Are There Billboards in Heaven?

James Weiskittel
jw571818@ohio.edu

Billboard Nation

    We spend the vast majority of our lives bombarded with advertising. Think about it—from the commercials blanketing your favorite cartoons during your formative years to the slew of billboards you likely passed the last time you drove, well, anywhere, advertising accompanies nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Still, despite its ubiquitous nature, we rarely dwell on the messages we receive.

Image Source: ferrantraite/Getty Images

    Given the massive importance advertising plays in our society, an organization such as The Institute for Advertising Ethics is an obvious necessity. Where the Federal Trade Commission regulates, the IAE guides, as evidenced by the nine-principles in their Principles and Practices for Advertising Ethics.

Image Source: IAE

    Of course, reading something like “Advertisers should treat consumers fairly based on the nature of the audience to whom the ads are directed and the nature of the product or service advertised” begs the question:

“do they really need to say this?”

Yes. They do. 

    You see, companies big and small, new and old have long struggled to balance their bottom-line-driven advertising with ethical practices.

    A famous example of this can be found in Campbell’s soup. As William O’Barr, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, points out in this article, the company famously used clear marbles in their ads to enhance and distort the amount and floating ability of the vegetables in their soup. Of course, this was nowhere near accurate, and the tactic eventually backfired, resulting in a slew of bad press for Campbell’s.

Image Source: Parents, March 1968, 63

    Obviously, there’s a fine line between distorting how many vegetables are in a can of soup and deliberately misleading the consumer about what a product can do. In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile ‘false-advertising’ cases that underscore just how rampant unethical advertising has become.

    As Will Heilpern points out in the following article for Business Insider, “Many companies have been caught out for peddling mediocre products, using wild claims like ‘scientifically proven’ with ‘guaranteed results.’”

    In some cases, the claims are preposterous (no, Red Bull can not give you physical wings, but that didn’t stop a lawsuit against the drink). But in other instances, the potential for harm is very real. For instance, Airborne (an over-the-counter supplement) claimed their product could prevent colds and flus. It couldn’t, and the company was eventually forced to settle a class-action lawsuit.

Image Source: ASR Photos on Flickr

    For most of my life, stories like these were fodder for a quick laugh or maybe a water-cooler talking point, but the pandemic dramatically altered my perspective on the influence of advertising. In fact, I actually had a family member tell me that they weren’t concerned about getting COVID, and they had no interest in the vaccine. When I asked why, they explained that they had Zinc, Airborne, and Ivermectin in their medicine cabinet, and were “ready to rock.”

Image Source: Chris Menning

    All of which brings us to the IAE’s second principle: 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. 

    Given everything I've witnessed, I no longer laugh when I read a story about a company ignoring its core code in the name of profit. In fact, at this point, I believe that the issue of ethics in advertising just might be a matter of life and death.