I couldn’t help but question the ethics of marketing with the recent Black Friday Sales.

My inbox piled up with Friday Black Sales and Monday Cyber offers, tempting me with many one-liners, like:

• 1 day until Friday black sales.
• Cyber Friday. 25% off everything online.
• 25-60% off!?
• Final chance to shop up to 50% off.
• There’s only a few hours left…

Anyway, I think you get the gist and am very aware your inbox (or junk mail) is probably looking somewhat similar.

In fact, this landed the brand Pretty Little Things (owned by Boohoo) in hot water for their Black Friday 99% sale deals, considered as “fast fashion” and unsustainable consumption. It has also been reported by The Times that workers in Leicester making clothes destined for the fashion giant are being paid as little as £3.50 an hour in non-covid safe conditions.

Meanwhile, their marketing campaigns continue; Boohoo Black Friday deals 2020: save up to 90% off in their HUGE sale.

So where am I going with all of this?

Being a marketer, and also creating daily email campaigns (but in the B2B world), I felt compelled to look into this further.

What role do marketers play in this?

What are the ethical consequences of sales like this?

And what is classified as “unethical marketing”?

While a deal may seem good to us, we need to think twice about the brand and their intentions. Promoting large sale campaigns for “fast fashion” brands could be detrimental to worker’s low wages and poor working conditions, as well as the environmental and social consequences.

Marketers, consumers, business owners all have a duty of care. I want to focus on what it means for you in the world of marketing.

“92% of Millennial consumers are more likely to buy products from ethical companies” (Wordstream, 2020).

So what do I mean by unethical marketing, I hear you ask?

Unethical marketing sends the wrong messages out to prospects about your products and services. It is not a marketing strategy.

On the flip slide, ethical marketing seeks to promote honesty, fairness, and responsibility in all marketing activities.

Forbes has published some common unethical marketing practices to be aware of:

• Misleading advertising.
• Contacting people without their consent/spam.
• Inciting controversy.
• Emotional exploitation.
• Unverified claims.

As marketers, we are expected to hold strong ethical values for what we put out into the market. Yet, it’s not something that gets discussed all that much.

How do we remain ethical with our marketing campaigns?

• Consider whether your audience is going to value or benefit from your marketing.
• Honest use of testimonials or case studies.
• How will your goods or services benefit socially responsible or environmental causes?
• No false or misleading offers/claims.
• Carry out ethical messages or themes throughout your campaigns (if it makes sense to do).
• Be transparent.

When it comes to SEO (search engine optimisation), there are some unethical practices to avoid:

• Plagiarising contents.
• Spamming comment sections.
• Paying for links and reselling them for more to marketers who lack the knowledge on how to use them effectively.
• Using too many keywords as well as hidden texts on a website.
• Using JavaScript re-directs in search engines to a different webpage other than the expected one.
• Using cloaking – the content presented to the search engine is different from that presented to the user’s browser.

Check out some of these conscious brands absolutely killing it with their ethical marketing:

• 85% of formerly at-risk Cambodian staff now at a reduced level of risk to exploitation after 6 months of employment at Outland Denim.
• Community Bean Coffee. Coffee for many of us is our daily dose of happiness. So why not drink ethically?
• ”Not the claim, not the label, not awards – it is the every day, constant actions of a business and its supply chain that speak loudest about a company.” – (Lush’s Ethical Director, Hilary Jones).

 

As a marketer, it is your responsibility to meet positive results and increase profitability BUT remaining ethical and transparent to your consumers. You can still reach high performance and successfully boost your webpage traffic in an ethical and pragmatic way.

Take a healthier approach and enjoy the long-term perks of clever and conscious digital marketing.

Whilst some of these unethical marketing practices may not be illegal, they can be very damaging and harmful to your brand and reputation. Ethical marketing needs to be top of mind as we are carrying out our daily campaigns.

If you’re ready to learn how you can implement effective ethical marketing for your business, then we at Eloquent would love to hear from you!

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