• by May 22, 2002

Moderator: Tig Tillinghast, Online Spin Contributing Writer: In some recent columns, I brought up several categories of ethical dilemmas facing marketers today. These range from tough choices on what kinds of clients to turn down all the way to outright illegal stuff. Many readers wrote me back telling their own stories, and an interesting theme began to come out of the sum of those responses. Many seemed to believe that in their firm, and maybe in the whole industry, people didn’t feel as if they were supported in making what they felt was the right choice. Of course there were others who wrote in to say that essentially people like me were a bunch of hand-wringing worriers. But just to give you a sampling, the responses varied from things like media vendor bribes to pressure to go along with sweetheart deals between clients and certain other media vendors. Choosing to decline work for "sin" clients, the conflict of interest some buying companies have with some of their vendors, and all sorts of budget shenanigans. So there was a really interesting rogues’ gallery of different ethical issues in the industry, and one of the premises of this discussion is that the most revealing issues as to the moral health of the ad industry lay in that gray area of ethical dilemma. It’s not the obviously illegal stuff that’s really going to tell us a lot; it’s people’s reactions to the close moral calls that will likely indicate where our propensity is to do the right thing.

I’ll start off by asking you, Ray, what your general impression is of the ethical health of the business. Do you think that this is a problem?

Ray Stern, Senior Meda Planner, Catalano Lellos & Silverstein: I think we have a very healthy industry, as far as ethics go. I know the public doesn’t necessarily have the same perception. There was a poll reported recently in AdAge where consumers were ranking advertisers’ ethics near the bottom of a long list of professions. Maybe it’s because of the early days of advertising, when it was sort of like the Old West and there weren’t many rules or governing bodies. Advertisers may have set a stereotype of the "see what we can get away with" adman. I don’t think the boundaries are as loose as they used to be in terms of allowing people to be unethical in the messages that they send and the information that they hide. We do some work with some pharmaceutical clients, and there are so many laws now about how you can position a pharmaceutical product and how much information you have to provide about it.

Tillinghast: Do you think that it’s likely that the average marketer out there is going to find himself in some sort of dilemma in any given year? Is it a normal occurrence in your view of the industry?

Stern: I think it might be not so much on the marketing side, but maybe more on the conflict of interest side. Sometimes you are privy to a lot of information that’s coming out before the general market knows, and sometimes you get into a situation where you know about something, and then you end up working for another client in a similar industry. Or, sometimes a client of yours will branch out into another client’s category. That’s probably the most common type of dilemma.

I was once approached at an industry party by a rep who had been trying to do business with me, when I was at Messner, with Volvo. They wanted Volvo business. The site was not doing well, a number of reps had left, and its stock wasn’t doing well. I was offered a bribe to put my client on their site. The rep told me that he would pay me money to recommend his site to the client. I wouldn’t classify that as an ethical dilemma, though, because I wasn’t tempted.

Sean Finnigan, Media Director, Tribal DDB Chicago: A year and a half ago, I was out at one these summits, and I remember there was a certain media property asking the media directors of these large interactive shops softball questions to win prizes A media director would get $100 if she could say what letter came after D. And to their credit, some media directors returned their stereo systems, their Palm Pilots, the cash and other things that were mounting up. But, yeah, over the past nine to 12 months, I think a lot of those offers have subsided. Those people have gone away, and you certainly sense those overtones in the industry. It’s a long career, and you would never want to be known as the guy who did something of that nature.

We’ve come a long way, in my estimation, over the years as an industry. I think that the people involved in advertising and marketing these days are a lot more socially conscious, are a lot more ethical, a lot more considerate of their message. I believe that the people I work with and then socialize with are some of the same types of people. They are all people who live holistic, consistent lives.

Tillinghast: I’m curious about the people who did the heavy-duty bribes or the quid pro quo. Did it go away because people weren’t accepting it, or because the companies went away because they weren’t successful? What do you think that business practice changed?

Stern: I think it’s because of the old saying "Cream rises to the top." I think the people who resort to techniques like that just aren’t going to last. There are good people here, despite what the public perception might be. Bribery never took off because the majority of people wouldn’t accept behavior like that. It is a small industry and word does get around, and if something like that happens it will be difficult for you to reestablish a relationship or reputation with somebody. It’s very easy to tarnish your reputation in such a small industry.

Tillinghast: To touch on one of your earlier points, there’s a lot of insider information that gets passed back and forth. And it’s not just between the agencies and the clients, it’s also between the agencies and the reps. I had an incident back in San Francisco where I was very uncomfortable. Some reps were giving information about their own company to some of my media buyers, who were making stock decisions based on it. I deliberately put a stop to it. And it wasn’t technically illegal insider information. But just the idea that the buyers were benefiting put us in a conflicted situation. But I haven’t seen that happen in years and years.

Finnigan: I have three words that I haven’t heard in two years: "friends and family." I think that that was the ultimate killer opportunity. The "friends and family" stock programs could be positioned as a "benefit of doing business with…," but, really, it was bribery.

On another front, I’ve seen a lot of problematic issues come out of companies partnering with one another, and then later figuring out that they were competitors, or in a conflicted situation. Where are lines drawn when you’re going to come to me and sell advertising programs and then go behind our backs to other clients to sell full-service agency solutions? I think that’s sort of the year 2002 ethical concern. As far as the inside information trading, friends and family options, cash and other prizes, I think that those have gone by the wayside. Tillinghast: I remember in 1994 having a production house try to take a very large client from us. We learned that one early on: don’t let foxes in chicken coops.

Stern: Yes, and agencies such as ours are perplexed and disturbed at that. We are very forgiving, but we don’t forget. Certain media properties have a long way to go before they prove themselves to us.

Tillinghast: Is there such a thing as a blacklist? Are there blackballed media vendors?

Stern: I wouldn’t say that we have a blackball list, but this is a business that’s really based on relationships. You can apologize all you want when something happens, but we never forget. And once you hurt that relationship, it’s hard to repair it. Even if you switch reps or contacts or whatever, there’s still always that stigma of "this company is not good to work with," and it is a small industry, and word does get around. Finnigan: Yeah, we don’t have a blacklist. We would never entertain the notion. We typically call the offending party in, read them the riot act, and then give them a next-step plan as to how they’re going to function in the future. We always end it with a positive slant. We’d never blacklist anybody, but these people need to realize what standard operating procedure is and what it is not.

Tillinghast: Moving on to a different topic, I just noticed NBC hired the crisis communications firm of Shepardson, Stern, and Kominsky. They seem to be concerned about the fallout from their decision to allow liquor ads back onto network TV. Do these issues affect us? Sitting as we are below the politicions, reporters, used car salesmen in that opinion poll, do we need to worry about policing ourselves?

Stern: Not necessarily. I think there’s always going to be some bad apples in the bushel that can spoil the whole thing. If you remember some years back, when Camel broke their Joe Camel, and there were a lot of reports that they were using cartoon images to appeal to a younger audience. Does the industry need to be concerned about tactics like that? Yeah, of course we do, but I think that there’s no way to really police it. It’s perception and opinion. There’s no necessary proof unless they’re running Joe Camel ads in Sports Illustrated for Kids. So do we need to be concerned with that as an industry? No, I don’t think so. Do we need to conduct ourselves in a professional manner and make sure that we’re operating on the level? Yes. But some people are going to do it, and we’re never going to be able to prove it to the point where we can step in and put some regulations down or change it.

Tillinghast: So what I’m hearing from both of you is that just because it’s legal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right. You’re talking about what’s regulated and unregulated, but there’s also this higher issue of whether it’s the right thing to do.

Finnigan: I agree with Ray for adults, but I think when we bring children into the equation it’s a different story altogether. Anybody who has children understands the impact of imagery on their lives. I’ve worked on General Mills Kids, and I’ll tell you that everyone respects the rules when it comes to kids. They worry about the imagery, the placement, the data collection, everything. As a parent myself, it’s the content I worry about, not the ads. The other day, I heard that Ozzie Osbourne is going to be a father on a certain network. At what point does Marilyn Manson replace Steve on Blue’s Clues? Tillinghast: So it’s not us, it’s the evil media programmers?

Finnigan: I think that we all need to watch out for the use of shock value, both in programming and in our ads. It’s true today that for every inappropriate ad, there are thousands of decent ones, which I think is a better ratio than the content creators can claim. The advertisers might get blamed more for everything, though. You can show hundreds of ads, but the one people will throw back in your face is the one where they shoot gerbils out of a cannon [Outpost.com].

Tillinghast: I can’t think of a better closing image. Thank you all very much for talking with us.