Category: Honesty7883a9b09e

The Real Beef About Burger Ads

5/22/2022

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

While Ukrainians mourn their war dead and Buffalo residents grieve victims of a hate crime, a guy in New York cries foul because his hamburgers aren’t bigger. Of course, not every real problem is a matter of life and death, but could some seemingly frivolous lawsuits challenging fast food promotions portray broader communication concerns?

On May 17, Long Island resident Justin Chimienti filed a legal action in a Brooklyn federal court, accusing both Wendy’s and McDonald’s of “defrauding customers with ads that make burgers appear larger than they actually are.”

The lawsuit alleges that the restaurants’ use of undercooked beef in photo shoots leads to promotional pieces with burgers that appear 15% to 20% larger than those customers actually receive. The suit also suggests that Wendy’s exaggerates the toppings that embellish its sandwiches.

Burger King, the third of the big three fast food competitors, was slapped with a similar lawsuit just over a month ago. In fact, the same law firms that sued BK are also representing Chimienti in the most recent litigation.

To many, these lawsuits are the epitome of money-grabbing lawyers eager to profit from a first-world problem--With so many truly important events happening in our world, why should anyone worry that Whoppers aren’t as juicy as they appear in their pictures?

However, Anthony Russo, one of the main attorneys representing the plaintiff, argues that there’s a bigger issue at play--corporate accountability. He maintains that these legal actions will make the companies mend their ways, stop false and misleading advertising, and ultimately give consumers a better idea of the food they’re eating.

That justification sounds good, but it does come from one of the people who stands to gain the most from the litigation. In fact:

“A detailed examination of eight years of consumer class actions in federal court found that consumers received only a tiny fraction of the money awarded in those cases while plaintiff lawyers frequently claimed a bigger share of the settlement than their clients.”

Still, legal action can be an effective way to bring about corporate change, and it usually takes attorneys to move such proceedings through the courts.

Imagining the burger court cases, the defendants might offer a counterargument like:

"When it comes to promoting themselves, don’t individuals and organizations have a right to ‘put their best foot forward,’ and doesn’t everyone expect others to do the same?"

Most people don’t have sections of their resumes labeled ‘Main Flaws’ or ‘Greatest Failures’; instead, we list our ‘Special Skills’ and describe ‘Awards and Recognitions.’ Likewise, no one reviewing resumes expects to see those self-deprecating categories. That’s why interviewers often ask job candidates things like, “Tell me about one of your weaknesses.”

So, shouldn’t companies also be allowed to brag a little and show their best examples versus humiliate themselves with mediocre or bad ones?

Curating top quality products for promotion certainly isn’t unique to fast food chains. Grocery store flyers rarely feature misshapen fruits and vegetables, car commercials don’t use vehicles with scratches or dents, and clothing ads don’t show shirts that are wrinkled or frayed.

As consumers, not only do we routinely see such examples, many of us are involved in the same sort of careful curation of ourselves and the organizations we serve.

During my two-plus decades in higher education, I’ve often helped select ‘best’ examples to help promote my department and university. For instance, when asked to suggest students or alumni who might provide a testimonial, I take plenty of time to think before offering names of individuals who I believe have had very positive experiences.

However, just because we engage in such selective promotion doesn’t mean that we should, i.e., we need to be careful about reasoning from ‘is’ to ‘ought.’

The main moral questions to ask are whether the recipients of the promotion are deceived and harmed.

Personally, I don’t feel misled by pictures of perfect peaches, super clean cars, or spotless shirts. Most people also probably expect the actual items they buy to have at least some minor imperfections when compared to their pictured counterparts.

Depending on the nature and cost of the product, there’s a level below perfect condition that we readily accept knowing that we live in an imperfect world. Furthermore, in terms of food, visual imperfections probably don’t matter as much as they do for many other products because although we eat with our eyes, the appearance of what’s on our plates is short-lived.

That takes us back to burgers and the main moral questions:
Do differences between what Burger King, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s depict in their ads and sell in their stores deceive and harm consumers?

First, it’s important to recognize that for the vast majority of consumers, these fast food restaurants’ ads represent reminder advertising, i.e., most people have already eaten in one or more of the chains, possibly multiple times, so they’re well aware of what they’ll receive the next time they visit.

Second, fast food is a rather low-involvement, low-risk purchase. When deciding what to order, people typically spend a minute or less, not hours, days, or weeks, as they might when selecting some products. Likewise, the average McDonald’s Big Mac Meal costs only $5.99, and customers can buy two cheeseburgers for just $2.00. So, if the beef patties don’t look quite as pretty as the pictures, it’s no big loss.

All that said, there is a difference between misrepresenting quality and misrepresenting quantity. Whether burgers look more or less appealing than their pictures is a somewhat subjective matter. Size is not. People almost always want to get more product for their money, not less, so it’s a problem if a burger’s picture looks 50% bigger than the one we actually receive.

In this sense, the burger lawsuits have more teeth. Consumers will quickly forget whether the Big Mac Meal looked as good in person as it did in the picture, but they won’t forget if they’re still hungry after eating it, especially if they have no more meal money to spend.

Although that’s not a life-threatening problem on par with those mentioned at the outset of this piece, it is a legitimate consumer concern, particularly in inflationary times. Whether they’re spending a lot or a little, people should always receive the amount of product they’re promised.

So, there is a plausible and practical component to the burger lawsuits; however, their bigger contribution is their call for accountability, which also may mean modeling more genuine communication.

It’s not to say that people take their communication cues directly from fast food ads, yet there’s an unsettling resemblance between the idealized product promotions and the utopian pictures many individuals paint of themselves in social media.

When people see large, heavily advertised corporations like Burger King, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s freely exaggerating and glamorizing their truths, it implies permission for others to do the same.

The world becomes a better place when individuals and organizations take care to represent themselves realistically. It’s okay to put our best foot forward, but it must be our foot, not some fantastical version of it. Those who walk with realism are stepping into “Mindful Marketing.”

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Mascot Madness

3/27/2022

4 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

When people mention products they see advertised all the time, “insurance” is often top-of-list. Insurance ads are virtually inescapable and stick because of clever humor and silly brand characters. One lesser-known competitor now claims to be better because it forgoes such foolishness, but is throwing shade on the big players’ branding the way to ensure it wins?

Today, the mascots of insurance companies are better known than those of many colleges. To test that claim, try the following two-part quiz. The answers appear a few paragraphs below:

1) What are the mascots of the five largest U.S. public university campuses by enrollment?

Texas A & M University
University of Central Florida
Ohio State University
University of Florida
Florida International University

2) What are brand characters of the following insurance companies?

Aflac
Allstate
Geico
Liberty Mutual
Progressive

If you’re like me, you know more on the second list than the first. Granted, I pay more attention to commercials than most people do, but I’m also a significant fan of college sports who works in higher education, which are good reasons why I should know list #2 too.

So, here are the answers:
1) Aggies, Knights, Buckeyes, Gators, Panthers
2) Duck, Mayhem, Gecko, Emu, Flo

The point of this exercise is to underscore how effective many insurance companies have been at familiarizing us with their brands’ personalities.

Despite the old adage, “You can’t argue with success,” one insurance provider is doing just that, making a very public case that all the time and energy its competitors spend building brand characters is wasted.

Unlike Geico or Allstate, the company with the hot take is not a household name for most people. It’s New Jersey Manufacturers Casualty Insurance Company, or NJM.

NJM began in 1913 by providing worker’s compensation to New Jersey businesses and a couple of decades later started to offer commercial and personal auto insurance and homeowners insurance. Over the last 100+ years it’s expanded its offerings even more, while extending into other states.

Only recently, though, did the company decide to redefine the acronym that’s represented its name for more than a century. Now, at least for the purpose of some contrarian marketing communication, NJM purportedly stands for “No Jingles or Mascots, Just Great Insurance.”

Why would NJM want to throw shade on several of America’s most successful insurance providers? The easy answer is it wants to be big like them but believes that its path to greatness must come not by copying their recipe for success but by being different.

NJM is a sizeable insurer; however, it’s scope and scale are small compared to the mascot-using competitors mentioned above. NJM only markets its products in New Jersey and five nearby states. Similarly, while NJM has about $8 billion in assets, the other firms boast much bigger asset totals:

Aflac: $165 billion
Allstate: $126 billion
Geico: $71 billion
Liberty Mutual: $145 billion
Progressive: $64 billion

Positioning against the brand, as it’s called, is not necessarily a bad idea. Avis succeeded with the strategy in the early 1960s, using the tagline “We try harder,” –a clear slight against the number one car rental company at the time, Hertz. Similarly, in 1967 Seven-Up tapped into countercultural sentiment by branding itself as the “Uncola” versus the soft drink “Establishment” that was Coke and Pepsi.

However, there are two important factors that dilute NJM’s claim to be different by not using ducks or geckos.

First, there are plenty of other insurance companies that can make the same claim that they’re more serious about insurance because they don’t use mascots. In fact, they represent the nation’s five largest insurers:

Prudential
Berkshire Hathaway
MetLife
TIAA
AIG

To be clear, Berkshire Hathaway does own Geico; however, it also owns these mascot-less insurance firms: National Indemnity Company, General Reinsurance, and Berkshire Hathaway Life Insurance Company of Nebraska.

Also, in case you’re thinking that Snoopy is MetLife’s mascot, the dog is gone. The company dropped the beloved beagle more than five years ago in an effort to reflect “a clean, modern aesthetic.”

Second, in its television commercials trumpeting its decision to not use mascots, NJM uses, of all things, mascots!

To be clear, the mascots in NJM’s commercials are not its own but ones it’s fabricated for fictitious competitors. The commercial characters include an alpaca, a jingle-singing entertainer, an elephant-giraffe-eagle-horse-octopus, a big blue bear, a narwhal, and a ferret.

Again, none of the mascots belong to NJM, but by using them in its humor-infused ads, the company is not so subtly doing the same thing it accuses its competitors of doing—prioritizing playfulness over serious insurance.

It’s kind of like one person scolding another for their profanity by swearing at them, “You s#@% h#@%, you’ve got to stop the b*#&#% cursing!” The point, of course is if the words are bad, no one should be using them.

So, if mascots don’t make for serious insurance, why is NJM using them in its ads?

That question is kind of a rhetorical one, but I can’t resist trying to answer it. It could be that NJM suffers from some mascot-envy and may even be using its commercials as a way of auditioning characters to see if any stick.

More generally, NJM must recognize that using mascots in marketing works. This piece began by identifying several insurance competitors’ well-known characters. Over the years, organizations in other industries also have reaped similar branding benefits from their own creations, such as:

Energizer – Energizer Bunny
Keebler Company – Keebler Elves
Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes – Tony the Tiger
McDonald’s – Ronald McDonald
Michelin – Michelin Man
Pillsbury – Dough Boy
Planters – Mr. Peanut
Procter & Gamble’s Mr. Clean – Mr. Clean
StarKist Tuna - Charlie

Of course, characters aren’t good fits for every industry. We don’t see luxury brands like Cartier, Gucci, or Mercedes employing mascots because they want to be seen as elegant and refined—images that characters can undermine. Likewise, some organizations’ missions are simply too serious to be connected with anything that might come across as irreverent, e.g., the American Lung Association.

But for many companies, mascots serve helpful purposes like giving brands more personal connection and communicating whimsy. But even more basic, the characters often capture our attention, keep our interest, and help us remember what can be easily forgotten products . . . like insurance.

Given the quest for Mindful Marketing, the other important question to ask is whether mascot use is ethical. Two areas that demand special attention are how certain mascots portray people groups and how some characters are used in marketing to children. Otherwise, it’s hard to identify any broad prohibition of mascots for branding.

NJM’s claim that ‘We’re more serious about insurance because we don’t use mascots,’ doesn’t make much sense since its own ads have mascots. Some might call that use disingenuous or deceitful, but it’s unlikely there’s any ill intent.

No, NJM is just searching for a strategy that can lift it to the level of Aflac and Progressive, but such a leap won’t happen by using an eclectic cast of ‘other insurers’ mascots’ and talking more about what the company isn’t than what it is. This specific claim for positioning against the brand should be assessed as “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

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Marketing Ideology

2/27/2022

1 Comment

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Principles of marketing professors teach that “products” are more than tangible goods; they’re also services and ideas. While it’s easy to identify organizations marketing goods and services, noticing idea marketing takes more discernment. Recently, the world witnessed one of the most blatant examples of idea marketing ever. It worked but unfortunately not for good.

In the annals of persuasion, one of the hardest ‘sales’ must be convincing one’s country to start a war, given the likelihood of loss of life, property, political allies, and more. In persuading Russia to invade Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, achieved such a seduction, while providing an example of idea marketing at its worst.

Of course, Russia’s largely autocratic regime doesn’t require the consensus-building demanded in a democratic state. Still, Putin was undeniably successful in marketing a momentous idea by convincing other government officials, military leaders, and to some extent the Russian populace to embrace the notion that invading Ukraine served a national security interest while accomplishing historically based cultural and ethnic reunification.

Mindful Marketing rarely tackles politics. I’m addressing this situation not just because it’s a poignant example of idea marketing but because of its significant human and economic impact, as well as its potential to become one of history’s biggest geopolitical events.

Russia’s incursion into Ukraine is also personal for me. Both of my wife’s parents were born in Ukraine, where they endured extreme hardships during WWII. Consequently, my wife and our children share Ukraine’s rich cultural heritage by birth, as I do by marriage.

The necklace in the picture above is my wife's tryzub, which her father brought back for her from one of his many return visits to his homeland.

Of course, millions of others also have personal connections. In fact, as I was writing this article, I read a post by one of my LinkedIn connections, Cait Mack who wrote:

“This has been one of the worst days of my life. The war in Ukraine feels like it’s pulling at the very fiber of my being. For those who don’t know, I’m Ukrainian. My grandparents came over during WW2, fleeing from Nazis. I am sick with grief. Everything feels so stupid and trivial in comparison to what’s going on over there.”

“I think of my grandparents. Our extended family in Ukraine. All the innocent people. The parents with their children. The harsh reminder that we can’t really keep our families safe.”

As Mack mentions, the secondhand angst that any of us feel can’t compare to the fear and horror that those in Ukraine are experiencing, which reminds me of the focus of this piece—Putin marketing the idea of invasion.

**Rather than commending his cunning, the intent here is to extract something edifying from the unfolding tragedy—to identify how individuals and organizations should market ideas responsibly.

Autocratic leaders have the advantage of superior political power. Marketers enjoy information superiority, i.e., they naturally know more about their organization and its products than do consumers.

Because of their very intangible nature, the information imbalance involving ideas becomes even more skewed, which means marketers are under even greater moral compulsion to carefully steward their influence on the conceptions of others. The following are five steps toward marketing ideas responsibly:

1. Seek Understanding**
It’s hard to understand when uninformed, which is why the first act in understanding is gaining information by researching the issue at hand and, above all, listening to those closest to it.

Courtroom dramas sometimes culminate with an attorney introducing a new witness or piece of evidence, which unexpectedly changes the minds of jurors. Such are likely violations of legal discovery, but the examples are helpful reminders that additional and possibly more accurate information can help change our minds for the better.

2. Explore Other Perspectives
As implied above, it’s helpful to lean on others, not just because they can provide additional facts but because they might offer their own experienced and informed interpretation of the information. Whether at the boardroom level or shop floor level, the best leaders always avail themselves of others’ insights.

It sometimes seems that people avoid other perspectives, fearing they’ll change their opinions. That may happen, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, seeking others’ perspectives is often like a fan who's loyal to a certain football team watching two other teams play. Watching them will probably not change the fan’s team loyalty, but they may see in the other teams things that enhance their understanding of the game, as well as things their team does well or could do better.

3. Present a Rational Argument
People can be persuaded in different ways, including by deception (painting an inaccurate picture of facts) and coercion (compelling an action from a position of power). Neither of these alternatives allows people to exercise informed consent, or freely choose to adopt an idea based on its logical merits.

Although we occasionally act otherwise, people are rational beings who can understand and make sensible decisions based on logical arguments. Even young children comprehend reason—‘If you eat your whole meal, you’ll get to have dessert.’ People of any age deserve clear, logical, communication.

4. Don’t Play on Emotion
However, humans aren’t simply rational beings. Our complex psychology also includes emotion, which makes us even more interesting. Yes, we should make most decisions by reasoning with objective information, but sometimes it’s appropriate for people to choose things that they enjoy or that make them happy, like playing a favorite game with a friend.

What’s unacceptable is to use others’ emotions against them, e.g., to persuade them to do something out of an irrational fear or a sense of guilt. Although good in moderation, too much emotion can cloud people’s thinking and cause them to do things that they otherwise would not rationally choose. The outcome is like a doctor tapping a patient’s knee with a reflex hammer: Their leg will move involuntarily no matter how much the patient may reason that it shouldn’t.

5. Be Truthful
The fifth act encapsulates the preceding ones and should go without saying; however, even when people fulfill the first four steps, they still must ensure follow-through of this final one, particularly to avoid selective presentation of facts.

For example, I could support the morality of advertising by referencing Gallup’s annual poll about the honesty and ethics of various occupations and accurately report that advertising practitioners ranked in the top 20 of all occupations. That may sound impressive, but the statement would be misleading because the survey only asked about 22 occupations and advertising practitioners ranked 18th.

What we don’t tell people is often as important as what we tell them.

Again, the point of this piece has not been to detail Putin’s tenuous argument for the invasion of Ukraine; however, this website, among others, provides a window into how his rationalization evolved. In short, Putin appears to have violated more than one of the preceding five steps; for instance, he played on his own people’s emotion with a “rousing speech” in which he called Ukraine a U.S. colony ruled by a “puppet regime.”

From my own reading and experience, Putin’s biggest breach of the steps of responsible influence has been of #5, by being untruthful, particularly with respect to his denial of Ukraine’s historic statehood and his claim that Russians and Ukrainians ‘are one people.’

Soon after my wife and I started dating, I learned two important facts involving her family’s ethnic heritage. First, the nation is not “the Ukraine;” it’s “Ukraine.” Adding the definite article “the” diminishes the country’s stature to that of a territory or colony, (e.g., the Louisiana Territory, the Yukon), which Putin directly suggested in his “rousing speech” referenced above.

Second, my wife’s family and their friends frequently reinforced that ‘Ukrainians are not Russians.’ I experienced firsthand that Ukrainians have a unique language, history, food, customs, and other rich cultural distinctives that distinguish them from their homeland’s northern neighbor.

My evidence spans more than three decades, but it is personal and, therefore, anecdotal. The most compelling proof of Putin’s misinformation is, regrettably, what’s happened during the invasion, as a 2/26 New York Times Breaking News headline read, “Ukraine, outmanned and outgunned, has slowed Russia's advance on Kyiv and two other cities as its forces wage a ferocious resistance.”

If Ukraine were just a Russian territory, if the majority of Ukrainians wanted unification with Russia, and if Ukrainians and Russians were one people, why are so many Ukrainians valiantly fighting and giving their lives to stop the invasion and maintain their nation’s sovereignty?

The disconnect stems from a lack of truthfulness, which many of Putin’s own people have recognized, hence widespread protests by Russians against the “war without a cause.”

Tragically Putin was effective in selling the idea of invasion to some, at the cost of many lives and the freedom of a peaceful people. That underlying deception and unimaginable destruction makes his strategy the worst example “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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Should Social Responsibility be Selfless?

1/16/2022

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

While people gave gifts to loved ones last month, the world’s largest pizza chain was providing presents to some very surprised recipients—other restaurants. True, “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but was Domino’s philanthropy actually aimed at putting itself on the receiving side?

As you may have seen in the 60-second spot from its feel-good campaign, Domino’s bought over $100,000 in gift cards from local restaurants and gave them to its own customers.

It doesn’t take much business background to know that the goal of an enterprise is to build market share for itself, not competitors. Even Vickie Corder, one of the restaurant owners who appeared in Domino’s commercial, was astonished by the action: “I can’t believe one restaurant is buying another restaurant’s gift certificates.”

Why would Domino’s want to support its competitors’ sales by buying their gift cards, and even worse, giving them to its own customers, making them less likely to buy Domino’s pizza? Some of the ad text suggests an altruistic reason: “Domino’s wants to help the people and restaurants in our local communities.”

One might take that explanation at face value. After all, the firm did fork over $100,000. However, for a company with annual revenues of $4.37 billion and operating income of $801 million, $100,000 is immaterial. There’s also some understandable skepticism--Why haven’t we heard before of Domino’s feelings of responsibility for other restaurants?

Instead, some of the chain’s social responsibility has looked more like ‘marketing gimmicks,’ such as its “Paving for Pizza” program, aimed at filling potential pizza-delivery-wrecking potholes, and its “carryout insurance,” guaranteeing free replacements for customers who inadvertently fumbled their pies.

The vast majority of people probably never had a poor pizza experience resulting from either of those issues and never will, so it’s realistic to suggest that in both instances Domino’s was making much ado about nothing, positioning for the free publicity that each unconventional campaign elicited. So, is gifting other restaurant’s gift cards just another attempt to gain exposure through oddity?

The gift card campaign certainly seems like it could be another gimmick; yet, there are some notable differences, namely that COVID has put unprecedented pressure on restaurants, causing many to shutter their doors permanently. In fact, Domino’s commercial mentions that “over 110,000 U.S. restaurants have closed since March 2020.”

That to say, unlike the exaggerated ideas of potholes pummeling delivery vehicles and consumers carelessly dropping carryout orders, the pandemic’s negative impact on restaurants has, unfortunately, been very real.

The ad also mentions a related phenomenon that COVID didn’t cause but did increase: the use of third-party delivery companies. During the height of the pandemic when most restaurants’ sit-down dining was paused, more and more people started getting restaurant food delivered to their homes and offices by providers like Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash.

Although selling food, whether for dine-in or delivery, seems like a good thing for restaurants, apparently the math doesn’t work well when third-party delivery companies are involved. Irene Li, another restaurant owner interviewed in Domino’s ad, affirms the profit predicament: “[Third-party delivery fees] take a huge chunk of our bottom line; all of that comes out of our pocket and goes to them.”

Others have echoed her concern, including NPR, which reported that apps often charge commissions of 17% or more, in addition to delivery fees. Likewise, the LA Times found that one local restaurant paid $35,000, or roughly a third of its annual rent, in delivery fees, which led the Times to recommend, “The next time you order takeout, call the restaurant [directly].”

Domino’s suggestion that delivery apps wreak havoc on restaurants’ bottom-lines is on-point; however, the pizza chain is also very well-known for doing its own deliveries. Does that mean that Domino’s is selflessly looking out for others? Not exactly.

Apparently, some of the many people who have grown accustomed to the third-party apps for food delivery have also used them to place orders for pizza, doing to Domino’s the same fiscal damage described above. In fact, another Domino’s ad has suggested such delivery difficulties, warning consumers that third party delivery firms charge “surprise fees,” but it will reward certain loyal customers who use its app with “surprise frees,” or, free food.”

Likewise, during an interview on CNBC’s Mad Money, Domino’s President and CEO Ritch Allision suggested that third-party delivery apps have, to some extent, stunted the company’s growth.

All this to say, by buying and giving away other restaurants’ gift cards, Domino’s has brought added attention to an issue that doesn’t just hurt its local restaurant competitors. It also bruises Domino’s own bottom line.

The question, then, becomes, Is it right for Domino’s to help itself while helping others?

Before considering the ethics of this query, it’s worth noting that Domino’s strategy does seem to be effective marketing. The unconventional approach gains attention, and the corporate social responsibility builds goodwill.

What’s more, because delivery is both the focus of the ad and a key component of the company’s value proposition, the promotion is more meaningful and memorable. When people consider Domino’s brand, the company wants them to think of food delivery, which the commercial accomplishes.

So, what about the marketing’s morality? One consideration could be the amount Domino’s spent on the gift cards ($100K+) versus how much it’s paid for the ads. Excluding production expenses, U.S. television broadcasting costs alone, average about $115,000 per 30-second spot, which means the campaign’s promotional budget certainly far exceeded the value of the gift cards.

The extreme imbalance may make some rightly question the company’s motives. Although Domino’s franchisees did assume some risk by giving other restaurant’s gift cards to their own customers, most people who eat out probably patronize multiple restaurants, making it unlikely that Domino’s lost business. In fact, free gift cards may have led some of their recipients to reciprocate by buying more pizza.

All said, it’ hard to paint Domino’s promotion as selfless: The company benefited from the tactics as did the other restaurants and those who scored the free gift cards. So, is such mutual benefit problematic?

Most business exchanges result in win-win outcomes. From the clothes we wear to the computers on which we type, we’re usually very glad we have those products and not the money we paid for them. Meanwhile, the marketers are grateful for our money and don’t want back their products.

Mutually beneficial exchange, in commercial and noncommercial contexts, is a very good thing. Some may argue that such a philosophy shouldn’t extend to corporate social responsibility, but why not?

Several years ago, two colleagues and I conducted research in which we identified three unique types of corporate social responsibility: donation, volunteerism, and operational integration. In the study we affirmed that helping others was very good, but implementing philanthropic acts that simultaneously furthered the economic goals of the organization was even better. The positive response to this article and another like it suggests that many others share the same viewpoint.

The reality outside business isn’t much different. When individuals give of their time, money, etc., benevolence in some form usually comes back to them. The stories found in the Go Giver artfully describe that phenomenon.

Domino’s did a good thing by buying and giving away other restaurants’ gift cards. Although it wasn’t a major act of corporate social responsibility, it was a meaningful one. The fact that the philanthropy also benefited the pizza chain, doesn’t stop the strategy from being "Mindful Marketing."

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Two Lessons TikTok can Teach Facebook

10/10/2021

2 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Most of us have used social media to learn how to do something, from making bread to remodeling a bathroom. We often turn to such media for new skills, but what if these sites could educate each other? In the wake of the latest revelations about negative social media impact, it seems there are at least two lessons the up-and-coming platform could teach the seasoned pro.

It’s been hard to find news feeds recently that haven't featured Facebook. The iconic social network that’s often been the focus of questions from citizens and senators, was back in the spotlight after a former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower appeared on 60 Minutes and exposed a series of alleged corporate abuses, most impacting consumers.

Francis Haugen is a 37-year-old data scientist and Harvard MBA who has worked for a variety of top-tier social media firms for 15 years, including a two-year tenure at Facebook. In her October 3rd interview on 60 Minutes, she didn’t pull punches in portraying what she believes is her former employers’ danger to society. Among her accusations were:

Facebook’s algorithms systematically amplify angry and divisive content, which are rewarded with more revenue, as other content doesn’t receive adequate returns.
Facebook employees are compelled to curate polarizing posts in order to drive site traffic, maintain user engagement, and ultimately keep their jobs.
“Facebook has set up a system of incentives that is pulling people apart.”

Two days later, Haugen testified before a Senate subcommittee, where she made several other stinging revelations:

Facebook has ways of determining people’s ages and could be doing much more to identify users younger than 13.
Hate speech and misinformation boosts meaningful social interaction (MSI), a key Facebook metric to which employee bonuses are tied.
Facebook’s “amplification algorithms” and “engagement-based ranking” drive young people to destructive online content, resulting in bullying, body image issues, and mental health crises.

Facebook has responded to Haugen’s accusations, including with a written statement to 60 Minutes in which it claims that polarization has decreased in countries where internet and Facebook use has risen. Also, in a Facebook post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has suggested that Haugen’s revelations represent “a false picture of the company” and that the idea that the firm prioritizes profit above safety and well-being is “just not true.”

Unlike Haugen and Zuckerberg, most of us have no window into Facebook’s innerworkings. At best, we’re just one of world’s largest social media platform’s 2.7 billion monthly active users, meaning we have no way of knowing whose representations are really true.

Human nature and history tell us that both sides are likely right in some ways, and perhaps responsible for certain misrepresentations. That said, many people have experienced firsthand Facebook feeds strewn with angry and polarizing posts. Likewise, the company’s recent decision to pause its work on an Instagram product for children under age 13 seems to reflect some sense of mea culpa.

In short, it’s becoming ever-more-apparent, even to nominal social media users, that there are important issues Facebook needs to address more effectively. The question, then, becomes, “Who can teach Facebook how to rehabilitate its social impact?”

It must be hard for one of the largest and most influential companies in the world to accept advise from anyone, including members of congress, as evidenced during Zuckerberg’s many visits to testify on Capitol Hill.

That doesn’t mean that government regulation isn’t effective. It plays a critical behavior-modifying role. However, there are natural delays in passing legislation, and those lag-times are often exacerbated by the speed at which social media and related technology change. Furthermore, members of congress typically don’t understand an industry as well as those who work in it, particularly when the industry involves high-tech.

So, who also lives at the cutting edge of technology and could influence Facebook toward more positive social impact? One particular competitor could—TikTok.

I admit; on the surface, this suggestion seems almost ridiculous: With its own algorithms driven by artificial intelligence, isn’t TikTok part of the same problem?

In fact, I’ve expressed my misgivings about the influence of the widely-popular app that Search Engine Journal describes as having “the fastest growth of any social media platform.” In the end, however, I concluded that users’ abilities to restrict or stop using TikTok suggested that it was not truly addictive.

Of course, ‘not being part of the problem’ doesn’t necessarily mean that TikTok can be part of a Facebook solution. However, the social media upstart has recently taken two initiatives that align squarely with two of the main principles that Haugen suggested Facebook must learn:

1. To discourage bad behavior: Compared to the millions and millions of videos available on TikTok, it was admittedly a minor move when the app recently began to ban posts that referred to stealing school property—a disturbing late-summer trend among teens. Still, the moral stand that the company took shouldn’t be diminished. A TikTok spokesperson explained the ethos:

“We expect our community to stay safe and create responsibly, and we do not allow content that promotes or enables criminal activities.”

2. To support users’ mental health: Also about a month ago, TikTok unveiled “a slew of features intended to help users struggling with mental health issues and thoughts of suicide.” Among the app-related resources are well-being guides for those struggling with eating disorders and a search intervention feature that activates if a user enters a term like “suicide.”

Facebook’s challenges to more effectively discourage bad behavior and to support mental health may be somewhat unique, both in terms of their nature and magnitude. Still, TikTok now has 1 billion monthly users, up from 700 million just a year ago, and those users seem to deal with many of the same social concerns that Facebook users do.

Businesses routinely learn from others, often by observing and emulating them (e.g., developing new products). Facebook certainly can and likely does already do that, but maybe there’s another level of within-industry education that could occur.

This suggestion may be the most ridiculous one yet, but what if Facebook and TikTok cooperated? What if the two companies ‘compared notes’ and in some way worked together to address the physical, emotional, and social challenges that threaten both their users?

Of course, imaging any cooperation between such large and close competitors is practically unthinkable, but it's not unprecedented. Several decades removed, both Harvard Business Review (1989) and Forbes (2019) published articles citing such partnership examples, like General Motors and Toyota, and explaining the win-win outcomes that accrued from such “coopetition.”

What might Facebook and TikTok’s motivations be for cooperating? Perhaps they both would like to avoid probable government regulation. Or, they may want to see how they can advance themselves, without compromising their competitive positions.

Moreover, maybe Facebook and TikTok can recognize that personal and societal well-being are what matter most, and together they have the power to shape it like few others can. Actually, all three of motivations have merit and together they certainly represent “Mindful Marketing.”

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Help Wanted, Marketing to Prospective Employees

7/31/2021

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

While eating lunch at a favorite restaurant recently, my son and I noticed that the menu was much shorter than before. The Italian eatery was no longer even offering one of its standard selections, pizza! After our meal, I asked our waitress about the simpler spread. She explained it was because they couldn’t hire enough cooks to prepare additional entrées.

You’ve likely seen signs in restaurants, ads from retailers, and posts on social media from other service providers announcing pressing needs for more employees. While the recent labor shortage has been a boon to job seekers, it’s been a bummer for many businesses that find themselves perpetually understaffed. However, firms can turn their current recruitment challenges into opportunities if they rethink how they market to prospective employees.

Like many professors, I’ve invested considerable time helping students get jobs, both internships during college and career positions after graduation. What has for decades been largely an employer-oriented sellers’ market has suddenly shifted. Now employers are increasingly competing for new hires. As a result, it behooves businesses to go back to school and brush up on their marketing, not to attract customers but to contract employees.

In a few days, I'll participate on a panel for that purpose, joining three others to engage employers in a discussion of how to recruit college students and recent grads more effectively.

Being both a marketer and a college faculty member, I hope to offer a unique perspective, mainly based on two-plus decades helping get students gainfully employed. I’m fairly familiar with Gen Z’s preferences in the recruiting process. So, in case there’s any overlap between the panel audience and this one--spoiler alert! I’m sharing below my recommendations for more effective marketing to prospective employees.

It’s probably not surprising that this marketer’s suggestions flow from the 4 Ps. Although there are several strategies I could encourage for each marketing mix component, I’ve singled out two for each, not because they’re necessarily the most important ones but because they’re the features/benefits that young prospective employees increasingly seek, which means they’re ones upon which employers need to double down:

Product

Social Responsibility: Gen Z’s desire to align themselves with organizations that make a difference is well-documented. Its members want to have a positive impact on the world, and one of the best ways to do so is to work for “purpose-driven companies.” Firms should be able to communicate clearly and concisely to prospective employees how they help people and the planet.

Attractive Organizational Culture: Decades ago, when I was entering the job market for the first time, company culture was not on my radar screen. Now most new hires want to know 'what it will be like' to work for a firm. I often hear them offer desired descriptors like “low-stress,” “friendly,” and even “fun.” Interviewers should be prepared to talk about their organization’s culture and point to specific examples. They also need to model it in their interactions with prospects.

Place

Work On-Line: Through the pandemic, where work occurs has become an increasingly important point of interest. Many people with whom I’ve spoken have suggested that they’ve enjoyed working from home; in fact, they’d like to continue to work remotely at least some of the time. As might be expected, most Gen Zs are extremely comfortable with digital technology and very used to interacting with others virtually.
Work In-person: At the same time, people also mention that they miss the impromptu interactions that would occur in office hallways and around the proverbial watercooler. In taking jobs, many new grads move away from family and friends, so they’re hoping to make new, meaningful connections. One recent graduate told me it’s harder for her to develop those relationships just from online interactions. So, it seems that employers should provide at least some opportunities for face-to-face interaction.

Promotion

Timely Communication: This past spring a senior student of mine was interviewing with an organization. The process was going well, but more than once he expressed concern, e.g., “It’s been almost two weeks since my second interview and I haven’t heard from them.” Granted, two weeks is not an unreasonable wait, but employers should be sensitive to the fact that more job seekers today have multiple options. So, to not miss the opportunity to make a great hire, firms should at a minimum make clear their timeframe for follow-up communication and even better, move the recruiting process along a little more quickly than it has gone in the past.
Transparent Communication: In keeping with the previous imperative, many college students tell me how much they value transparent communication. Sometimes I push back and ask, “Do you really want to know everything an organization does?” They reply, “No, but we don’t like when they hide important things or try to put a positive spin on something negative.” In short, they want organizations to be open, honest, and genuine. Companies should be careful to model these values in their communication with prospective employees.

Price

Appropriate Pay: Professional sports fans often hear of pro athletes wanting to “get paid.” It’s usually when a star’s current contract doesn’t compensate them in proportion to their productivity. College-age prospective employees don’t have contracts, but they should ‘get paid’ in the sense that they shouldn’t be lowballed; rather, they should be offered competitive salaries and benefits at if not above market averages. These young people aren’t looking to squeeze out every dollar they can, but they do have debt to pay and don’t want to have to live paycheck-to-paycheck. Similarly, unpaid internships should be a thing of the past.
Work-Life Balance: The greatest resource employees give organizations is their time. Although the prospective employees with whom I speak are very willing to work hard, they rightly want to have sufficient time for other needs and interests outside of the office. Employers should monitor and encourage healthy work-life balance. They also should be ready to tell prospective employees about their systems for maintaining an agreeable life equilibrium.

Some sectors, like healthcare, already know well the challenges of employee recruitment and retention: For years, hospitals have labored to hire enough doctors and nurses. Now, many employers share their pain. The above prescriptions can bring some recruitment relief while also helping firms feel better, knowing that they’re practicing “Mindful Marketing.”

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College Athletes Must Get in Condition for Commercialism

7/5/2021

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

College students enjoy talking about ads, especially ones that feature top athletes like Tom Brady, Serena Williams, and Lebron James. The NCAA’s momentous decision to allow college athletes to become paid spokespeople has leveled the promotional playing field, but are young, soon-to-be endorsers ready for the pressures they’ll face in a different kind of game?

In a landmark decision on June 30, the NCAA lifted its long-standing rules prohibiting organizations from paying student athletes to endorse their products. Now athletes in all three divisions can profit by leasing their names, images, and likenesses (N.I.L.) to the highest, first, or only bidder.

The rationale behind the NCAA’s prior rulings was to preserve amateurism and the purity of competition, uncontaminated by commercialism. The point of this piece is not to debate the pros and cons of paying student athletes, which many others have already done. Instead, it’s past time to ask if these young people are prepared for the new opportunities and challenges that come with being paid endorsers.

Already, many of the same college athletes who had simply enjoyed watching professional spokespeople now find that they are professional spokespeople, but is paid promotion a game they’re ready to play?

The clock had barely turned midnight on June 30, when several college athletes began to monetize their new marketability. The first was apparently Auburn University quarterback Bo Nix who signed a deal with Milo’s sweet tea at 12:02 am, July 1. Two others who quickly followed suit were twin sisters Haley and Hanna Cavinder, basketball players at Fresno State University, who inked an agreement with Boost Mobile.

For the Cavinders, the leap to professional endorsers should be a fairly smooth one. They are business marketing majors, but even more, they are already social media stars with over 3 million followers on TikTok and about 4 million across all platforms.

However, for other newly minted marketers with less knowledge and experience, the transition will likely be more challenging. Here are five things college athletes should understand in order to do well and good in their new commercial competition:

1) Marketing: One wouldn’t jump into a serious game of basketball, football, etc. without knowing the sport. Similarly, one shouldn’t enter paid endorsement without understanding marketing. Beyond an appreciation of the discipline as a whole (e.g., the four Ps), two concepts that every paid endorser should comprehend are target market and branding.

The sponsoring organization and its advertising agent should be aware of the target market they’re trying to reach in terms of its demographics, psychographics, and any other identifying criteria. Endorsers should have the same understanding so they can make their own assessment of personality-audience fit and use that knowledge to tailor their communication.

Closely related, an endorser should have a clear picture of the unique identity, or brand, they’re building for themselves and the branding of the sponsoring company. Although these personal and organizational brands will never be identical, they should be complementary. For instance, individuals trying to build their brands as ‘sophisticated and exclusive,’ probably shouldn’t endorse brands that are seen as ‘low-budget and casual.’

2) Contracts: Sponsorship deals are typically bound by contracts that specify the rights and duties of all parties, including those of the spokespeople. As such, college athletes should understand basic contract terms like offer, acceptance, breach, indemnification, and exclusivity. The last term is especially important in that contract terms might prohibit an athlete from signing sponsorship deals with other organizations, particularly competitors.

Another special provision often found in endorsement contacts is a character or morals clause, which “allows the sponsor either to suspend or terminate a sponsorship agreement in the event that the athlete, celebrity or other endorser violates the clause [because of] behavior that is criminal, that is scandalous, or that might tarnish the advertiser’s brand.” Most people have better sense than Ryan Lochte showed after the 2016 Rio Olympics; still, it behooves every college athlete to understand that by signing an endorsement contract they become more accountable for their actions, including their social media posts, than they ever were before.

3) Personal finance: Although those who feel they don’t have enough money may disagree, research study results support the premise that more money can mean more problems, at least in terms of added stress. A former NCAA athlete who now works in banking, believes that newly earned endorsement income can become a burden for college athletes who lack sufficient financial acumen and discipline.

A little over a year ago, Hunter Brindle was captain of Messiah University’s baseball team while he completed majors in economics and marketing. Now an investment advisor, he expresses concern that college-age spokespeople may not manage their endorsement money wisely, leading to unsustainable spending habits they’ll regret later in life unless they are financially informed:

“When your housing, utilities, and meals are all covered by a scholarship, loan, or your parents in one large payment, you develop the mindset that every dollar that enters your bank account is there for spending. Therefore, I believe it will be very common to see many college athletes spending any endorsement dollars as fast as they are coming in without realizing the potential future benefit those dollars could provide when they are someday trying to figure out how to put a down payment on a house. Because of this, I believe it could be extremely beneficial for athletes to participate in some sort of financial counseling as they enter college where the reality of real-life expenses is laid out before them.”

4) Time-management: College places time pressure on every student, but regular practices, workouts, and games, mean that athletes must work even harder to balance their schedules. Messiah University’s men’s soccer coach Brad McCarty, who has led his teams to five NCAA Division III Championships, believes the addition of endorsements makes athletes’ time management all-the-more critical:

“One of the biggest challenges student-athletes face is the balance of time and resources. Regardless of the level—D1, D2, or D3—NCAA athletes are having to juggle homework, exams, study groups, practice, games, lifting, fitness, nutrition, sleep, relationships with teammates, dating relationships, spiritual development, social media, jobs, etc. College athletes interested in finding ways to be a paid endorser takes time/energy, but they already don’t have a lot of margin in their lives.”

McCarty goes on to say that athletic departments will be important players in helping their athletes navigate the new commercial environment.

5) Respect for others: The first four items college athletes need to understand are squarely in their own self-interest. However, they also should be cognizant of the impact their endorsement decisions may have on others, including some already inferred above:

Teams: Athletes who are good enough to receive sponsorship deals are naturally among the best on their teams, which means their coaches and fellow players must depend on them to avoid distractions and perform at high levels in order to help the team succeed.
Universities: Any organization’s brand is partly a function of the personal brands of its leaders and other members, e.g., Apple and Steve Jobs; Tesla and Elon Musk. College athletes must realize, therefore, that their endorsement decisions reflect on their institutions, which is why Brigham Young University has adopted an N.I.L. policy that prohibits its athletes from endorsing products like alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and adult entertainment.
Society: College athletes already serve as role models for many people, especially young fans. As they evolve into multimedia influencers, athletes should be aware that many more people will emulate their words and actions in ways that can produce broad positive or negative impact in areas such as physical health, mental well-being, interpersonal relationships, and environmental sustainability.

The five preceding prescriptions can challenge anyone, including young athletes who lack certain life experience and who need to focus on their sports and their education. As such, these new endorsers will require the guidance of many others, including their coaches, athletic departments, and institutions, as well as other individuals who can offer them informed and unbiased perspectives on personal branding and integrated marketing communication.

College athletes are some of the most gifted individuals in the world. With the support of others and their own self-discipline, they can continue to excel in their sports and in the classroom will also becoming producers of “Mindful Marketing.”

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Don't Be Naïve About Native Advertising

5/22/2021

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Christmas Story fans remember Ralphie’s excitement in receiving a long-awaited Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, only to be disappointed by the unexpected product plug: “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” Slipping commercial messages into media content is nothing new, but digital media have exploded that potential with more and more companies trying to make their ads look like they're something else.
Native advertising is the term used to describe “paid advertising where the ad matches the form, feel and function of the content of the media on which it appears.” Think of the approach as camouflage for commercials. Just as hunters wear green and brown to blend into a forest, native ads mimic the look and feel of their media surroundings so people don’t perceive that they’re promotion.

Native advertising has likely existed for more than a century, one of the earliest examples being John Deere’s agricultural magazine The Furrow, which contained “articles on agriculture and farming tips” alongside ads for the firm’s agricultural products. The entire magazine was, in essence, subtle promotion for John Deere; still, readers could probably easily distinguish the publication’s articles from its advertisements.

Today's native advertising is much more stealthy.

Scrolling through a Yahoo.com news feed recently, I saw sandwiched between a Telegraph article about Prince Harry and a MarketWatch piece on COVID-19, an interesting black and white photo of a woman playing pool along with the intriguing caption, “Pics Show A Gross Past To How We Used To Live.” I barely noticed in small type “Ad Autooverload” before hitting the hyperlink.

The link opened a new browser tab for autooverlaod.com with header menu items that included “Racing” and “Supercars.” The page also featured the start of a slideshow titled “Amazing Wild West Photos.” What Lamborghini’s have to do with Wyatt Earp wasn’t clear, but one could imagine that the prolonged progression of “wild west” photos enhances Auto Overload’s web metrics (e.g., time spent on the site, page views) for purpose of appeal to advertisers.

The use of such native ads has been increasing steadily with no signs of stopping. Media from BuzzFeed to The New York Times have incorporated the promotional approach, with some suggesting that native advertising “will soon become as mainstream as the TV ad.”

BigCommerce reports that in the U.S. in 2020, over $47 billion was spent on native advertising and that 62% of all digital advertising, or “six out of every 10 digital ads were native ads.” Furthermore, native ad spending is forecast to increase by 21% in 2021 to a staggering $57.27 billion.

Of course, an increase in native advertising is not a problem unless native advertising is a problem. So, why are 51% of consumers who know what native advertising is skeptical about native advertising?

The example above from AutoOverload serves as a good case for analysis. People are rightly wary of the ethics of native ads like this one because they have a propensity to deceive in two closely-related ways, which also violate Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines.

1) Clickbait photo and caption: A sultry photo alongside the enticing text “gross past,” “wild west,” and “rarely seen,” represent a hard reach to reel people into something that’s likely different than what they expect, in more ways than one.

The use of these visual and verbal elements fits the FTC’s description of bait advertising: “an insincere offer to sell a product or service the advertiser does not want to sell, in order to sell something else . . . .” Again, there’s no reasonable connection between old west photos and automobiles. AutoOverload seems to be taking the somewhat deceptive approach just to increase its site traffic.

The approach can be called “somewhat” deceptive because, the website does deliver a series of old west photos; although, from what I saw, they don’t live up to the promise of “wild.” The greatest deception actually might be of AutoOverload’s advertisers. These sponsors, which include Volkswagen, probably believe they’re paying for pageviews from people interested in purchasing cars—a conclusion that likely is often not the case.

2) Subtle sponsorship: Most of us have regretfully clicked on a sponsored article or post thinking it was an objective news piece or something a private person shared. The frequency of this common experience is largely attributable to what native advertising so often tries to do: Make people believe what they see is not an ad.

One of the easiest ways to do so is to downplay the ad’s sponsorship. The AutoOverload ad sought such subtlety by using the shortest commercial identifier possible, “Ad,” instead of “Advertisement” or “Sponsored Post.” The ad’s commercial nature also might have been overlooked because “Ad” and “Autooverload” appeared in a smaller and lighter color font than that of the headline text.

Such understated endorsements may seem normal, but that’s likely because native advertising has made them so commonplace. This subtle sponsorship stands in stark contrast to most traditional ads on TV, radio, and billboards where sponsors want to be clearly identified.

Why don’t sponsors of native ads seek the same recognition? They do want to be known, but they first want to make sure that people click on their ads, which individuals often are not inclined to do if they know they’re ads. The following two quotes from LinkedIn’s B2B University expose the sneaky strategy:

“Native ads mimic the look, feel, and function of a medium’s content, making it more likely that your audience will trust them.”
“Native advertising is designed specifically not to look like an ad, making it harder to ignore. Instead, it’s designed to look like the rest of the content on the page. As a result, consumers interact with native ads 20-60% more than traditional banner ads.”

So, native ads pretend to be something they’re not in order to increase the probability that people will mistakenly choose them. In other words, the goal of most native advertising is to deceive.

The irony of native advertising’s casual acceptance of deception hit me squarely as I was scanning a daily newsletter from the American Marketing Association (AMA) and noticed the headline “Transparency Is the Clear Choice for Salespeople.” The article summarized the findings of a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research titled “Open Negotiation: The Back-End Benefits of Salespeople’s Transparency in the Front End.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the researchers found that “customers to whom the salesperson revealed the cost of a car at the beginning of the negotiation spent significantly more in the back end than others.” In other words truthfulness and transparency from the beginning of the buying process paid off not just morally but monetarily.

These results reminded me that the AMA has identified five core “Ethical Values,” which include honesty and transparency. More specifically, one of AMA’s three “Ethical Norms” explains the aim of fostering trust in the marketing system:

“This means striving for good faith and fair dealing so as to contribute toward the efficacy of the exchange process as well as avoiding deception in product design, pricing, communication, and delivery of distribution” [boldface added for emphasis].

Besides flying in the face the AMA’s clearly articulated professional standards, the deception-driven strategy of some native advertising also violates several specific FTC guidelines:

“When the first contact between a seller and a buyer occurs through a deceptive practice, the law may be violated even if the consumer later finds out the truth.”
“An ad is deceptive if it promotes the benefits and attributes of goods and services, but is not readily identifiable to consumers as an ad.”
“Disclosure must be clear and prominent.”
“Advertisers cannot use ‘deceptive door openers’ to induce consumers to view advertising content.”
“Advertisers are responsible for ensuring that native ads are identifiable as advertising before consumers arrive at the main advertising page.”
“Advertisements or promotional messages are deceptive if they convey to consumers expressly or by implication that they’re independent, impartial, or from a source other than the sponsoring advertiser – in other words, that they’re something other than ads.”

The last bullet suggests what is likely the main ethical issue with native advertising—feigned objectivity. In fact, the FTC understands well the moral rationale as it explains:

“Why would it be material to consumers to know the source of the information? Because knowing that something is an ad likely will affect whether consumers choose to interact with it and the weight or credibility consumers give the information it conveys.”

It’s like a new acquaintance inviting you for coffee “to get to know you better” and soon into your conversation, they start to ask your thoughts about cars while sharing their opinions of a particular make and several specific models. You’re surprised by the topic but support the discussion. Finally, near the end of your meeting the acquaintance reveals that they’re a car salesperson, and they ask if you’d like to schedule a test drive.

Unfortunately, some of us have experienced situations similar to this one, which felt uncomfortable because we want to know:

When the context we’re in is a commercial one, i.e., we’re being sold to.

When the person with whom we’re speaking is an agent of an organization or has some other financial stake in the product or company they’re describing.

There’s nothing wrong with a salesperson doing their job when we know who they are and what they’re doing. We expect them to tell us the good things about their products with little treatment of their weaknesses. Since, complete objectivity is not expected, we take what they say with a grain of salt.

In contrast, when talking with friends, family, or coworkers about products, we let down our perceptual guards and take what they say at face value because we believe they’re objective and unbiased.

To be fair, not all native advertising deceives to the same extent. Some ads very clearly identify themselves as sponsored content, and they provide the exact content they promise, offering real value through useful information or worthwhile entertainment.

However, any ad that tries to trick people into taking steps they wouldn’t otherwise choose is on legally and ethically shaky ground. Relationships that start with a lie usually don’t last, which is why ads that deceive represent “Mindless Marketing.”

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Is Excedrin Out of Its Mind?

5/8/2021

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Businesses need to do many things well to be successful, but the most basic is getting people to buy their products. So, why would a company that markets migraine medicine want to help people find other ways to deal with their headaches? What is Excedrin thinking?!

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), maker of Excedrin, one of the world’s best-known pain management products, recently decided to target video gamers, a cohort whose long hours of intent focus on video screens often create the condition the brand is built to cure—headaches.

It’s not surprising that gamers are susceptible to headaches. Research by Limelight Network found that video game players spend an average of six hours and 20 minutes a week participating in their pastime. However, that average is deceptive: Binge-gaming is on the rise, and most gamers report “having played for more than four hours consecutively.”

A ‘half-workday’ or more glued to a video screen could give anyone a migraine. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Excedrin’s website claims that “89% of gamers have experienced gaming related headaches.” It also adds that “80% simply play through the pain.”

Targeting gamers for headache remedies seems like a no-brainer, especially given Excedrin’s well-tailored creative strategy. For instance, in a 15-second spot that looks like a video game, an animated Guardians-of-the Galaxy-like team called “the Healing Academy” rushes to the aid of a young gamer whose headache has him crying out, “I’m fading.” Tablets taken, the gamer quickly recovers and the ad ends, “Excedrin, game over for headaches.”

GSK’s promotional mix includes several similar short spots as well as banner ads and sponsored posts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The firm is also leveraging increasingly effective influencer marketing in the form of professional gamer Matthew "Nadeshot" Hagg, who has 1.6 million followers on the live game-streaming platform Twitch.

GSK’s strategy for targeting gamers seems very well-played. However, there’s another part of the brand’s approach that could have many marketers hitting pause and that might make investors ill: Excedrin is also trying to help people avoid headaches.

On a company microsite specially created for gamers, the company references an exploratory study that tested “a simple 6-step routine to mindful gaming designed to improve focus and optimize performance in gamers.” The six steps, which are designed to “help manage the risk of headaches,” include the following tips:

Don’t play angry
Look away from the screen for 20 seconds now and then
Listen to some relaxing music after a long stretch
Pause the game and relax your mind by sketching or doodling
Put down the controller and give yourself a hand massage
Close your eyes and do some deep breathing: inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth

Excedrin has enlisted 12 Twitch influencers as hosts of branded gaming livestreams, the most notably being Nadeshot, who talks about “the six-step mindfulness routine” during his live play on Twitch.

At first glance, Excedrin’s migraine mitigation strategy sounds good—helping people avoid headaches is a noble endeavor—then one realizes that fewer headaches mean fewer pills popped, lower sales, and less income for the company. It seems like Excedrin is creating a headache for itself.

The company’s strategy has made me wonder, what if I wrote an article, “Six reasons you shouldn’t attend college”?—it probably wouldn’t sit well with my university. Likewise, would an attorney author, “How to represent yourself in court,” or a public accountant pen, “Why to do your taxes on your own”? The likely answer to each is ‘no.’

However, there are other examples that affirm Excedrin’s tips for headache-avoidance. An online search quickly led me to an article, “Safe Driving Tips to Help Avoid Collisions” by an unlikely contributor—an autobody repair shop. Similarly, it may be surprising to see that a physical therapy center has published a piece, “Injury Prevention in Young Athletes.” Aren’t these organizations jeopardizing their own bottom-lines?

The two different sets of examples create confusion because they conflate problems with solutions and preventive measures with cures.

Education, legal representation, and tax preparation are preventative solutions to the probable problems of unemployment, a negative legal judgment, and an audit by the IRS. In the same way, safe driving helps to prevent car collisions and stretching helps avoid athletic injuries.

For an attorney, authoring “How to avoid a lawsuit” is different than writing “How to represent yourself in court.” The first piece is an effort to help people prevent a problem, while the second is a possible solution that wouldn’t only divert business from the firm, things probably wouldn’t end well in court for the self-represented defendant.

So, Excedrin’s mindful gaming tips are preventative measures, aimed at avoiding a common problem for gamers. Yes, fewer headaches mean less demand for migraine medication, but several other factors will likely more than offset any such sales decrease for GSK:

More consumers will know about Excedrin: The public relations exposure that Excedrin is enjoying because of its educational efforts likely means that many more Gen Zers and others who had never heard of Excedrin before are becoming familiar with the brand.
The health tips will create goodwill and trust: Consumers appreciate when companies do things for them without asking for anything in return. Such benevolence builds goodwill. It also engenders trust, as people are more likely to put faith in organizations that aren’t simply looking for sales.
The medicine will make its way into more people’s consideration sets: I’ve been familiar with Excedrin for as long as I can remember, but I don’t think I've ever tried it; I’m not sure why. I only ever consider Advil and Tylenol. I’m not a gamer, but now I’m thinking of trying Excedrin sometime.
People will reciprocate: Often when someone gives or does something for us, we wonder, 'What can I do for them?' Besides being more top-of-mind, Excedrin will benefit from people who have appreciated its headache advise buying the product as a way of repaying the company for its kindness.

So, even if Excedrin’s headache prevention tips stop some people from getting migraines, many more people will be familiar with the brand, appreciate its altruism, trust it intentions, add it to their consideration sets, and purchase the product, partly to reciprocate for its good deed.

Another way to view it is Excedrin is greatly increasing the top of its sales funnel, or its brand awareness, which will inevitably mean more consumers taking action. Granted, the headache tips may somewhat reduce the need for migraine medicine, but gamers and others will still get headaches at times, and more of those who get them will now turn to Excedrin.

As significant as these consumer outcomes are, there’s another consequence of the company’s strategy that’s equally important: the impact on employees.

People want to give their time and energy to worthwhile causes. They want to work for organizations that have a meaningful purpose. Probably few people get excited about making ‘pills,’ accounting for ‘pills,’ or marketing ‘pills.’ However, it would be motivating to work for an organization whose mission is to help people feel better so they can do what they want and need to do.

GSK seems to be such an organization. The company’s “About us” webpage beings with:
“We are a science-led global healthcare company with a special purpose: to help people do more, feel better, live longer.”

The choice of words is telling. GSK could easily say something like, ‘We want to be the premier producer of headache medications. That wording, however, would suggest that the firm’s first priority is its bottom-line and that helping cure customers’ headaches is just a means of getting there. Instead, GSK emphasizes that helping people feel better is what matters.

Employees, not to mention customers and investors, can get excited about that kind of a focus on a greater purpose.

Of course, individuals and organizations can put anything on a website. That’s why Excedrin’s headache avoidance tips are so important: They show that the company truly supports what it says: It puts its medication where its mouth is.

When companies put people ahead of profit, something counterintuitive happens—they make money.

There are hundreds of pharmaceutical companies in the world. According to Pharmaceutical Technology, GSK has annual revenues of over $44 billion, which makes it the world’s sixth largest pharmaceutical firm. In 2020, GSK had income of over $7 billion. All that to say, GSK’s focus on helping people feel better appears to be paying off.

One way to know that someone loves you is seeing them sacrifice something to make you happy. Whether people buy its medications or not, GSK seems to want people to be happy.

It may look strange for a company to lead prospects to a solution that avoids its products. However, such a selfless approach does not go unnoticed; in fact, it’s one that most people find endearing. Excedrin’s effort to prevent headaches before they happen isn’t naïve; it’s actually “Mindful Marketing.”

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Recoloring History

3/12/2021

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

February’s Black History Month was an important reminder of the impactful roles people of color have played in our world. History should be about what actually happened; however, some entertainment has actors playing roles that were really performed by people of other races. Now a media icon’s popular streaming series is shining a light on such controversial casting.

In online entertainment, where content is king, Netflix’s original series Bridgerton, about the lives of Regency-era nobles, has risen above the populace to become a royal success. Other period pieces like Game of Thrones and The Crown also have shown viewers’ appetites for aristocracy, but Bridgerton is different in one very visible way.

Playing the roles of English nobles and others, people of color are many of the series’ leading actors, for instance: Regé-Jean Page, Ruby Barker, Jason Barnett, Martins Imhangbe, Sandra Teles, Anand Desai-Barochia, and Golda Rosheuvel. In fact, Rosheuvel plays one of the show’s highest-ranking royals, Queen Charlotte.

Although some believe that the real Queen Charlotte “descended from a Portuguese branch of nobility with African ancestry,” even a casual royal-watcher knows that the bloodlines of English nobles are rather consistently Caucasian. So, to see persons of color playing the parts of dukes and duchesses is at least surprising, and some might say ‘historically inaccurate.’ Either way, Bridgerton begs the question:

Should an actor of one race portray a person of another?

First, it’s important to recognize that Bridgerton is not exactly breaking new ground. A few months before COVID closed the curtain on live performances, my wife and I had the privilege of visiting Philadelphia and seeing one of the best examples of diverse casting: Hamilton. The musical mega-hit features many people of color portraying individuals who in reality were white, e.g., George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr.

However, actors were crossing racial lines long before Hamilton hit Broadway in 2015. In fact, it’s easy to find such film examples over the past century, and it’s worth noting that in most cases the roles were reversed, i.e., white actors played either real or fictitious people of color, for example:

Angelina Joline as Mariane Pearl in A Might Heart
Ben Affleck as Antonio J. Mendez in Argo
Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson in Elizabeth, Michael, and Marlon
Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Laurence Olivier as Othello in Othello
Natalie Wood as Maria in West Side Story
Johnny Depp as Tonto in The Lone Ranger
Katharine Hepburn as Jade in Dragon Seed
Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra
John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror

So, what issues are really at stake when it comes to actors’ racial representations?

The most obvious seems to be historical accuracy. Participants’ personal identities (racial, ethnic, gender, etc.) are important for understanding past events and how they impact us today. For instance, it would be dishonest to depict WW II’s Tuskegee Airmen as Asian, Hispanic, or white, when almost all the squadron’s aviators were Black. Doing so also may steal a sense of pride from African Americans today.

However, does that same need for ‘identity accuracy’ apply to entertainment? Not necessarily. When we watch a television series, a feature film, or a Broadway show, we know that the actors are not the actual people—it’s a morally-acceptable accommodation that Alec Hill calls “mutual deceits.” Play-goers understand that Lin-Manuel Miranda is not actually Alexander Hamilton. They know that he's just pretending to be him for a few hours.

The same logical likely applies to Bridgerton. Even though some of the show’s characters were real people, like Queen Charlotte, it’s okay for people of other races to portray them, because it’s a largely fictional series that viewers know is taking creative liberties and not purporting to be very factual.

However, that artistic license shouldn’t be wielded with impunity. There still need to be standards, particularly related to portraying people in ways that reasonably represent who they are or were.

If an actor ever played me in a movie, which will certainly never happen, I’d be less concerned that the actor looked like me and more concerned that he acted like me. No one alive or deceased deserves to have their character defamed, which is an issue I’ve written about on several other occasions:

Accuracy consistent with the nature of the artistic creation (e.g., comedy vs. drama) is certainly important, but two other race-related factors also deserve consideration:

Opportunities: While it’s convenient to conclude that white actors can portray people of color and vice versa, that generalization fails to account for centuries of discrimination that have often kept from racial minorities opportunities afforded others, including work in acting. To help overcome that historical disparity, a case can be made that persons of color should receive added consideration for acting roles.
Representation: Similarly, it’s encouraging for people of any race, ethnicity, or gender to see themselves represented in desirable occupations. Acting is such a profession for many, but even more, actors paint pictures of career possibilities with each profession they portray, from A–accountants to Z–zookeepers.

Realizing that my own background and identity influence my thoughts on this issue, I asked an astute student of mine, Mikayla Broome, who is a person of color, to share her perspective. Not surprising, she offered insights that hadn’t occurred to me.

Mikayla first disclaimed that while Bridgerton seemed intriguing, her impressions of the show came mainly from seeing its trailer. She hadn’t watched any episodes because of their graphic sexual content—a good call that may be reason for future Mindful Marketing analysis.

In addition, she suggested that although she understood others’ affection for the show’s racial diversity, the setting in Regency-era England made the series seem "unrealistic" to her. In keeping with that sentiment, she would “have no problem with white actors depicting the characters.” She emphasized that was her personal opinion and she respected those whose attitudes differed.

Each of these reflections were instructive to me, but it was something else Mikayla shared that I found especially enlightening:

“I would be much more interested in a show depicting the lives of people of color in their own culture . . . like the royalty in Benin, Nigeria, the Tang dynasty in China, the Gupta dynasty in India, or Arsinoe the princess of Egypt. People of color love to see themselves represented on the big screen with cultural accuracy. We have such rich histories that I see no need to insert us into stories that are not ours.”

Again, Mikayla emphasized that her personal opinion didn’t negate the potential value of diverse casting like that described above. However, she rightly suggested that the bar should be set higher.

In the category of fiction, Disney has taken significant diversity strides with feature films like Mulan, Moana, and Coco. However, there also are so many inspiring stories to tell of real-life heroes from underrepresented people groups, such as those shared in Hidden Figures, The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind, and a Ballerina’s Tale—a documentary about Misty Copeland, the first black female principal dancer of a major international ballet company.

One might think that films featuring real-life diversity are kind-hearted charity works that do good socially but not well financially. According to research by UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers, that characterization is not the case. In analyzing 100 films released from 2016 to 2019, the study found that “films with diverse characters and authentic stories actually make more money at the box office.”

Interestingly, Mikayla is double-major in Dance and Business Administration. Perhaps her future will in some way involve bringing to light real-life stories of underrepresented people.

Lives are stories that intertwine to create a rich tapestry of tales that marketers and others need to tell well. At the same time, they should seek opportunities to share more real-life stories born from backgrounds of diversity.

In entertainment, it’s sometimes okay to recolor history, but it’s even better to depict individuals and events just as they were. Regardless how one might classify Bridgerton, true stories told accurately are more often “Mindful Marketing.”

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