Ethics in Advertising

Ramadan Advertisement by Media Prima Strikes Controversy

There are many concerns advertisers should look out for in order to not send out a controversial message. For instance, the 8TV channel from Media Prima Bhd was forced to take down a controversial string of television advertisements during the month of Ramadan this year after it was strongly disapproved by the public claiming there were racist messages contained in it. The advertisements displayed a socially incompetent Chinese girl acting disrespectful in front of a Muslim community and disrespecting their ethnicity. The advertisements then end with a message pleading non-Muslims to respect the importance of Ramadan. 

(Source: Youtube, www.youtube.com)

The controversial advertisement by 8TV channel

According to Plous & Neptune (1997), advertisements are universal and are the most significant cultural elements changing the modernity of society. Having said that, advertisers still design advertisements that can sometimes cause worrying stereotypes and other complications (Patterson & Wilkins 2002, p54). Therefore, producers of advertisements have to be considerate towards their target audience. In my opinion, I believe it was wrong for 8TV channel to have produced the advertisements in such a manner, as it was insensitive towards the non-Muslim culture.

Another occurrence that was similar to this incident was the Intel racist advertisement during 2007. The following advertisement was initially supposed to describe how improved the performance of their new processors but received negative feedback from the public due to the image used, which was a white American boss with his employees who were African American athletes bowing down to him. The following advertisement depicted slavery and ended up being very controversial. 

(Source: AdSavvy, www.adsavvy.org)

The racist advertisement by Intel

According to Patterson & Wilkins (2002, p51), advertisers have to respect the audience who will be receiving the persuasive message contained in their advertisements. And if they failed to do so, the impact of these advertisements can be strongly accepted by cultures as racial and gender stereotypical advertisements (Patterson & Wilkins 2002, p54). Aside from that, Kieran (1997) claims that wrong use of media can be considered as an offense of harm as receivers have the potential to be emotional distressed and disgusted. In conclusion, in the field of publication and design when thinking in an ethical perspective, advertisers must be sensitive towards contextual factors and other subtle aspects.

References

• Kress, G & Leeuwan, V 2006, Reading Images: The Grammar Of Visual Design, 2^nd edn, Routledge, New York.
• Patterson, P & Wilkins, L 2002, Media Ethics: Issues & Cases, 4^th edn, McGraw-Hill, New York.

• Kieran, M 1997, MEDIA ETHICS: A philosophical Approach, Preger Publishers, United States of America.

• Pious, S & Neptune, D 1997, RACIAL AND GENDER BIASES IN MAGAZINE ADVERTISING: A Content-Analytic Study, Wesleyan University, viewed 14 November 2011, <http://www.socialpsychology.org/pdf/pwq1997.pdf>.