Let’s get a couple things out of the way. Yes, I’m going to be a copywriter at an ad agency, where I’m sure I will come up with many a creative, funny and ultimately effective tagline and copy for the clients I work for. Before learning about media ethics, this was all I knew. Now I have a third sentence I’m going to tag on. When creating these devilishly good taglines and copy, I will consider how my work will affect the different groups of people involved in advertising and consumerism. This includes the client, the intended audience, people outside of the intended audience, my co-workers, and others.
I will apply ethics in my everyday work. My main goals are to create effective copy that will help sell the product, but not at the expense of deceiving the consumer. Yes, I have a responsibility to my client to help sell their product, but I also have a responsibility to the tens of thousands of people reading the ad to make sure that they can make an informed decision when shopping. I won’t advertise a product that I believe isn’t beneficial to the target audience and I will not use the power of language to deceive consumers into believing they’ll gain something from a product when in reality they won’t. Consumers aren’t stupid. If the product is bad, they won’t be a return shopper. So why go through the hassle of producing an ad that deceives a consumer into thinking a product has a certain benefit, when in reality it doesn’t? I believe an ad can be effective by highlighting a product’s benefits, instead of erasing its negative aspects. Do it right the first time, because advertising can’t sell a bad product.
I used to think that advertising was all fun and games, coming up with silly taglines that let me twist the English language into persuasive rhetoric. I admit, I still think writing ad copy is fun and exciting, but now I realize that those aren’t my first priority when writing. I’ve come to realize that advertising is a medium where a company can share information about its products to consumers. Ethically, it is my responsibility to create copy that helps sell my client’s products using persuasive language while still allowing the consumers to make an informed decision about the product. Above all else, advertising is information, even though it’s dressed up in fancy words and clever rhetoric.
I know that in the course of my career I will be put in a difficult ethical dilemma where there is no obvious answer between a few choices. When put in these ethical dilemmas regarding the copy that I write, I need to figure out what course of action will benefit the most people. Once that’s figured out, I will try to come up with some alternatives that might still benefit the most amount of people, but harm other groups less severely. I need to ask myself, “Is there some middle ground that I can reach that will maximize benefit and minimize harm?” I will also discuss the dilemma with other people in the agency to try to get multiple perspectives.
My ideal workplace would be someplace that first and foremost recognizes the need for ethics in the modern advertising field. There are so many situations in advertising where ethics can be applied that I think the agency should be aware of how important ethics are in the advertising field. When the agency is put in an ethical dilemma, it should be discussed everyone in the agency so the best decision can be reached. I would also like to work for an agency that wouldn’t pressure me into writing for a client that had a product that I believed wasn’t going to benefit the intended audience. In the best case scenario, they would allow me to just step back from the project. I would also want to be at an agency that tried to avoid getting into ethically shaky situations on a continuous basis. In the end, my ideal agency would be a fun, creative place to work while still allowing me to follow my own ethical guidelines. This would give me an environment where I could most benefit both my clients and the consumers.
