Marketing Ethics - Coursework Example

?Marketing Ethics: Psst! Have you heard What are the ethical issues in relation to stealth marketing? Ethics can be defined as moral principles and values which an individual, an organization or any other entity display through their conduct (Smith et al, 1992). In the case of stealth marketing, Sneeze, a marketing agency which was hired by Premiership football club, deemed it ethical if it planted paid actors in different pubs and bars located around the ground to promote the text subscription of the football club. Sneeze chose to promote the subscription by hook or by crook. Graham Goodkind, who is the owner of the agency, argues that his company has not committed any fraud and the use of the phrase “constitutes fraud” suggests that in the books of Law, Sneeze has not committed any crime which is punishable with the verdict given for fraud. He nevertheless does not understand that the subscriptions were promoted through lies which the football fans were fed. With the lies and in retrospect of the scenario presented by the actors who were posing as football fans, the text subscription service was promoted. The true essence of ethical marketing is to use the tools of marketing and promotion in a creative way and not to exploit the consumers. Stealth marketing mars the true spirit of marketing as the consumers are exploited without them being aware of something being promoted. Goodkind also goes on to say that it is okay for Sneeze to build a promotional campaign based on lies as there are already a lot of unethical practices happening in the field of marketing. However, this cannot be an excuse as each marketer and each individual must be responsible for his/her own actions. Moreover, Stealth Marketing hides the true essence of the value of a brand which should be promoted. For example, if an individual is hired to generate false word-of-mouth for a particular brand, it would undermine the true essence of what value a brand actually presents a market and stealth marketing takes the naturalism away from a brand (Langer et al, 2006). 2. What were the football club’s communication objectives? Communication strategy is not only limited to the Above the Line and Below the Line advertising campaigns. It also includes Sales Promotions, PR Activities, Customer Service and Public Selling. The Football club’s primary objective for the text subscription campaign as stated was to keep the football fans updated on the latest developments in the football club. Initially, Premiership football club chose to promote the service through its own literature which may include, but not limited to corporate broachers, flyers etc. It also hired a bunch of attractive girls who would distribute promotional material to the fans. But this apparently did not work. Their main objective of communication was beyond just keeping their fans abreast with the latest trends and progression going on at the club. It was to promote the text subscription service itself. Eventually, Sneeze was hired which communicated the message, encoded in a stealth message of a person being fired because of using a particular text subscription service, and getting the actual feedback in the form of increased number or subscriptions and an unnecessary feedback of getting the customer signing a fake petition. The message actually did promote the service as the audience selected itself was football fans. The objective of this communication and the one adopted overall was to inform the customers about a particular texting subscription and to generate a significant number of sign-ups for the text service. The reason for communicating the message was therefore to affect the attitudes and beliefs of the audience towards the texting service in question. Secondly, the campaign which was designed by Sneeze was in response to Premiership football club’s instructions and initial failure to attract enough sign-ups. The campaign did not highlight the brand of Premiership Football Club as a major influencer but instead, the actors would pull out a piece of paper which would explain the usage of the service. This process suggests that the football club’s objective to run the campaign was also to guide the footballs on how to use the service and avail its benefits, which seems to be taken well by the football fans as it could be gauged from the number of subscriptions which rose as a result of this campaign. 3. How else could they have achieved these objectives? True essence of marketing a product would only be achieved when the tools of communication and marketing are used ethically without exploiting the consumers’ needs. This is implying that Sneeze used the football fan’s passion to promote the text subscription service. Besides planting paid actors to pose as football fans, Sneeze could have have used celebrity endorsements to provide leverage to the brand image of Premiership football club and the text subscription as well. Apart from this, the social media is an important tool of marketing especially in this age of information. A classic example of Fifa world cup 2010 can be quoted here where Adidas has already sponsored the event. Refuting this strategic move, Nike came up with a campaign which could engage the football fans through Facebook and Twitter. It started online competitions which the consumers could participate in and win tickets to the world cup matches. By going online, Nike could save loads of money on its marketing and was able to connect to the audience and achieve way more mileage and brand leverage as compared to Adidas, which spent awful amounts of money by winning the Fifa 2010 sponsorship (franc?OIS et al, 2012). Similarly, Premiership football club could use the social media such as a separate Facebook page, Twitter following along with an interactive website of the text subscription campaign to create hype online in the market. Besides this, Sneeze or event Premiership football club could come up with competitions which could give away free match tickets or exclusive interview with the players on every 10th or 100th subscription. This could be done on a weekly base. Secondly, Premiership football club could brand the whole campaign of text subscriptions. This would also have enabled other brands to participate in co-branding opportunities. Once the campaign could be branded, not only it would be open to sponsorship but it would also have become easier to promote the whole campaign through BTL or ATL with other promotional campaigns of the football club. Placing standees or branding the pubs which had most access to the football fans would have generated better results as along with the sign-ups, the brand of Premiership football club would also be leveraged (Langer et al, 2006). References FRANC?OIS A. CARRILLAT, & ALAIN D'ASTOUS. (2012). The sponsorship-advertising interface: is less better for sponsors? European Journal of Marketing. 46, 562-574. LANGER, R., & BECKMANN, S. C. (2006). Stealth Marketing: Socially responsible and ethically sound communication? MURPHY, P. E. (2005). Ethical marketing. Upper Saddle River, N.J., Pearson Prentice Hall. SMITH, N. C., & QUELCH, J. A. (1992). Ethics in marketing. Homewood, IL, Irwin. Top of Form Bottom of Form Read More