CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1. BACKGROUND

The field of advertising has and continues to experience immense growth as a result of increased industrialisation and an ever popular consumerist culture. Like any profession, advertising practitionehrasve  a  huge  responsibility  to  their  clients  and  Bovee  (1994,  p.  21)  spells  these responsibilities out as;

To differentiate products from advertisers’ competitors, to communicate product information, to expand product distribution, to increase brand preference and loyalty and/ or to reduce overall sales cost.

The activities of service professionals like doctors, lawyers, and bankers are often deeply connected to human beings giving rise to situations that pose potential ethical problems. Advertising practitioners, as service professionals are not exempted from thepsoetential ethical dilemmas (Hunt, Shelby and Chonko, 1987). Advertising practitioners are obliged to produce ads that are truthful and ethically appropriate. Failure to do so may gravely affect the credibility of the sponsoring organisation and morally harm the society. Advertising ethics is therefore defined by Cunningham (1999, p. 500) as;

What is right or good thine conduct of the advertising function. conduct is concerned

with questions of what ought to be done, not just with what legally must be done.

The act of mixing facts and art in advertising communication must always be done taking advertising ethical principles into consideration (Sidhul et al, 2015). However, this is not always the case as suggested by Drum wright and Murphy (2009, p.86), who have indicated that, practitioner generally unethical because the temptations of unethical behavior often surpass

any ethical concerns. Putting ethics aside in the creation of ads has become easier because such provocative and unethical ads break through advertising clutter and achieve results (Sidhul et al, 2015).

Some ethical issues in advertising as asserted by Amoako, (2012, p.65) include;

Vulgarity/obscenity  used to go in  consumers’  attention,  misleading  information

and deception, puffery, stereotypes, racial issues and controversial products such as alcohol).

Hyman, Tansley and Clark (1994, p. 5-15), also identified crucial themes  such as advertising of

‘health care’, ‘tobacco’ or ‘alcohol’ and also children advertising, racial discrimination, political advertising  as   well   as   the  use  of  ‘fear’   and   other  ‘advertising  appeals’   are   some   of the

controversiaul iss  es in the advertising sector. Indeed, Burnett et al  (2003,p. 33)  exp   ressed  that,

advertising industry everywhere is receiving high numbers of ethical complaints from various stakeholders. Sidhul et al (2015, p.115), reinforces this point by stating that;

The advertising industry has been frequently criticized for putting out misleading or exaggerated claims in respect of product, goods and services advertised.

Taking an insight from academic literature on advertising ethics, the following views, conceptualization and negotiations on ethical issues were identified. Some practitioners had acknowledged the negative implications of unethical ads on society but did not assume moral responsibilities  for them.  Practitioner  mostly concerned  with  the  legal  aspect  of  the  ads than the ethical aspect (Academy of Marketing Conference, 2013). Previous studies have also revealed that, practitioners viewed raising ethical concerns to advertisers (clients) as uncomfortable and bad for business. Therefore, the practitioners usually operated from ‘client is always right’ perspective (Drumwright and Murphey, 2004).

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