• by Kendall Allen , April 4, 2011

When it comes to ethics, most of us operate quietly every day, making little judgment calls along the way that reflect our integrity. The ethical compass -- sometimes moral, if you will -- just works in the background. We know who we are; we know the kind of person we want to be -- and we just are that person. As we watch others make their way  through choices of magnitude or minutiae, some of the choices seem obvious:

-      Be the kind of person who does what you say you are going to do. If you can't, say so in enough time to make a new plan.

-      You can be the agency buyer who returns calls and takes meetings -- or the one who doesn't. Be as much like the former as possible.

-      You can spend your hard-earned currency, accumulated legitimately, to grow your business network and your prospects -- or you can fling more "inappropriate currencies" and build a flimsy house of cards.

-      If you are going to operate under the modus of "No press is bad press," take a minute to define bad.

-      So, yes, lastly, if you are going to kill elephants and hand out sporty company loot to villagers, filming the whole thing to post on your sort of NASCAR-esque ".me" website -- and position yourself as a conservationist -- make sure you have your social media strategy figured out.

By now, you've probably read about, or seen the clip (apparently one version of it even features the scene rocking out to "Hell's Bells") of the annual hunting expedition to Zimbabwe by GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons. This is not a comment on hunting, big game or otherwise. I've plenty of friends who hunt. And some even post their hunting photos quite, well, abundantly, on Facebook. But, the convolutions surrounding this incident are just mind-boggling. Parsons' official position is that he and his crew consider this annual expedition a humanitarian one, and that in this instance, they were out to protect the villagers' crops from the ravages of elephants, flying in with video cams and branded tchotchkes to do so.

The resulting late-night killing video was posted, tweeted, took off like wildfire -- and prompted outraged commentary, public denouncement by PETA (which also pulled its GoDaddy account) and other humanitarian groups, and all kinds of equally unfortunate commentary agreeing with Parsons but still managing to make him sound like a complete thug, in all of his chest-thumping conviviality. Those watching the blogs for a little while wondered just how hand-picked and over-moderated the commentary was,  since after a while, most of the public comment was essentially supportive. Most of the disparaging stuff seemed to vanish.

Though, beautifully, even the supportive "You Go, Bob" stuff left intact highlights the contortions of Parson's positioning. As seen on Parson's own blog: "Mr. Parsons, I want to thank you for standing up for hunting & hunter's rights and having the guts to post your elephant video on a public forum. I think that too many folks are afraid to stand up for what they believe in due to fear of criticism. Too many of todays [sic] hunting fraternity tuck their tails & try to fly under the radar. I'm proud to be a hunter and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I know the villagers in the video certainly were not upset that you shot that elephant. Maybe that is the problem here in the good old USA. Most of us dont [sic] know what it is like to be hungry." Hunters' rights? Hunger? Humanitarianism? Not for profit marketing? Big Game blood sport? Which is it?

In the wake of Parsons' banned Super Bowl ads and his other faux pas, it was kind of fun to see another marketer swoop in and take advantage of his bad moment. After publicly speaking out against GoDaddy and Parsons, Namecheap launched a special promotion, offering to transfer domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap at aggressively cheap pricing.  In addition, it will donate $1 for every transfer to Save The Elephants (www.savetheelephants.org).

Parsons' expedition may or may not have been big game hunting, and may or may not have been humanitarian aid. But there were branded hats, music, video uploads, blog rolling, and action in the Tweighborhood -- making it look an awful lot like branding and "experiential marketing" gone amuck. On the other hand, right-on for Namecheap. Sometimes it's the small moves that matter.