How Important is Ethics in Marketing?

[Rachel1980]

Hi everybody,

I am currently developing an interactive product to help small business owners through the process of writing and developing their own marketing plans. This product will be created around a set of principles that come from the foundation of our business concept, Character Driven Marketing.

I am keen to get a feel and some first-hand input from the group in regards to the following question: How important is ethics in marketing?

What kind of marketing would you consider to be decent, ethical marketing and why? What kind of marketing do you respond to? What kind of marketing turns you off?

This information will be invaluable to us in developing a product that can help people create a cost effective marketing plan they can be proud of.

I would love to generate some discussion on this, and get the benefit of your opinions, insights and experiences.

Thanks for your time and ideas.

[fastfences]

Hi everybody,


I am keen to get a feel and some first-hand input from the group in regards to the following question: How important is ethics in marketing?



How important is ethics in any business discipline? Extremely! it's the very foundation and cornerstone of our business - good ethics equals good business, good referrals, good credibility and good goodwill.

The type and variety of ethics will be viewed and received differently by everyone. Take tele-marketing or tele-sales for instance. My view, as a consumer, will be far removed from the view of a company like, say, EbonyBailey; I'm sure Michael will respond!

To me, the biggest 'turn-off' is being disturbed at work to receive a call from someone in a 'phone pit' trying to extol the virtues of me changing phone carriers. If, as Michael has stated previously, they rang to make an appointment - no problem - as long as they don't persist when you say NO!

I much prefer to receive printed marketing material, whereupon I can instantly decide (on my own!!) whether I would like to pursue the proposition, or not.
Cheers, Nigel

[Jayne]

Hi,

I totally agree with Nigel. I had my first telesales call yesterday (the meeting type). I couldn't get him off the phone, I the end I can to say it was ok for another man to ring me next week, just so I could go and watch Emmerdale!

I have gone off ads sales men (who come to the bakery) too a little. We were conned out of some money once by a man saying he worked for the local rugby team, doing an advertising campaign, we even had a meeting at the rugby ground, so we thought it was all above board. Turns out, he hired a room and Cas Tigers knew nothing about it. Luckly we only lost £200, but some of the other business people lost more.

We had the last laugh though, turned out, one of the others he conned, had a brother, an MP and top solicitor, so his life was made a living hell :lol:

Oh, I don't like email spam either!

Jayne

[Agri-Hire]

I can't agree.

Perthonally I think that Ethics has no more importanth in marketing that say Kent or Glouthtershire!

Sorry, having a silly moment

:oops:

[SethMould]

Fascinating topic. I am starting up a business for a friend. She wants to link part-time task-based Employees with Customers in the Employee's locality.

So, I'm proposing to send free business cards to people who've asked to become an Employee, with a space "Your rep: " where they can write their name. They then distribute these as they wish.

If a potential Customer makes an enquiry, we ask for the Rep's name and bingo! we have a match. Reps will have undergone checks and a telephone/email interview.

This struck me as completely ethical. What do you think?

[Richard Glynn]

When people phone me up saying they are doing a crime survey in my area, and then try to sell me an alarm system - this in my opinion in unethical.

But worse than that, if you have to resort to unethical marketing practices to win business you are plainly desperate. And if you are desperate then I can only assume that your product or service is defective or below par.

Would I rather do business with an ethical or an unethical business? Ethical every time.

Is it the first thing I look for? No - never.

If you're unethical it will damage you. If you are ethical I'm delighted for you. But you should be ethical and I have more important criteria such as price, quality, personal relationship with the company and if the service satisfies my needs.

[Minuteman Press]

Fundamental in business - not much has changed since 2005.

[Blood Lust]

Hi everybody,

I am currently developing an interactive product to help small business owners through the process of writing and developing their own marketing plans. This product will be created around a set of principles that come from the foundation of our business concept, Character Driven Marketing.

I am keen to get a feel and some first-hand input from the group in regards to the following question: How important is ethics in marketing?

What kind of marketing would you consider to be decent, ethical marketing and why? What kind of marketing do you respond to? What kind of marketing turns you off?

This information will be invaluable to us in developing a product that can help people create a cost effective marketing plan they can be proud of.

I would love to generate some discussion on this, and get the benefit of your opinions, insights and experiences.

Thanks for your time and ideas.

lol you are making a marketing product and asking us how to do marketing??

I want a share of your business if I tell you!

[cjd]

I am currently developing an interactive product ........around a set of principles that come from the foundation of our business concept, Character Driven Marketing............ How important is ethics in marketing?


Are these two things linked in some way (character driven marketing and ethics)?

If by "character" you mean good character, then it sounds like you're looking for reassurance that you can sell this idea - in which case I'd say, yes, there's probably a market. But it's pretty specialised and most small businesses that cared about ethics would probably that they could go it alone. It sounds more like a sale to a corporate looking for a fake social/ethical/green identity.

If by "character" you mean an individual unique identity, then no, ethics would not necessarily be important - but it's normally desirable of course.

[athanne]

Ethics should be the fundamental point on which to build on customers. I therefore, don't think that casting your eyes on your volume of products and fixing your mind on prospective customers should leave you with no chance for exercising ethical marketing. Marketing is achieved by attraction and I guess that no one can be attracted to something through unethical means.

[mixolodian]

Hi there
Im new to business and i just starting to learn a little at a time.
But as a customer I think that if a business pays attention to being as honest as possible, then businesses will have more longevity and keep their customers, and would be reward ed in the long term.

[Sophia Myles]

Hi, there

I believe that ethics is the button line & base stone of marketing. In essence, marketing is the way for sellers to introduce their products to the public. That is to say - they have to have the products at first, and then market them to customers. During this process, if ethics is lost, the whole thing may go into an fraud. In some cases, the sellers have a certain product with some specific features, but for promoting it, they add some other features that do not actually exist by going to far on marketing - I take that as lack of ethnics also.

However, there's no fault to use some beautiful description & comments on the products. It's kind of the thing marketing is born with. Just put ethics in mind to measure the process all the time.

[James Grant]

Without ethics you have no actual relationship with your customers.
Your customers = your business.

[Montaigne]

You're either an ethical person or you're not. You don't start out in business thinking "should I be ethical or unethical" or rather most people don't. I suppose there may be people who follow Machievelli's principle of the end justifies the means but I would guess they were in the minority and restricted to companies like Shell :)

I think that being unethical or dishonest in business will damage your firm in the end but then I have plenty of experience of competing against firms that intentionally mislead their customers and still have multi-billion pound turnovers each year.

A business should always strive to be the most ethical, the most honest and provide the best service that it can because that it the right thing to do both morally and from the perspective of having a successful business.

[Montaigne]

Doh, I just noticed this is a revived thread from 2005!