s irresponsible and fraudulent actions have a reverse halo effect (also known as the ‘devil effect’) on the MLB brand.

So, now I’m left asking the question again, do you believe Responsible Marketing can save baseball?

What’s your take?

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VitaminWater or the CSPI: Who do you believe?

Friday, February 6th, 2009

vitaminwater-from-coca-cola-cspi

The Coca-Cola Company is being sued by the Center for Science in the Public Interest for deceptive claims regarding it’s VitaminWater product line.

Coke markets VitaminWater as a “healthful alternative to soda by labeling its several flavors with such health buzz words,” and claims they “variously reduce the risk of chronic disease, reduce the risk of eye disease, promote healthy joints, and support optimal immune function.”

The CSPI news release further asserts, “VitaminWater contains between zero and one percent juice, despite the full names of the drinks, which include “endurance peach mango” and “focus kiwi strawberry,” and “xxx blueberry pomegranate acai,” among others. A press release for the “xxx” drink claims its antioxidants makes the drinker “last longer” in some unspecified way; in any event, it has no blueberry, pomegranate, or acai juice, nor do the others have any cranberry, grapefruit, dragon fruit, peach, mango, kiwi, or strawberry juice.”

Here’s Coke’s response to the CSPI lawsuit:

This is a ridiculous and ludicrous lawsuit. glacéau vitaminwater is a great tasting, hydrating beverage with essential vitamins and water, with labels showing calorie content.

Filing a lawsuit is an opportunistic PR stunt. This is not about protecting the public interest. This is about grandstanding at a time when CSPI is receiving very little attention. There is no surprise that one week before the inauguration of the U.S. President, with the flurry of activity in Washington, D.C., that CSPI has chosen today to try to bring attention to themselves.

We don’t need a “healthful” alternative to sodas. All our beverages, including sparkling and diets, can be part of healthful diet. Furthermore, consumers today are aware and are looking for more from their beverages than just hydration. Products like glacéau vitaminwater provide a great tasting choice for hydration that also helps contribute to daily needs for some essential nutrients.

Consumers can readily see the nutrition facts panels on every bottle of glacéau vitaminwater, which show what’s in our product and what’s not. The success of glacéau vitaminwater is due in large part to consumers looking for a product like this to help support their healthy, active and on-the-go lifestyle.

Put simply, glacéau vitaminwater is a great complement to our often less-than-perfect diet with each of the different glacéau vitaminwater varieties providing a convenient, great-tasting way to get more of some of the vitamins and hydration we all need each day.

Public opinion on the topic is polarized, as you might expect.

So who do you believe? VitaminWater or the CSPI?

Is VitaminWater responsible or not?

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. . .

Image: The Coca-Cola Company

On sweatshops, morality and marketing

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

On sweatshops, morality and marketing

Do you care if a pair of jeans you were about to buy was made with sweatshop labor?

What if you looked really good in them—would you care then?

Are you sure?

In Sweatshop Labor is Wrong Unless the Jeans are Cute, Neeru Paharia and Rohit Deshpandé of Harvard Business School share the results of two studies that have revealed that consumers “are motivated to use moral disengagement strategies to reduce dissonance when their desire for a product conflicts with their moral standards.”

Put simply, the more you want something, the more you are apt to mentally justify your actions with statements such as “The use of sweatshop labor is okay because companies must remain competitive,” and “Sweatshops are the only realistic source of income for workers in poorer countries.”

We rationalize war, but now it’s clear our moral judgments are affected in the purchasing decisions we make every day.

To this, the authors warn—

While on the face of it, such actions are less atrocious than the horrors of war, they may perhaps be even more dangerous due to their subtle and insidious nature – by some estimates there are hundreds of thousands of sweatshops still operating today.

While there’s debate about the role of sweatshops in a global economy, most would agree that conditions in many are deplorable.

So who’s most responsible for the survival of sweatshops?

  • Consumers for continuing to purchase the products?
  • Marketers that position, package and merchandise the products?

What’s your take?

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. . .

Thanks to Freddy Nager, purveyor of the Cool Rules Pronto blog and Harvard alum, for sharing this research with me.

Image: BBC/MailOnline

Is Belkin’s apology for astroturfing enough?

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Is Belkin's apology for astroturfing enough?

First, what’s “astroturfing?”

Roughly, it’s when formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seek to create the impression of spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.*

On Friday, The Daily Background Blog revealed that a Belkin employee was doing just that: Paying 65 cents for perfect reviews on Buy.com, NewEgg.com and Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk, where people can receive micropayments for small technical tasks computers can’t do.

To their credit, Belkin’s CEO responded over the weekend, stating that “Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this.” The company went on to take responsibility, asked forgiveness and claimed Belkin will remove all the false reviews and posts on Mechanical Turk.

Hats off to Belkin for the quick response—this is exactly the way this should have been handled and they’ve surely avoided even more negative word of mouth.

But I ask you, Responsible Marketer, at what point do we hold a company accountable for the actions of its representatives? Is all forgiven with Belkin? Could this have been avoided?

Seems like a great argument for social media training to me, but what do you think?

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. . .


Thanks to Freddy Nager at Atomic Tango for sharing the Belkin story with me.
*My revision of the Wikipedia definition

Hall of Shame: Countrywide Home Loans

Friday, January 16th, 2009

Countrywide Home Loans - Foreclosure sign

Marketing is about persuasion, so occasionally marketers stretch the truth.

But how bad is a company when it mocks it’s own advertising in a court of law?

Pretty bad.

Countrywide Home Loans is no stranger to litigation and is considered by some to be among those lenders most responsible for the mortgage crisis.

Maybe it should come as no surprise when then they call their own advertising “mere commercial puffery.”

Loan modifications have been marketed throughout the industry as homeowners sold irresponsible adjustable rate mortgages scramble to find a way to avoid foreclosure and pay their ballooning mortgage payments. Countrywide’s current modification offers say “We can help you,” while they pursue foreclosures against customers seeking just that.

From MSNBC.com:

Saying the modification offers are “only Countrywide’s vague advertisements,” attorneys for the lender are asking the court to throw out a lawsuit alleging breach of good faith, fraud, negligence and misrepresentation, which was filed on behalf of a family that was refused a loan modification by the California-based company.

For that, Countrywide Home Loans, you deserve a spot in the Responsible Marketing Hall of Shame.

What do you think of Countrywide’s marketing practices?

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. . .

Inspiration: Eric Weaver via Twitter.
Image: Minnesota Public Radio

Tobacco in an irresponsible marketing death spiral

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

Tobacco companies in an irresponsible marketing death spiral

This week, tobacco companies were dealt a blow when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of allowing lawsuits to proceed under state law for deceptive advertising of “light” cigarettes.

Tobacco companies are now in what I call an irresponsible marketing death spiral:

The proliferation of traditional and social media have created millions of professional and private corporate watchdogs. Irresponsible marketers may be able to run, but they can’t hide.

When irresponsible marketers are caught, the U.S. legal system rewards companies, individuals and attorneys that prosecute said marketers for their actions.

Of course, controversy sells, so traditional and social media will document every step and misstep as the company attempts to respond.

Competitors gain traction as the distracted irresponsible marketing is forced to shift time, money and other resources to defending itself and/or working to mend it’s broken brand.

The company dies a slow, painful death.

Okay, not every marketing misstep will result in a class action lawsuit, boycott, movement or campaign against a company.

It’s usually more subtle than that, as customers and prospects respond with their pocketbooks—and their voices.

Truth, authenticity and transparency are no longer optional, folks.

Responsible Marketing is what the people want. One way or another they are going to get it.

Which other companies (or industries) are entering an irresponsible marketing death spiral now?

Comment below to share.

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