Photo Credits via: Insightiitb
Issues of ethics are difficult to discuss, as they often are not clear cut and linger in the grey area, between black and white. I would like to briefly talk about ethics in a business/marketing context. Here is my crude attempt at creating a short video clip about one of Ford’s social media posts.
Ford updated their Facebook status following the capture of the second bombing suspect. The brand said, “To the first responders of Boston: Thank you. You are true American heroes.” It is hard to find fault in wording, ford is just expressing their sincere appreciation for the sacrifices of those who serve. What about the striking image of their products, complete with the Ford logo and tagline ? It seems fine right? Compared to the dull text message they could have posted. Ford is just trying to associate their brand with the image of the police. No false advertising there either, they are indeed manufacturers of the police vehicles.
While not everyone will agree, Augie Ray feels that Ford’s use of brand imagery not only reduced the sincerity of the message but demonstrated questionable ethics. he asks to compare the two status updates and consider the following questions:
- Which is a more authentic expression of appreciation to people who sacrificed their safety to protect us?
- What does the product and brand imagery of the post on the right add (if anything) to the sincerity of the gratitude compared to the simple text version?
- Which version more clearly puts the focus on the heroes in Boston?
As future digital marketers, we need to be responsible when sharing content on social media. There are posts that are deliberately set up to gather likes and shares, with motives which are less than ethical. For example, Like-Farming is hugely popular and uses social engineering tactics in order to gather as many likes as possible. User data is then collected and sold on the black market, or the user is directed to a survey scam or even a site infected with malware. As a social media marketer it is our job to know about these scams so you don’t pass/use them on to our followers/customers
When we click “submit” to share the next social media post, it is easy to settle on the simple questions of will it achieve its goal, fits best practices and suits the brand. As digital marketers we have take the extra step to ask ourselves if it is honest, transparent and ethical. While it is a much higher standard to adhere to, isn’t higher standards what consumers want and what brands should be striving towards?
References
Photos in video via: Socialmediatoday , Chromasia
Anon., n.d. Hoax Slayer. [Online]
Available at: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/like-farming-scams.shtml
[Accessed 5 12 2014].
Butters, K., 2014. Xen. [Online]
Available at: http://xen.com.au/social-media-marketing-ethics/
[Accessed 5 12 2014].
Ray, A., 2013. Social Media Today. [Online]
Available at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/ethics-social-media-marketing-responding-boston-tragedy
[Accessed 5 12 2014].
isaaclye 
Hello Isaac! Wow I was really amazed by the short video that you have done up yourself. It was simple yet easy to understand. After reading your blog post, I do have some questions that I would like to ask you about. 🙂
For the two messages, A and B, personally I feel that B carry and send out a more powerful message to the audience. I feel B present the message out better when showing gratitude for the heroes of Boston. Personally, I felt that message B’s look of police cars do give me a sense of security knowing that they are always there to protect us. How about your view on this?
IF you own Facebook, what would you do to prevent activities like, Like-Farming from occurring? How would you better educate Facebook’s users from being scammed?
Do keep up the good work and continue on publishing more interesting posts! 😀
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Hey Xiu zhen, i agree that message B may have more “punch” to it, however it does seem to be placing more emphasis on the Ford brand and its vehicles than the policemen themselves.
If i were the owner of Facebook, i would change the policy on how advertisers are allowed reach out to their audience and send an official message to educate users on these shady tactics
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Hi Isaac.
Good effort for the video. You have a very different view on business ethics, I like how you show example on how brands leveraged on incidences to market themselves. You may also take a look at some of the examples here perhaps.
• Fake advertisement of Samsung response to the release of iPhone 6: http://www.campaignlive.com/article/bendgate-leveraging-power-someone-elses-problem/1315312
• Scoot taken swipes at Briton Anton Casey and his derisive comments about public transport users: http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/scoot-takes-dig-anton-casey-20140126#sthash.cAukXFn9.dpuf
• Brands hijacked Kim Kardashian’s #breaktheinternet hashtag:
http://www.marketing-interactive.com/brands-hijack-kim-kardashians-breaktheinternet-hashtag/
Controversy sells, it stirs people up. What do you think? Do you think it’s smart parody or just insensitive?
Like-farming seems to be more popular on Instagram, one has to truly discern for themselves if the posts are genuine. Some stuff are obviously too good to be true.
Nonetheless, good blog post!
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Hey Sara, thanks for the comment.
Thanks for additional links, they are good examples of opportunistic marketing / real time marketing, whereby companies react quickly to real-time events that have just happened, to incorporate them into their social media or marketing content.
Sometimes they can be too hasty to ride the wave of free publicity and fail to consider the consequences and relevance to their audience.
The examples you have shared are really just smart parodies. Here’s an example of an insensitive one.
Epicurous had to issue an apology for their insensitive tweets after the Boston marathon incident.
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Hi Isaac, interesting post you’ve written on social media ethics for business! Your ‘crude’ attempt at creating a short video clip about one of Ford’s social media posts really helps to illustrate your point in expressing an authentic appreciation. The visual from option B seems to aim in thanking the police who captured the bomber, with visuals of stunning police vehicles. But like what you said, Ford is the one manufacturing these police vehicles. Behind these vehicles are people; policemen who risked their lives to put men responsible for the Boston tragedy behind bars of justice. Then why not feature the police department or the policemen themselves? To me it appears that Ford is riding onto the success of the policemen to promote their own brand…
However on the other hand at option A, without any Ford or company-related hashtag, to me it seems like a more sincere way in expressing gratitude. It would simply be a shout out to thank the policemen. My takeaway from your post is that we should discern our sincerity as a company… And it is best if we don’t ride on someone’s successes or misery – I’m sure our followers on social media accounts will be able to tell. Like-Farming is something new I learnt today too! Thank goodness I have yet to buy in to those ‘promotions’ – and from today onwards will never will. Keep up the good job 🙂
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Hey Novina
My initial thought of message B was “Nice police cars Ford!”
It was only after i have considered the questions suggested by Augie Ray, that i feel the same way as you.
While there isn’t anything inherently wrong about message B, Ford could have better themselves by including the policemen and their department in the image.
The tag line could be “We at ford are proud and humbled to be making cars for these heros, heroines and their department!”
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Hi Isaac. Thank you for the very insightful post. I enjoyed watching the video. It was a good attempt! I personally feel that Ford should have gone with method A instead, because as what Augie pointed out, it definitely comes across as more authentic when we remove all the additional marketing ‘noise’.
That being said, you raised up a really good issue to think about. As marketers, I think we can actually use both ways to depict our messages. The question then is more of the context. In this case, since the context of the Boston bombing suspect is reminiscent of an unfortunate event, a more “sensitive” expression of thanks (such as A) would have been more appropriate.
Just a thought off hand, do you think there can be a universal code of ethics when it comes to social media marketing? Perhaps in the near future we will see more regulatory bodies and policies governing the use of social media in educational and business practices.
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Well, there is the American Marketing Association’s Code of Ethics
http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/cba/marketing/code-of-ethics/
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