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A good deal of Marketing on the Advertising side deals with manipulation of the human psyche. Using various techniques such as "bandwagoning", "celebrity endor
by crusso 14y ago
A good deal of Marketing on the Advertising side deals with manipulation of the human psyche.
Using various techniques such as "bandwagoning", "celebrity endorsements", "card stacking", etc. are not at all intended to help the user make a good choice. They're intended to fool the user into making a choice for the associated product or service.
Really, any advertising that isn't just an honest presentation of the facts could easily be described as "unethical".
- chatmasta 14y agoIf you believe in your product, then you should also believe you are guiding them to the "best choice."
- crusso 14y agoPerpetrators of the Spanish Inquisition believed that they were guiding Jews to the "best choice". That didn't make their actions ethical.
- rhizome 14y agoIt was ethical in that they had reasons for doing it, but that didn't mean it wasn't destructive and counter-productive. Those are still ethical choices, though, "ethics" is not a "good or bad," it's just a name for the group of reasons used to do something.
- crusso 14y agoEthics involves some judgement of "right" and "wrong". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that torturing people so that they worship your "loving and forgiving God" is unethical.
- rhizome 14y agoIt's certainly destructive. However, certain people throughout history have figured out way for the ends to justify the means, they had an ethic (cf. TV's Dexter), and this contextual dependence is what I'm trying to describe.
- AJ007 14y agoI would argue all marketing on the advertising side deals with human manipulation. If not, then its just an essay.