Hello and welcome back. We continue today to examine the question of whether the public is being manipulated by advertising. Our focus now will be on the question of, ethical practices in advertising. And whether in particular some practices, that have, or are common in advertising border on the unethical. And thus, the public is manipulated through these things. Throughout history famous people have exhibited some of the best and worst behaviors. Within American history, the very names of some presidents evoke notions of truth and honesty. While others warn of the consequences of lying. Abraham Lincoln earned the nickname Honest Abe. George Washington could not tell a lie. On the other hand, Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and Bill Clinton suffered impeachment because they lied. Let's begin with the question of, what is deceptive advertising? Now there's no simple or easy answer to this but claiming that a product can do something that it cannot do is a clear case of deception. Saying that a package is one and a half times bigger than another if it in fact is, is a clear cut case of telling the truth. But in the real world of advertising the issues are seldom so clearly demarcated. Is it deceptive for example to say that KFC tastes great? Without also saying that too much of it will make you fat, raise your cholesterol or increase your sodium intake above a healthy level? The public wants and expects advertising to be truthful. But exactly what does this mean in practice? Does it mean saying that a new car can get you from New York to California in style is insufficient? For the ad to be truthful, do this also, does it also need to say that driving cars adds to environment pollution? And that you might get hurt or killed in an accident along the way. Does honest advertising require that some products, like prescription drugs for example. Need to make fuller disclosures about possible side effects than do ads for fast food and cars? Let's begin by examining mock-ups, demonstrations, and simulations that are often used in advertising. Here's an example of a situation that occurs in a variety of contexts. The issue here is that one particular product is being advertised, namely these ice cream toppings. Most Americans would be familiar with these. They are available in the supermarket quite widely near the place where you buy ice cream. Now in this ad, it's highly probable that what you see there is not actually ice cream that the toppings are being poured onto. But rather some sort of mock-up like, let's say, mashed potatoes or maybe shaving cream that's been colored. The reason for this is that the hot lights of the studio will cause ice cream to melt very quickly. And it will become difficult to shoot the ad as is planned here. The convention on this is that when a, an advertisement or commercial is being made that employs something like this. That the actual product that's being advertised must be real. But that the supports and things that go along with it may be mock-ups and not what they appear to be. So we find situations like this quite frequently in advertising. You have to use the real product. But you can use other things as the supports, in demonstrating the product. And here's an example of what was considered to be a problematic advertisement. When consumers bought this, vegetable soup that Campbell promoted. In this ad you can see it's a bowl full of soup. And little alphabet shaped pastas and vegetables. In this bowl, all those things are very apparent in a, in a liquid. However, when consumers prepared the product, it didn't look like this at all. All those things sank to the bottom, and they weren't visible at all. So it turns out when examined that this had been, this has been shot in a particular way. Namely by putting clear marbles in the bowl. So that when the soup was poured in to it, these things would appear at the top. Now in one sense, it's a good demonstration of the product and what it contains. But in another, it's a misleading and false statement about what the public can expect when they buy and use a product. This kind of thing is no longer practiced, by the way, in advertising because it's been the source of enormous negative publicity. And even rulings against it in the courts and by the Federal Trade Commission. Have a look at this Rapid-Shave commercial from the early 1960s. It's a product demonstration but it's a product demonstration that has a fairly serious problem associated with it. Watch it first and then I'll talk about what you've seen. >> [INAUDIBLE] Who is the man behind the sand paper mask? It's triple threat man Frank Gifford, backfield sensation of the New York Giants, a man with a problem just like yours. A beard as tough as sandpaper, a beard that needs Palmolive Rapid Shave, super-moisturized for the fastest smoothest shave possible. To prove Rapid Shave's super moisturizing power, we put it right from the can onto this tough, dry sandpaper. It was apply, soak and off in a stroke. And super-moisturized Palmolive Rapid Shave can do the same for you. In this sandpaper test or on your sandpaper beard, you just apply Rapid Shave, then take your razor and shave clean with a fast, smooth stroke. Try Rapid-Shave or cooling, soothing Rapid-Shave menthol, both super-moisturized for the fastest, smoothest shave possible. >> Now, the claim here is that Rapid-Shave will hold up a beard and soften it so that a razor can shave it very closely. As you see here in this demonstration of sand being sha, shave from a piece of sandpaper. The problem was that this wasn't actually sand being shave from sandpaper. It was sand sprinkled on the plexi glass and a razor run through it pulling the sand away very easily and very smoothly. This was deemed to be a misleading kind of advertisement. It was not one that clearly demonstrated what the product could do. One big problem is when people try to repeat this with actual sandpaper and rapid shave, shaving cream, it wouldn't work. So this was again, the, the kind of thing that, advertising tried. But was deemed to be inappropriate, because it was a clear manipulation of the public. Leading them to think one thing when, in fact, the product didn't actually work that way. I have to confess one thing about the promo video that you saw, at the very beginning of this course or in an advertisement for it. I talked about a glass of orange juice. You may remember that. If not, you can go back and have a look at it and see it. There's one little problem here. Namely, that, that is not orange juice in the glass. I used mango juice instead because the color is richer and more vibrant. Is this fair game in advertising? Actually it isn't, because this is not the real product that's being talked about. Since I'm talking about orange juice, I need to use orange juice. A big issue in advertising is the question of full disclosure. How much information does the public need to be given in an advertisement? >> Big is back. Big sun, big save, big splash, big wave, big hat, big drink, big kiss, big wink, big feet, big fries, big bite, big guys. [MUSIC] Super sizes are back. Larger than large Coca-Colas. Super sized shakes and fries. For a limited time there is quickness in drive thru. [MUSIC] >> At McDonald's big fun [LAUGH]. >> A famous case of this is a lawsuit filed against the McDonald's Corporation. On behalf of individuals who claim that they'd become obese by eating too much McDonald's. And by buying supersized versions of some of the things that McDonald's had to offer. They claim that they'd gotten fat over the years, just simply eating too much of this. As this case made its way through the courts, the courts rejected the claimant's position. And argued that it is not the job of McDonald's to protect people from the excesses that they may bring upon themselves. Indeed now what has happened in response to that lawsuit is that McDonald's clearly posts in all of its outlets. The caloric content and other content shows its products for a consumer to read, if he or she should want to do so. That still doesn't mean that people can't use the product to excess, which they often do about many products. But it isn't the courts have, determined the job of companies who advertise things that in excess may be harmful to people. To warn them against this. On the other hand, here's a situation where there are lots of warnings in an ad. This is an ad for a, prescription medicine. In this case, a sleeping medicine. And look, there are three columns of, of, details here about what the product is, the warnings that go along with it, and so forth. What's clear to the case here is that some products like prescription medicines for example. Are deemed to require a fuller disclosure than other products. This is dangerous taken wrong, it could be make you very sick or even kill you. And thus, this amount of information is usually given with prescription drugs when they are advertised. So it isn't the case that, perhaps all products need to carry the same, sorts or, amounts of disclosure. Then there's the specific issue of false advertising. When an advertisement claims that a product can do something which it clearly can't. This is the old ad for, a, a, Hamlin's Wizard Oil which makes the specific and overt claim that it will cure your rheumatism. Now, this was not the case, but, in the early tw, years of the 20th century. Advertising commonly made these kinds of claims. Today, we consider this to be false advertising because there's no documentation that the product works in the way that is said to work here. Now, there's a whole area of misleading advertisement. What constitutes a misleading ad and when does it happen. Here's an example of one that caused, the Gerber company a great deal of trouble. Their claim was four out of five pediatricians recommend Gerber. The difficulty is when we look at this that we don't know how many pediatricians lie behind this information. It could be simple five, so that four of the five. Recommend it, but it could also be 4000 out of 5000 or some other number like this. The problem is that the information is incomplete and it is therefore, misleading. When the courts got into considering this kind of thing, they ruled that this was out of order. And thus today when claims like this are made. It is generally the case that the numbers that lie, lie behind them need to be more clearly stated. There's also the area of impression management. And whether this is deceptive ans misleading and manipulative. Here's a sign that you can find in the Tokyo Disneyworld. It says that the wait time for this line is about 10 minutes. It turns that it is standard Disney practice to overestimate the waiting time. When it turns out that people have had to wait less than the time that was posted. This makes them quite happy. They're very pleased with how fast the line goes. Here's another example of this situation occurring. If you look at airport and airline schedules listing the times of departure and arrival of airplanes. You can find that flying, jet planes flying between the same two cities. Several decades ago did so faster by the, by the booking than they do today. That's because airlines have found that there is considerable wait time involved. And by extending the times the expected times of flight and arrival. What ends up happening is many more planes therefore end up arriving on time. It's good business strategy again. Not to put in the shortest possible time, as was the case say in the 1960s when jets first began to fly. The idea then was to convey to people just how quickly the trip could be. And today, it's to talk much more about how airlines are on time, this is what it will take, and that waiting time and delay time. And so forth, are built into the schedule. It's another example of impression management. There's the specific area of harmful products. We know, for example, today that tobacco and alcohol are really harmful products. Cigarette packages today carry warnings that they are harmful to health. But, in the 1920s, say. We found ads like this where famous people in this case a Hollywood movie star was endorsing, Lucky Strike. She actually says look at the copy, light a Lucky and you'll never miss sweets that make you fat. The idea here was smoke a cigarette instead of eating candy. Now today we don't see famous people advertising cigarettes. There are great many restrictions that have come in about how cigarettes can be and tobacco products in general can be advertised. That's an these warnings have to go along with them. This is the situation when a product is clearly known to have, harmful effects. And where it has, it has been deemed that the public needs to be warned of those things. And the advertising needs to tread very lightly in terms of the way that it talks to the public. Alcohol advertising is another such area. Some alcohol companies, beer companies in particular, often promote responsible drinking. But in this case, what we see here is an older advertisement that glamorizes, drinking and alcohol. They're many restrictions on how it can be done and where it can be done. Just as there are on tobacco. Because these are areas where ad, the advertising is being done of products that are on the one hand legal. But on the other known to be harmful in many ways to the users. >> Did you know Heineken Light won the best tasting light beer at the 2013 World Beer Championships? Apparently there are rules about drinking beer in commercials, so I'm drinking it over here. [SOUND] Tastes good. [MUSIC] I'm not wearing any pants, by the way. >> Finally, one of the most complex areas of advertising, in terms of manipulation is ads directed to children. We know from the work of psychologists, that children don't think like adults until they are much older. So one question, that comes up when we look at children in advertising is the issue of how to speak to children. And what to say to them. And even ultimately the question of whether they should be advertised to at all. There are some countries that greatly restrict this. In the U.S., there are limitations and regulations on it. Most of these are policed from within the advertising industry. But is a complicated matter of how to advertise to children. Here's a famous example of something that was considered to be manipulative and deceptive. It was the use of this character, Joe Camel for a long time in advertising Camel cigarettes. He's a cartoon characters and children could recognize him and many of them knew him from seeing the images in ads. And they liked him. The ethical question, the deceptive question that came up in this was, was is this a way of also enticing children. Into positive feelings about and desire ultimately to use cigarettes and tobacco. There were many people who thought that it did and Camel eventually dropped this character as the spokescharacter for the brand. But it was an area where manipulation might be occurring. Because children are attracted to this and this,it's a covert way of doing that kind of thing. Now in this lecture we further explored the question of whether the public is being manipulated by advertising. In this case, through a host of questionable ethical practices. To learn more, I'd like to recommend that you visit the Federal Trade Commission site. And also, the sites of the advertising industry self-regulation councils. On these, sites, you'll find a lot of information about, the regulatory process. Both on the part of the govern, of the U.S. government and the advertising industry, which does its best at self regulation. There's also a separate regulatory council for advertisements directed to children. Also, I'd like to recommend that you turn to the ad text unit on ethics. Where the materials I've talked about today are discussed in more detail. Along with additional information about the kinds of topics that we've talked about in this lecture. This course is a collaborative venture of Duke University and the Advertising Educational Foundation.
