Never take financial tips from a Kardashian or other celebrities, especially when they don’t tell you it’s an ad
By Chris Roberts Never take financial tips from advertising. And never, ever take financial tips when it’s advertising and they don’t tell you it’s advertising. Kim Kardashian peddled EthereumMax’s crypto asset in Instagram posts in June 2021. What she didn’t do was tell her audience that she was paid $250,000 for the sales pitch. That’s […]
Today in minimum standards: Don’t bribe
Here’s an example of a minimum standard: Don’t bribe people, whether they’re public officials or not. WPP, the world’s largest advertising and public relations company, will pay $19 million without admitting guilt in a federal claim that it bribed officials in India and Brazil. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claimed the company violated the […]
Not an April Fool’s joke in March when Volkswagen lied.
You’re an automaker who lied again and again about your emissions testing. You’ve paid more than $33 billion in fines and to buy back many of the 11 million cars you lied about. Your chief executive officer was forced out, saying he was “deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and […]
Ram ad was bad, but Bell Pottinger story shows worse persuasion ethics
Discussions of the fundamental flaws of a Super Bowl truck ad are soaring higher today than any missed field goal during the game played Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018. But that’s not the bigger story in persuasion ethics today. You’ll read much righteous indignation of the ad that peddled Ram trucks using Dr. Martin Luther King’s […]
Dove ad shows some dirty racism
By DE Harry A Dove Facebook advertisement went viral on social media this past Sunday, Oct. 8, 2017. The GIF displayed three women taking off their skin-colored shirts, revealing the next underneath. The transition from the black woman to the white woman made headlines. The company received backlash from viewers of the advertisement labeling it […]
Cartoonist fired for biting the hand that feeds his publication
A herd of media are writing about Rick Friday, who was fired from Farm News, a weekly publication of The Fort Dodge (Iowa) Messenger, after it published this cartoon pointing out that the CEOs of three men who run major farming-focused corporations earned a combined $53 million in 2015, as much as 2,129 Iowa farmers. […]
AppSumo and Michael J. Fox: An online marketer makes a solid apology
If you’re in mass media or sales or nearly any other activity involving humans, write this down: Don’t make fun of sick people. AppSumo, an online selling company that relies on emails and clever writing, learned that lesson this week. Its April 25 email peddling a product included a joke involving Michael J. Fox, who […]
Loyalties and transparency: Clients wonder what ad agencies are hiding with rebates from media companies
There’s an old saying in advertising, attributed to department store magnate John Wanamaker or to carmaker Henry Ford: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Companies that pay advertising agencies to buy media time have another worry inside one of those halves. Business Insider says a […]
76ers, Redskins and Wells Fargo: On the ethics of not calling things by names that others use
From Philadelphia comes news that the 76ers basketball team refuses to say “Wells Fargo” when referring to the arena where it plays. Wells Fargo, which bought the bank that bought the bank that made the original deal in 1996, owns naming rights until the 29-year, $40 million deal ends in 2025. But that money went […]