Controversial Advertising Campaigns (Ethics in Advertising)

Several controversial advertising campaigns have gained media coverage for the controversy they provoked. Here we try to understand if advertising should be permitted to use imagery and words that shock, offend or insult particular groups in order to get messages across; we will apply virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism or religious ethics to support the various discussion and points. Find examples of ethically controversial campaigns that will help draw out the implications in each case for regulation, ethics and brand management.

Protein world’s 2015 campaign “Are you beach body ready?”, Gillette’s 2019 campaign “We Believe”, Dove’s 2017 Facebook campaign ‘whitewashing’, Paddy Power’s are few examples of controversial advertising campaigns that have stirred up controversy by giving offence, vulgarity, promoting socially harmful activities, promoting stereotypes of race, gender, body type, advertising to children, and so on.

Marketers should address the issue of social responsibility in the context of advertising’s wider stakeholders e.g. shareholders, employees, and relate ethical issues to matters of regulation. Its important to use ethical concepts including virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism or religious ethics to controversial advertisements. There are often conflicts of interest between groups that take offence, regulators and brands who might in some cases benefit from controversy.

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