But it is difficult if not impossible to make a direct relationship between the dollars spent on advertising and how consumers value a brand. While Lexus spent one-fifth of the advertising dollars of Ford in 1993, it was Lexus that ranked higher in customer satisfaction according to the J. D. Power Survey of Potential Car Buyers.⁸ Many goods or services advertise very little, if at all, and yet are still highly appreciated and valued by their users. Hospitals typically only spend a few thousand dollars on advertising, yet they are highly valued. In contrast, cable television companies spend a good deal of money on advertising and promotion, but they have low satisfaction ratings.

Advertising Provides a Sense of Belongings

When Hallmark reminds you to send a Valentine’s Day card, “When you care enough to send the very best,” your participation in this annual ritual links you to millions of others who are doing the same. Advertising depicts familiar activities or scenes to help consumers feel that they belong to a larger social organization. For example, commercials for Shout stain remover help mothers of young children feel they are not alone in trying to cope with grass or ketchup stains; and Subaru has begun targeting lesbians with creative advertisements designed specifically for that part of the gay market.

A sense of belonging is one reason why minority groups argue for specific creative executions for their customers. Major advertisers such as McDonald’s and Seagram’s have ethnic advertising agencies develop separate ad campaigns to reach African American ora Hispanic consumers. These ads show people from those ethnic groups using the product, and they may also reflect different cultural preferences or customs that these minorities will be more likely to recognize and appreciate. Dominick’s Finer Foods, a midwestern chain of grocery stores, not only creates ads in Spanish to reach its Hispanic customers, it even shows different cuts of meat in these ads to reflect the pieces that this ethnic group prefers to buy.

Advertising Reflects the Value of Society

Advertising’s supporters maintain that the messages it conveys merely reflect the values of society as a whole. In the 1980s, when the United States was enjoying an economic boom and materialistic values became more important, there were numerous ads that focused on having more and buying more. Society’s compassionate value is expressed in public service ads that try to raise awareness for some of today’s social problems, such as child abuse or AIDS discrimination.

Today, the world has changed. Instead of three major broadcast television networks from which to choose, there are now at least 50 different broadcast and cable networks, plus numerous independent stations. Instead of a few hundred magazines, there are now thousands, with scores of new ones appearing each year. These changes make the tasks of the media department more challenging; indeed, media is now considered to be the “second creative department” in many agencies.

There are two main functions in media: planning and buying. Media planners put together a schedule of different media vehicles (programs, magazines, etc.), deciding which ones will best reach the target audience and at what cost. Once the plan receives client approval, it is then executed by the media buyers, who negotiate with the media themselves for space and time. Both groups work to determine which media will be most effective at delivering the brand’s message and at what cost. Some agencies also employ media researchers, who help planners and buyers better understand how people use media.

Media Planners. It is the task of media planners to focus on the media habits and activities of the target to whom the ads are being addressed. Very often that target is determined by the planner, in conjunction with account managers at the agency and brand managers at the client. Once the audience is agreed upon, the planners then have to find out which media forms are preferred by those people. Planners ask questions such as, Does the target audience watch many hours of television, or prefer reading magazines? Which TV shows are preferred, and how many of the target group watches those particular programs? After evaluating the various media alternatives, the media planners come up with a recommendation of which media to use. In addition, the plan recommends how to schedule the media, showing when to use different forms, and for how long. The options are then discussed, first within the agency and then with the client.

Media Buyers.After a plan has received client approval, the media buyers negotiate space in printed media (newspapers and magazines) or time in broadcast media (television and radio). They look for the best rates available to stretch the client’s dollar the farthest. After the buy has been made, media buyers are responsible for ensuring that the ads appear when and where they are scheduled. On the occasions that an ad does not appear, the buyers negotiate compensation with the media.

Within the media buying group is another sub-department called media business services. This group provides the accounting portion of the media process. It is here that bills are processed and invoices are paid. The people in this unit must ensure that the media are paid for all ads that appear and that the client is billed appropriately for that space and time.

Media Research.A third unit sometimes found within an agency is the media research department. This is a support group for the media planners and buyers (as well as the rest of the agency) that helps answer questions that pertain to how people use media. These questions may be as general as, Are people watching less television? or Do people use coupons placed in magazines? Media research also answers more specific questions, such as, Should

I place most of my dollars into the first four weeks of my schedule on cable television, or should I put them into the second four weeks on broadcast TV? Media researchers are involved both in conducting original (primary) research that they undertake themselves, such as a survey or experiment, and in analyzing existing (secondary) data, such as numbers on how many people are watching “E.R.” in Las Vegas or how many copies of Good Housekeeping magazine are distributed each month. In smaller or midsize agencies, the role of media research is often designated to a media planner.

The criticisms of advertising as unethical range from advertising cigarettes that are known to cause cancer, to implying that the use of a particular perfume will bring hordes of admirers to your doorstep, to claiming that a sugar-coated cereal is “part of a nutritious breakfast” for children when only the accompanying milk or toast has any nutritional value. In some cases, legal issues do become involved. The use of excessive glue or paint to make a product look more appetizing in a TV commercial is not only unethical, it is also illegal. Similarly, there are legal restrictions on the advertising of sweepstakes or lotteries, both of which have been criticized for misleading innocent consumers into believing they have won large monetary prizes.

The question of advertising ethics is clearly linked with the question of the nature and purpose of advertising. Most people can understand that advertisements, at the very least, take liberties with the “truth.” This practice of using exaggerations that consumers will know are factually false is known as advertising puffery. Most women understand, for example, that they will not look like the models in the commercials simply by buying Salon Selectives hair shampoo. Businessmen realize that when they travel, American Airlines does not literally provide “something special in the air.” The use of puffery does not mean that any of those brands is unethical in its advertising. It would only become so if Salon Selectives guaranteed that use of its product would really turn you into a model.

Ultimately, advertising ethics depend to a large extent on your beliefs about the purpose of advertising and your view of consumers. If you believe that consumers are rational, skeptical, and self-aware, and accept that advertising is designed to persuade the audience to think, feel, or act in a certain way in order to increase sales, then you will probably not find advertising inherently unethical in trying to get you to “Be like Mike” (Michael Jordan) and drink Gatorade, or “Have your break today” and eat at McDonald’s. On the other hand, if you think that consumers are completely innocent with regard to the ads they see, hear, or read, then you are likely to find advertising, by and large, to be unethical with its promises of leaner bodies, cleaner homes, faster cars, or money-saving credit cards.

The Vatican issued a 37-page text on “Ethics in Advertising” in which it emphasized the need for advertisers to adhere to three basic moral principles: truthfulness, upholding human dignity, and social responsibility. It noted that advertising in and of itself is not necessarily unethical, but that it “can distort the truth by implying things that are not so or withholding relevant facts.”33 Importantly, however, the report did not call for increased regulation of advertising; rather, it states that advertisers should work harder at monitoring themselves, with a view to remaining ethically responsible.

Unethical behavior does occur. The most common occasions are advertising to children and the promotion of controversial products such as alcohol, tobacco, and contraceptives.

In this school of thought, advertising is considered an incentive for companies to be innovative and compete vigorously. Many new products introduced in the past 10 years have succeeded, in part, because advertising was used to increase consumer awareness of their existence, which in turn increased demand. Examples include personal computers, satellite television, computer online services, and new cars and trucks such as minivans or sport utility vehicles.

As you can see, the distinctions between the two models reflect somewhat negative or positive views on advertising’s role in society, respectively. Under the market power model, advertising is helping to shape society by raising the cost of goods and services. Because consumers are less price sensitive, that allows companies to charge more for what they are selling. In contrast, the information model tends to view advertising’s role in society more positively, seeing it as a relatively benign influence that merely offers information to consumers. In doing so, advertising is really reflecting the value of brands and allowing consumers to make their own decisions, which will encourage greater competition in the marketplace and keep prices in check. The difficulty with either approach—and with assessing advertising’s economic impact in general—is that it is very hard to measure accurately. Because advertising is usually just one of many variables that impact a consumer’s decision over which brand to buy, it is almost impossible to determine advertising’s precise role in that process.