Seth Godin recently wrote a post on marketing ethics at his blog that has marketers talking.
I applaud Seth's passion and his clever way of addressing marketing ethics in his book "All Marketers are Liars." It's a topic our profession needs to dialogue on and care about.
I realize that business ethics books don't sell very well, so I'll keep this short and hope you'll look at Seth's post. Seth's point is that marketers take on personal responsibility for the decisions they make that they cannot rationalize away. I think he is dead on and am delighted to see him take on this important topic. Persuading managers on the merits and importance of thought and discourse on ethics is easily the most challenging area of business to tackle -- especially for those farthest from ethical behavior.
I could try, but I doubt I can write it any better than Seth did in his final sentences:
"We're responsible for what we sell and how we sell it. We're responsible for the effects (and the side effects) of our actions.It is our decision. Whatever the decision is, you need to own it. If you can't look that decision in the mirror, market something else."
2 comments:
Too bad there isn't an organization that can certify marketers for following ethical guidelines.
Problems are often exaggerated and so are solutions to problems. The consumer knows it. The customer knows it and the Clients know it too. This can hardly border on the grounds of ethics. Finally when marketers sell a product, every buyer knows fully well what is he is buying into irrespective of how the marketer positions it. To get he buyers initial interest, the marketer does attract the buyer with an as exaggerated solution as the problem is. No marketer can survive and no brand can survive successfully if they did not own up to what they sell and how they sell.
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