A634.5.4.RB - Is Marketing Evil?

Being a marketer myself, the topic of ethical marketing hits close to home for me. Just as stated in our reading, marketing is commonly scrutinized as it is subject to analysis by society as its most often in the public eye (Dincer & Dincer, 2014). Marketing often is based around winning, whether it is winning business, winning a positive reputation, winning customers or followers, winning really is the goal of marketing. Even with winning being a priority in marketing, marketers can still do so with integrity.

I would like to use my own company as an example of a marketing campaign with integrity, more specifically our campaign that ran at the end of 2018. The goal of MassMutual’s marketing campaign was to raise brand awareness, but with our brand mission of helping others secure their future, and protect the ones they love, we were able to launch a campaign effort that was positive and withheld uprightness. Our campaign was all about the positive news stories of 2018, instead of instilling fear in our potential customers we highlighted the goodness of people and their actions, as can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQpCOIj1_nU&t=1s. Ultimately this marketing effort was done so with integrity and wholesomeness, while also instilling and spreading awareness of the organization which was the initial purpose of the marketing effort.

As a leader, already constantly balancing ethical marketing and selling, I make it a priority to remain conscious of the ultimate goals of all the stakeholders. Meaning if I am selling a launch of a new system to sales, I make sure that this new system will actually assist and support sales from their viewpoint. I am currently trying to get the buy in from the sales organization on a new system involved with social media management, and I do believe that the system will be a value add to them, so I do feel that this is an ethical marketing effort. I do this, because anything can be marketed, but not everything should be marketed, and that is what is critical to understand as a leader.

References

Dincer, C., & Dincer, B. (2014, November). An Overview and Analysis of Marketing Ethics[PDF]. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences.

MassMutual. (2018, November 19). Retrieved April 22, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQpCOIj1_nU&t=1s