1. Morality of Persuasive Advertising
By:
Gaurav Pant
Prashant Pal

2. What is advertising?
Communication from a specific source that intends to inform and influence the audience so that they believe something and/or behave in a certain way
Types of advertising 1) Informative and 2) Persuasive advertising
Informative advertising focuses on selling a product by calling the customer's need and interests.
Persuasive advertising focuses on "stimulating demand”.

3. Benefits of Advertising
Advertising helps consumers decide what to buy
Informs about the existence of new products
Advertisers claim to be helping consumers to freely choose how to best satisfy their needs and wants
Some advertisements are funny and address moral issues to sell their product, like JAGO RE (Tata tea) and IDEA 3-G ads

4. What is Persuasion?
“A symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behaviors regarding an issue through the transmission of a message in an atmosphere of free choice”
Self-persuasion is key. People are not forced; they are instead free to choose.

5. Persuasive Advertising
Creating a demand is the main motive
Selling people a product by changing the autonomy
Do these types of ads make people unhappy?
Example: Fairness creams, slimming belt, deodorant, alcohol
Some of these ads like cigarettes and alcohol actually claims that people who are stylish, cool and ambitious are smokers and drinkers

6. Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E
Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E. Murphy interviewed 51 advertising practitioners who work in 29 advertising agencies in eight cities two persisting problems among advertising practitioners
“Moral muteness”—the unwillingness of practitioners to acknowledge and discuss ethical problems.
“Moral myopia”—the inability even to see clearly ethical issues when they arise.

7. Robert Arrington’s view
Instances portrayed in ads are “Puffery”.
Puffery is not just bragging; it is bragging carefully designed to achieve a definite effect.
In purchasing something we may think we are free, when in fact our act is completely controlled by factors in our environment and advertising is one of them
But Theodore Levitt argues that if we remove puffery from ads then they will just nearly be empirical descriptions and do not offer joy and adventure
“We need automobiles not just for transport but for feeling of power and status they give”

8. Is advertising information or creation of desire
To answer this we need to know what is involved in autonomy
Autonomous desire
Rational desire
Free choice
Control or manipulation

9. What fairness creams persuade people?
Dark and brown complexion is not good and its ugly
You can’t achieve success in life until you are fair
People will actually make fun of yours if you are dark

10. What is the ground reality?

11. How actually these ads work?
Persuasive ads are subliminal, i.e. they affect one’s mind without their being aware of it.
If you are aware of seeing/hearing it, then it’s not subliminal advertising
Most of the ads target our Unconscious Desires of sex and power. For example advertisements of deodorants.
Persuasive advertising overrides our autonomy (which is immoral)

12. Does such ads really make you unhappy?
These type of advertisements create gap between what we have and what we want
Happiness is proportional to satisfaction
But now a days people always want a better form of what they already have
1. Even a slim guy want a better body or abs
2. Guy with a decent hairstyle uses hair gel to impress a girl

13. Robert Crisp’s View Persuasive advertising is immoral because
Because it overrides our autonomy
It makes us desire products without us realizing.
Persuasive ads coerces us into a constant state of dissatisfaction

14. References..
Advertising, Autonomy, and the Creation of Desire by Roger Crisp Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 5 (Jul., 1987), pp
Advertising and Behavior Control by Robert L. Arrington, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Feb., 1982), pp. 3-12
Getting to Persuasion by John L. Mcreeky, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp
The morality of advertising by Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business Review, 1970
Ethics and Advertising: Moral Muteness, Moral Myopia, and Moral Imagination by Minette E. Drumwright , The University of Texas at Austin
Patrick E. Murphy, University of Notre Dame