Tasteful & Ethical vs. Tacky & Unethical

- Blog 8

When it comes to advertising people take different approaches in order to catch the target audience’s attention. They can be daring and bold, cliché and un-original or just plain tacky and this is where the argument comes in as to whether the advertisement is in Good or Bad taste or in fact ethical or even unethical. The table below allows a sample audience to place a score in relation to their interpretation of  the advertisement.

Audiences will also interpret intended messages based on their own needs, humour, past experience and so on. In the same way as an author hands their literary creations over to the readers to determine meaning and as such, to some extent, advertisers are also subjected to a similar “death of the author” phenomenon. The viewer will draw their own conclusions – the advertiser’s job is to ensure that they get the correct message across.

I’ll tell you what I think – see if u agree!

And BTW I thought the Mother Natures Treasure chest add was excellent – The association to breast feeding was inoffensive to me and the connection it made could only add a little more tolerance to public feeding of infants instead of mothers being locked away in public toilets to feed their babies for fear of offending the occasional prig.

What may be clearly obvious is that  - different people think differently – the advert has to be targeted at the intended audience BUT - Some times there is a fine line between funny and tacky, advertisers really need to get the balance right in order to keep their audiences engaged.

Getting the balance right!!

Ethical theories-

Deontology:

This is the study of the nature of duty and obligation. So there are rule, principles and duties and if they are followed then the overall outcome will usually be acceptable .

Consequentialism:

Is the doctrine that the morality of an action, is to be judged solely by its consequences. Therefore it’s more so to do with the ends justifying the means, ‘never mind how we got there as long as the result was good’.

Virtue ethics:

This theory suggests that ‘goodness’ comes from a good disposition of character and good habits (or virtues such as, courage temperance, justice etc.) It may then be concluded that virtues are the ‘golden mean’ of behavior.

When we talk about the golden mean, we are talking about the ideal moderate position between two extremes, such that…..

Codes- Deontological ethics:

• MEAA CODE

(Media Alliance Code)

Go To- Link  

Or join their facebook

Principles:

Honesty Fairness, Independence and Respect for the rights of others

• PRIA CODE

(Public Relation Institute of Australia)

Go To- Link

• AFA CODE

(Agency code of ethics – at the Communication Council)

Go To-Link

•  AANA CODE

(Australian Association of National Advertisers)

Go To- Link

For the 2012 – Fact sheet.

For the 5 unethical advert’s OMG! - Click here