Ethical Marketing: Are You Crossing the Line?
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:28 am
Tracking. Geolocation. Targeting. Monitoring. Spying. Many of these practices are part of everyday digital marketing.
Do you consider all of this ethical? Are you comfortable, as a marketing professional, having those words describe your job? Is it possible to be ethical in our profession, and still use the data that informs us about the ways in which we interact with customers? Or are we crossing the line? At Roas Hunter , we tell you how to do it.
Let's look at a couple of examples that have come to light recently:
A Washington Post reporter detailed how over the course of a week, his iPhone was hit with more than 5,400 trackers , mostly in apps, that passed on his personal information to third parties. This happened even while he was sleeping.
An article in the New York Times recounted how cell phones record the location of their owners minute by minute and how companies have access to this data. “At least 75 companies anonymously receive the exact location of those apps that users allow to know where they are in order to receive local news or weather.”
Another New York Times article highlighted area code malaysia list how much you can learn from just a phone number. It explains how numbers can be used to track and target audiences.
A CNET article recounted how we only know a part of the FaceApp app and that everything plays in favor of the company, and not the user. FaceApp gained scrutiny when it introduced the feature of seeing your face as an adult or as a child, and this was very successful.
As marketers, how can we make sure we don't cross the line?
Table of contents
How to behave ethically in marketing
The audience comes first
Talk about the topic
How to behave ethically in marketing
The audience comes first
What are the priorities of a company that obtains the location of the mobile phones of their owners? It can be said that the priorities of that company are more important than the users of those phones. In fact, the users are merely a resource from which to extract money. Is that ethical?
But when we put our audiences first in marketing, that’s when we’re on the right track. That location and derived data is the means to create a better experience. If the resulting experience pushes customers to provide more information, it can be seen as a privilege, even a symbol of reciprocal trust. Not only is this more ethical, it creates an even better experience for users.
As Robert Rose says in his article on GDPR, we must treat our audience as we would treat our customers, and put the same priority and care into our content as into the products we launch on the market. In this way, the purpose of marketing can be transformed.
christin hume hBuwVLcYTnA unsplash
Talk about the topic
With more and more personal data being generated, collected and used, and the growing number of smart devices in our lives, the ethical challenge for marketing only increases. Don't rely on mandates and regulations to dictate your policies and principles of what is ethical.
Take a step back and think about how your brand can access and use data shared by your potential audiences, current audiences, and customers. Center the conversation around this in your core beliefs of what is ethical and what is not, and outline the principles that should never be compromised.
Do you consider all of this ethical? Are you comfortable, as a marketing professional, having those words describe your job? Is it possible to be ethical in our profession, and still use the data that informs us about the ways in which we interact with customers? Or are we crossing the line? At Roas Hunter , we tell you how to do it.
Let's look at a couple of examples that have come to light recently:
A Washington Post reporter detailed how over the course of a week, his iPhone was hit with more than 5,400 trackers , mostly in apps, that passed on his personal information to third parties. This happened even while he was sleeping.
An article in the New York Times recounted how cell phones record the location of their owners minute by minute and how companies have access to this data. “At least 75 companies anonymously receive the exact location of those apps that users allow to know where they are in order to receive local news or weather.”
Another New York Times article highlighted area code malaysia list how much you can learn from just a phone number. It explains how numbers can be used to track and target audiences.
A CNET article recounted how we only know a part of the FaceApp app and that everything plays in favor of the company, and not the user. FaceApp gained scrutiny when it introduced the feature of seeing your face as an adult or as a child, and this was very successful.
As marketers, how can we make sure we don't cross the line?
Table of contents
How to behave ethically in marketing
The audience comes first
Talk about the topic
How to behave ethically in marketing
The audience comes first
What are the priorities of a company that obtains the location of the mobile phones of their owners? It can be said that the priorities of that company are more important than the users of those phones. In fact, the users are merely a resource from which to extract money. Is that ethical?
But when we put our audiences first in marketing, that’s when we’re on the right track. That location and derived data is the means to create a better experience. If the resulting experience pushes customers to provide more information, it can be seen as a privilege, even a symbol of reciprocal trust. Not only is this more ethical, it creates an even better experience for users.
As Robert Rose says in his article on GDPR, we must treat our audience as we would treat our customers, and put the same priority and care into our content as into the products we launch on the market. In this way, the purpose of marketing can be transformed.
christin hume hBuwVLcYTnA unsplash
Talk about the topic
With more and more personal data being generated, collected and used, and the growing number of smart devices in our lives, the ethical challenge for marketing only increases. Don't rely on mandates and regulations to dictate your policies and principles of what is ethical.
Take a step back and think about how your brand can access and use data shared by your potential audiences, current audiences, and customers. Center the conversation around this in your core beliefs of what is ethical and what is not, and outline the principles that should never be compromised.