What's in an Advertiser?

Kate Nolen katenolen27@gmail.com

 

As I started to think about the content of this blog, the one thing that I kept asking myself is… who falls into this “advertiser” criteria? Should everyone that is selling something be asked to follow these rules? Are governed advertisers just the bigger companies with paid commercials on television and radio? Or does this extend to sellers on Amazon and mid-level marketing firms that are all over Facebook and Instagram? What about just a small business website?

So, as an example, I did some digging and looked into Facebook’s Community Standards policy on advertising where I found several similarities to Facebook’s standards compared to the AAF and PRSA ethics codes. The rules on Facebook are definitely blurrier than the above-mentioned agency codes, but I think they still cover the same principles and ideas for the most part.

A comparison between the three on truth:

AAF’s site states Advertising, public relations, marketing communications, news, and editorial all share a common objective of truth and high ethical standards in serving the public.

PRSA states: We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.

Both of these are pretty clear. But when it comes to Facebook there isn’t a straightforward guideline about truth. Instead, it’s broken down into several categories like “authenticity, false news, and inauthentic behavior”. It’s clear that Facebook chooses to follow their set of rules, which is a little scary because there are a lot of people there that believe the ads they see on Facebook.

Source: Consumer Reports

It seems as though the broadly advertised items like commercials and radio ads follow these codes as they should. Thought, there are a few recent instances were being dishonest about product claims could really mean the difference between life and death, so it’s being taken very seriously. False Advertising Dangers Lurk in the Age of COVID-19 – Reduxin explains that in March of this year, the FDA sent a warning letter to CBD manufacturer NeuroXPF because of their false and wildly suggestive claims made on their website. NeuroXPF’s site claimed that the company was working on a vaccine for Covid-19 and that its products could prevent someone from getting Covid-19, though the product was not FDA approved and had no documented scientific research to back its claims. Companies like this are playing into people’s fears of getting sick to get them to buy the product. This is a violation of both AAF and PRSA code of ethics:

AAF PRINCIPLE 1: Advertising, public relations, marketing communications, news, and editorial all share a common objective of truth and high ethical standards in serving the public.

AAF PRINCIPLE 2: Advertising, public relations, and all marketing communications professionals have an obligation to exercise the highest personal ethics in the creation and dissemination of commercial information to consumers.

PRSA: honesty - we adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.

It seems as though in advertising, creators will follow the ethics that they feel they must, but the product and service markets are extremely competitive. At the same time, they will continue to find ways to attract customers and sway consumers to purchase their product over another. I think the sheer competitiveness of the market is what keeps tempting advertisers to see what they can get away with in their ads if it helps boost purchase volume.