Blurred Ads?

Jacquez Printup
jp583215@ohio.edu


In "The Ethics of Branded Content," Ann Willets goes into detail about the potentially blurred lines of how people that work in the public relations field should interact with branded content. First, what exactly is "branded content?" According to Medium.com, branded content is "content that does not involve traditional advertising. It can include articles, videos, podcasts, and even live elements that bring relevant value to the consumer. It is not advertising in the way most people think of."

The problem is not the branded content itself, it is the fact that it is becoming more and more challenging for readers to be able to tell the difference between advertising and journalism. One of the big ethical challenges that was written about in this article was the issue of trust. Trust and honesty are two of the biggest commodities that exist in journalism. One, as the journalist, you are to be honest with everything you do because you are representing not only yourself, but your employer as well. And two, trust is important because the public relies on us to bring them news that is honest and relevant. So if the content that we are putting out in reality is paid advertising and not and editorial piece, we will lose the public's trust.

Another way companies are able to promote their stuff without creating advertisments is by using social media influencers. In other words, social media influencers are people who have big followings on social media. What these companies do is reach out to these people and reward them with money and products to post on their social media pages about how good their product is. Recently, more and more of these influencers will either start or end their post with "#Ad", or label it with "Paid Partnership with *blank*" which lets their followers know that the content they just posted is an advertisement. This is an ethical choice that ties into what was mentioned earlier about trust.

21six.com

In this YouTube video, ABC News did a story with a well-known fashion influencer who went in depth and described how these designers and companies work with her and how they work together to present content to the masses. Again, this is a common strategy that many companies use with well known YouTubers, actors, musicians and other public figures to get more traffic pointing towards their products. 

One example of branded content is The Lego Movie. A lot of people did not know this, but this movie was a crafted 90-minute advertisement that taught a lot of important values to the viewers, mainly kids, that watched it. Now after watching, kids everywhere are connected with Legos and parents are influenced to buy them. 

Personally, I do not think this is unethical at all and I do not see a problem with it. It is a movie that was targeted and aim towards children and that's exactly what it did. Using the movie as an advertisement strategy I do not find to be wrong, but a great tool to promote their products.