Influencers v. Corporate America: Who Presents the More Ethically Failsafe Culture?

Adam Subotin
as921212@ohio.edu

Understanding the Climate

In today's age, social media is another avenue of turning a profit in corporate America. With the help of social media influencers, digital campaigns run through popular social networks such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook have been a just one notable avenue large scale corporations have taken to cash in on both Millennials and Gen-Z. 

Apple and HTC owned company Beats by Dre were the latest to jump on the trend after recently announcing their partnership with singer/songwriter Ashnikko to decide Beats' newest headphone color.

This upcoming campaign is just a single example of how large corporations have been exploiting the youth in their attempts to drive sales. 

Social Media Influences May Be at Higher Risk of Succumbing to an Ethical Breach

Why is this the case you may ask? Well, there is a duality with social media influencers. This duality stems from their status of celebrity. Although influencers may see themselves as regular individuals, those influencers are bound with a status of celebrity, holding them to higher ethical standards.
There are two main traits social media influencers have which are identical to that of a corporate structure that may be harder to manage.

Firstly, is the audience. Just like many mega-corporations, social media influencers such as TikTok's Charli D'Ameilo boast an unbelievable audience of loyal customers, or in this case, followers. D'Ameilo broke the 69 million follower mark Tuesday. To put that number in perspective, 16-year old D'Amelio has more followers than the entire population of the UK (67,886,011), France (65,273,511), or Italy (60,462,836).

Second is a product. While an influencer's product in question may have a wide scope (i.e. gaming, dancing, comedy, a physical product, entertainment, etc...) to capitalize on their immense following, influencers naturally must adjust to selling their product or else their notoriety and branding begin to dissolve. This is where things have to potential to become quite messy. 

In February 2017, YouTuber, and well known FIFA Gamer NepenthZ, full name Craig Douglas, plead guilty to a major gambling offense in which Douglas knowingly promoted a website to his subscriber base (1,000,000 plus) that allowed paid bets in a virtual currency earned on FIFA with no age limitation. That resulted in minors, the majority of Douglas's audience, using their parents' credit cards, and money of their own to gamble online. 

Without the necessary hard-line ethical buffers or guidelines, a corporation must collectively meet before publishing or kick-starting product campaigns or advertisements there is a greater risk of those morals being evaded as Douglas's case above indicates. Due to the fact it is their vision or content as an influencer, most of the time they subsequently utilize their moral judgment regarding if an opportunity should be taken, increasingly so if they've built their own brand, regardless of any representation team's word. 

Why Corporate Culture May Be More Of An Ethical Failsafe

Commenting on the aforementioned Beats by Dre example above, while the company may be exploring their campaigns to a much younger audience using platforms like TikTok, corporations do have a much higher standard of ethical excellence. While there is fear surrounding any ethical blunder within any circumstance, two main measures of corporate culture that hold teams accountable for their ideas stick out.

First are Federal Compliance and Regulations. Those teams within the corporate structure are large entities that can dramatically impact or alter advertisements and campaigns solely based on the perceived moral standing and appropriateness to their viewership or audience. This is a massive fail-safe element that the corporate culture presents.

This is further exemplified in, the American Advertising Federation's, Institute for Advertising Ethics states in their Principles and Practices for Advertising Ethics preamble that, advertising professionals "...should always do what is right for consumers, which in turn is right for business as well." 

Image via Ceshnot/Getty Images
TikTok has weathered quite the week itself as Republicans have tabled banning the app citing worries the app may alter the 2020 election. 

Lastly, there is a mentality held within a corporate culture that is not present as an influencer. This mentality is one of steady submissiveness. Working for somebody else may present a wonderful work/life balance, but it also means as an employee, you work for somebody else. Essentially, your vision as an employee must also be representative of that of the higher-ups, equating to more accountability and less of an entrepreneurial mindset as there is within an influencer.

This in turn may further lessen the chance of an ethical or moral blunder that may take place knowing that others particularly high-ups would be under immense pressure. 

When it comes to social media and advertising there are always caveats to morality and ethics. Even though cooperate America may seem like a lawless place, the ethical morality of a social media influencer whose everyday life is hunting for content may be just as frail as corporate America is portrayed.