Advertising Ethics

Synonyms

Ethical product promotion; Moral advertising

Introduction

This is a study and concern about how one ought and ought not to promote products, services, and ideas through various sorts of media. Issues include not only the truth in advertising but the appropriate methods of persuasion as well as concern for potential harms caused, the undermining of autonomy, or other negative effects of advertising on society.

What is advertising? Advertere in Latin literally is ad (“toward”) and vertere (“to turn”), and the point of advertising is to get potential customers to turn towarda product, service, or idea. Advertising has a positive role in society by alerting people with common interests to products or services which they really want and need. As Leiser has written, “Advertising is far more ancient, and in some respects more respectable, than many people imagine. In a sense, the first person to cut open a fruit or vegetable so that passersby could see its interior before buying it...