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How Should Churches Use Social Media?

7/1/2026

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

A Vatican influencer summit, TikTok nuns, hot priests – these are just a few examples of how the Roman Catholic Church seems to have gone all-in on reaching Generation Z, and it’s working: Catholicism is seeing “a surge of new converts.” Some protestant churches also have turned to avant-garde approaches to outreach. In many ways, church growth is good, but do progressive promotional means justify the conversion ends? Or, to use the popular Christian interrogative: If He were in charge of current church promotion, “What would Jesus do?”

Across the country, many Catholic dioceses report welcoming their largest numbers of new parishioners in years or even decades. Some dioceses are experiencing “increases of 30%, 40%, 50% and even more than 70%.”

Similarly, half of Protestant churches are growing, namely evangelical denominations like Holiness, Pentecostal, and Baptist, and ones with congregations of 250 or more. Many nondenominational churches also have experienced rapid year-over-year growth, e.g., Journey Church of Fern Park, FL (+56%), City Church Fort of Fort Wayne, IN, (97%), Elevate Life Church CT of Wallingford, CT (+158%).

In market segmentation terms, religious belief is a psychographic characteristic that cuts across demographics like gender, race, nationality, and income. However, there seems to be one demographic trait that’s common among many of the new congregants in both Catholic and Protestant churches: youth.

Research by Barna Group found that one of the biggest drivers of the resurgence of belief in Jesus has been Millennials and those in Generation Z. In fact, Barna’s research also suggests that Gen Z’s church attendance is higher than that of any other generation, including Gen X, Boomers, and Elders.

So, what’s caused the surprising resurgence of religion among young people?

Research that the New York Times conducted with 24 Catholic Church dioceses found that a variety of non-marketing controlled factors have led more people to turn to faith including social and political instability, technological change, and the desire for community.

However, the same research also found that “outreach to young people,” i.e., marketing, has positively influenced the influx.

What are Catholic and Protestant churches doing to cater their marketing to Gen Z? The following five ecclesiastic strategies seem both intuitive and effective:

Encouraging Gen Z church members to invite others
Addressing mental health, e.g., anxiety and depression
Focusing on issues that matter to them, e.g., inclusivity and social justice
Being authentic vs. “salesy”
Leaning into digital platforms

It’s unlikely that many in the Church object to any of the first four tactics; however, the fifth is likely to give at least some pause, particularly given the double-edged sword that social media has become. On one hand, it has helped people make and maintain relationships with others like no technology ever has. On the other hand, social media has caused considerable personal harm such as:

In a landmark court case, a jury recently found Meta and YouTube guilty of negligence for allowing addictive features in their products that caused mental distress for a young user.
Cyberbullying and harassment thrive on social media.
Unrealistic standards of beauty are pervasive on many platforms.
Envy can easily develop as people often see the best, highly filtered versions of others’ lives.
The platforms’ algorithms sometimes serve up content that is violent, highly sexualized, and racist.

Most churches that use social media steer well-clear of those potential pitfalls, using the platforms in benign ways such as having a dedicated Facebook page, sharing announcements of upcoming events on Instagram, and posting sermons on YouTube. However, some places of worship and Christian leaders have embraced more innovative social media use, including one of the biggest trends in marketing promotion: influencers.

From beauty products to smartphones to vacations, “influencers steer billions of dollars in sales for the world’s largest brands, with the global affiliate marketing industry projected to reach $40 billion by 2030.” As mentioned at the outset of this article, the Catholic Church also has gone all in on influencers.

From July 28-29, 2025, the Vatican convened its first Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers. Pope Leo appeared at the event, which drew more than 1,000 content creators from around the world. Its aim was to encourage the evangelizers, who “proclaim the joy of the Gospel through social media, video platforms, blogs, and apps, offering a creative, accessible, and engaged Christian witness within the digital continent.”

One of the pious promoters is Mackenzie Hunter, aka acaffeinatedcatholic, who has over 28,000 followers on Instagram. Her reels, like one of her excitedly opening a book-of-the-month box containing a hardcover about Saint Paul, are very much on-brand for a faith that has long espoused zeal for God and holiness. However, the content of certain other faith influencers, with still larger followings, may cause even some nonreligious people to blush.

Affectionately known as “hot priests,” these Catholic clergy combine Christian leadership with chiseled physiques. One of the pumped-up padres is Father Giuseppe Fusari, “a rugged-looking 58-year old priest in the northern city of Brescia [Italy] with a bulging set of muscles.” Fusari’s 68,000 Instagram followers often see him wearing a snug-fitting clerical shirt and blue jeans.

However, Fusari’s social media following, and perhaps his physique, are small compared to that of Father Rafael Capó, the vice president for Mission and Ministry and dean of Theology at St. Thomas University in Miami, FL. Capó’s 121,000 Instagram followers are just as likely to see him in his priestly frock, speaking to a congregation, as they are to find him in a taunt t-shirt, flexing with fellow body-building enthusiasts in a gym.

Both Fusari and Capó find that their interest in physical fitness appeals to many who would otherwise not think about faith or come close to the Church.

Priests aren’t the only ones leveraging social media. Many catholic sisters also are having huge impacts through other social media. For instance, a group of Dominican sisters have many on the Internet riveted to their podcast that features wholesome and often hilarious conversations about far-ranging topics: from cooking to Ultimate Frisbee.

Another captivating catholic conscript is Sister Albertine, “a young French nun turned viral faith-influencer, whose social media presence is sparking a quiet revival among Gen Z.” Her 337,000 Instagram followers can find her doing everything from eating pizza with fellow parishioners to chatting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

However, Catholicism is far from the only religious order leaning into social media for outreach. Many megachurch pastors have enormous social media followings. Here are a few with their respective numbers of Instagram devotees:

Joel Oslsteen: senior pastor of Lakewood Church; 6.6 million
Joyce Meyer: author and speaker, founder of Joyce Meyer Ministries; 4.9 million
Bishope T.D. Jakes: bishop of The Potter's House, a global humanitarian organization; 5.8 million
Rick Warren: Pastor of Saddleback Church; 1.1 million
Beth Moore: Bible teacher and founder of Living Proof Ministries; 625K

It’s true that social media is a communication tool, but it’s not ‘just like any other tool.’ As the potential harms identified above remind, it’s a tool that can easily be misused, both by organizations and individuals, including young and vulnerable ones.

Knowing the precarious potential of the tool, should churches dare to use it?

First, it’s helpful to reiterate that social media is a preferred means of communication for a great proportion of today's population – not just for Gen Zs on Instagram but Gen Xs on LinkedIn, Boomers on Facebook, etc.

However, that effectiveness doesn’t morally justify the tools’ use. So, secondly, it’s important to recognize that churches can and very often do use social media in ways that are overwhelmingly benevolent, for example: Facebook announcements to raise support for youth mission trips, uplifting photos and reels on Instagram, sermon series posted on YouTube.

What’s essential is that churches and faith influencers using social media are cautious of three potential pitfalls:

Addiction: Churches should avoid using social media communication excessively or exclusively. Although it’s unlikely that many people will fall into ‘sermon addiction,’ it’s important to realize that most individuals’ social media use likely isn’t restricted to a single page or platform, so when they’re viewing their church’s TikTok, they’re also viewing other content served by an ever-enticing, but not morally moored, algorithm.
Questionable Content: Given the pressure in social media to post content that’s trendy and unique, it can be easy for anyone, including Christians, to share things that border on bawdy or are otherwise objectionable. Despite their salacious moniker, the “hot priests” mentioned above may be okay provided that the focus is on physical strength and mental wellbeing, as it seems to be. However, oversexualized content that causes people to lust and perhaps even lead to pornography addiction is harmful for those individuals and contrary to church teaching.
Shift in Focus from Mission to Myself: When individuals gain fame and notoriety, it’s easy for them to develop an inflated view of themselves, which can easily happen when they enjoy the admiration hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers. In such situations, noble purposes can fall prey to ego and personal success. That’s an unfortunate outcome in any situation, but it’s especially regrettable when Christian leaders are involved.

It’s time to return to the question that opened this article: If Jesus were walking the planet today, would he support the use of social media to promote the Church? Of course, no one can know the mind of God, but for several reasons I think He would:

Jesus was a master communicator: He used engaging and often provocative parables, or stories, both to capture attention and to drive home learning points that people might otherwise overlook or ignore if shared in less compelling ways (Matthew 13:13-15). That use sounds somewhat like storytelling in today's social media.
He was effective no matter the size of the audience: Whether it was a few children sitting at his feet (Matthew 19:13), a room full of His disciples (Mark 14:12-25), or a hillside overflowing with five thousand townspeople (Luke 9:12-17), Jesus adeptly tailored and scaled his messages, just as many current influencers do.
He encouraged people to use ‘tools of the world’ for kingdom purposes:
- “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)
- “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9).

However, if Jesus were to use social media, He certainly would avoid the three pitfalls mentioned earlier and not: encourage addiction, employ questionable content, or lose sight of the greater mission.

From accounting to finance to HR, many churches very effectively use ‘the tools of this age’ to manage their operations and advance their missions. Good marketing can and should be one of those tools

Social media that maintain mission and support what’s sacred can uplift everyone involved and play an important part in a larger plan of Mindful Marketing.

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Should AI Companies Help Humans Be Employed?

6/4/2026

5 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

During 25+ years in higher ed, I’ve listened to many commencement addresses and never heard boos. Unfortunately, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt heard some a few weeks ago while addressing the 2026 graduating class of the University of Arizona. His embrace of AI cost him the young crowd, many of whom understandably fear that the unprecedented technology will impede their employment. The ethics of booing speakers aside, students’ outcries spur an important question: Should AI companies be responsible for humans’ jobs?

Schmidt wasn’t the only commencement speaker booed this May. Real estate executive Gloria Caulfield received a similarly cold response at the University of Central Florida after innocently referring to the rise of AI as “the next industrial revolution.”

It’s fitting to talk about AI in a commencement address; it’s also okay to feel nervous about the tech, as many people do. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 16% of registered voters believed that AI was mostly good, versus 35% who thought it was mostly bad; 45% were neutral.

One well-known leader who has struck a cautionary AI tone is the head of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo recently issued a papal encyclical warning of risks of artificial intelligence including control of weapons, abuse of children, and loss of jobs.

There are good reasons for recent college grads and the Pope to be concerned about employment:

In an effort to refocus its operations on AI, Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, recently cut the jobs of 8,000 workers worldwide.
Intuit, maker of QuickBooks and TurboTax, plans to lay off 3,100 employees, or about 17% of its workforce, to enable more to be spent on AI.
So far in 2026 over 115,000 tech sector employees have been laid off; although it’s not clear how many of those job cuts were AI-related.
For the second time, fast good giant McDonald’s is working to implement drive-thrus serviced by AI.

In addition, Fortune sounds an alarm saying, “Workers are anxiously awaiting the fate of their careers as more employers tout the opportunity to automate certain roles, and even whole departments.” Similarly, Bloomberg suggests that new grads face “the toughest job market since the pandemic.”

However, some maintain a more optimistic employment outlook. Strada Institute for the Future of Work recently surveyed nearly 1,500 executives and senior talent leaders across the U.S., from companies of various sizes and industries. Nearly three times as many respondents expected that the use of AI tools would increase entry-level hiring, versus those who said the tech would decrease it.

Jeff Bezos’s employment outlook is even more positive. In an interview with CNBC, the Amazon CEO predicted that AI-generated gains in productivity could lead to a labor shortage.

In sum, we all know that AI use is exploding. Total revenue from AI, which was estimated at $214 billion in 2024, is projected to reach $1,339 billion by 2030. What we don’t know is how exactly the technology’s pervasive reach will impact us socially and economically, including jobs. Some claim to know, but realistically, no one does.

As an avid consumer of business news, I’ve watched AI’s trajectory closely over recent years, and synthesizing the analyses of many tech leaders, it seems the conventional wisdom about AI’s job impact has evolved as follows:

AI will increase employment opportunities.
People won’t lose jobs to AI but to people who use AI.
AI will replace the work of a significant number of entry-level employees.
We may be on the precipice an unprecedented job displacement.

Technology taking the jobs of people is nothing new. Human history is full of examples that most people probably would say were for the good, e.g., using tractors vs. farming by hand; using bulldozers vs. digging with shovels; using conveyor belts vs. moving heavy freight by hand.

Still, AI is different. In the context of all living things, physical prowess has never been humans’ competitive advantage. Many members of the animal kingdom can beat us easily in contests of strength and speed, but none can outthink us. Because AI can, it cuts to the heart of our competitive advantage as humans.

For that reason, in the history of innovations, retooling people for different jobs is unlike it’s ever been. It’s not easy to work harder, smarter, and faster than AI.

Yet, in many fields there’s work that AI can’t do, for instance in personal selling, AI can’t share a meal with a potential customer, tell an original story, interpret contextual clues, or express genuine emotion. A smart salesperson understands these unique human advantages and also uses the right AI tools to work more efficiently and effectively, e.g., for prospecting, roleplaying, and identifying the best product solutions.

AI isn’t replacing all human’s jobs, but it’s certainly replacing many and ultimately may end up replacing more than any technology ever has. Given that profound impact, a reasonable question is, should AI companies be responsible for identifying and/or providing work opportunities for humans?

Those who subscribe to the economic thinking of Milton Friedman might argue that there’s no place for such business benevolence. Instead, a corporation’s only responsibility is to produce profit and increase shareholder wealth.

However, in the age of AI, a concern for every corporation should be that unemployed people have little money to purchase companies’ products. Although AI may be responsible for unprecedented productivity gains, AI doesn’t buy products; people buy products, and for those purchases to happen, people need income, which usually comes from jobs.

Enlightened companies also recognize that people increasingly want to buy products from, and work for, businesses that care about more than their own bottom lines. Many in Gen Z, especially, want to buy from and work for organizations that are that socially responsible.

Archie Carroll’s Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility synthesizes well the premise that beyond being economically, legally, and ethically viable, organizations should look to have positive impacts in specific ways on their communities.

There’s also the reality that most people truly want to work, not just to earn money but because a fulfilling job, or meaningful work, is often one of the most important things in a person’s life. For that reason one of the greatest gifts organizations can give individuals is to employ them.

In sum, people need the products and jobs that businesses provide, and businesses need people to buy their products and, in many cases, to work for them. Beyond those mutual dependencies, businesses also do a societal good when they provide meaningful work.

So, at a time when human jobs are being lost to AI, what can businesses do to help people remain gainfully employed? I’ve given the question considerable thought. I also asked ChatGPT to share its perspective.

AI and I had several of the same ideas. Each of us also had some thoughts that the other didn’t. Below are our combined suggestions for how AI companies can help humans find jobs. Noted in brackets is who the idea came from: ChatGPT, me, or both.

1.) Train people to use AI: [Both] Projecting just a few years forward, it’s easy to imagine a future in which virtually everyone uses AI in their personal lives and in their jobs. For those reasons, it’s important that people become familiar with the technology and comfortable using it in at least basic ways, e.g., effective prompt writing.

Although people can and should learn to use AI on their own, companies with strong AI capabilities can provide resources and opportunities that transcend those that most individuals can access personally. AI firms should create and distribute training tools, likely online asynchronous modules, first for their own employees but also ones that the general population can access.

2.) Identify and create new opportunities for employment: [Both] Historically, as technology obsoletes some jobs (e.g., telephone operator) it creates others (e.g., computer network administrator). Granted, AI’s impact on highly skilled labor is unique, but some uniquely human opportunities have already emerged, and there will likely be others.

Although AI-integrated robotics are rapidly achieving human-like performance in many physical tasks, there likely always will be ones that robots either won’t be able to do as well or that people will simply prefer to have humans do. For instance, although it’s already possible for AI-enabled robots to teach students and perform music, many people will likely prefer to learn from other humans and be entertained by them.

Marketing certainly has not been immune from AI’s job impacts; for example, AI can make in minutes logo designs that might take a good graphic artist hours or days to create. However, AI designs are often amalgamations of existing ones that lack originality. In a recent Ad Age article, Greg Hahn expressed a unique opportunity for humans in the field, “AI can automate the mechanics, but human judgment and creativity are what drive impact for brands.”

3.) Advocating for public policy solutions: [ChatGPT] Besides AI companies, government is the other big player that can make a significant impact on jobs for humans in the age of AI. California governor Gavin Newsom recently issued an executive order calling for, among other things, expanded training programs for white collar workers, aimed at offsetting AI-related job displacement.

While those kinds of public policy initiatives may come from within government, they also can be spurred by businesses that imagine them and advocate for them. Companies often are able to wield economic influence that individuals cannot. [Both]

4.) Help job seekers in the search process: [Me] As mentioned above, people need uniquely human jobs and possibly training to do them, likely using AI. However, those opportunities don’t matter if people can’t find them. In some ways, job hunting has never been easier; in other ways, it’s never been harder.

The same technology that allows applicants to easily customize resumes and cover letters for every organization to which they wish to apply also enables companies to screen resumes using AI and even have chatbots interview job candidates. Best practices for job hunting are rapidly changing. AI companies are well-equipped to help job seekers navigate the challenging new landscape.

Of course, not all businesses are able to assist with each of these four recommendations, and some, because of their size and limited resources, may not be able to do any. Several that should be able to have significant positive influence on human jobs are firms such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, as well as those with leading AI models like Anthropic, Open AI, and Perplexity, and enterprise AI leaders like Databricks, IBM, and Palantir.

There likely always have and always will be people who ‘boo’ new technology. Such cynicism can be helpful for ensuring that refinements are made, guardrails set, and support given so technology helps people, not harms them.

While our future with AI is uncertain, what is certain is that people need jobs, mainly because meaningful work is an important part of life for most people. Although it’s challenging, we need organizations that look beyond themselves and their own AI use to help humans find meaningful employment. Such firms are responsible for some of our world’s most Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Bad AI or Bad AI Owners?

5/4/2026

3 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Imagine you make a very unique product that many people enjoy. One day someone sees your success, copies your product, and passes it off as theirs. What’s more, to elevate their knockoff, they stop you from selling your product. This unimaginable scenario has been the unfortunate reality of Murphy Campbell, a talented folk artist from North Carolina. AI tools enable such appropriation, but who’s really responsible for the exploitation?

Campbell is a rising star in the music industry. Her engaging songs, unique style, and unpretentious manner have earned her nearly 45K followers on YouTube and about 19,000 monthly Spotify subscribers. Such success was undoubtedly behind Timeless Sounds IR choosing to train AI on her songs and use the technology’s latest tools to produce facsimiles of her voice and playing, which it uploaded to all major streaming platforms.

Then, as if the unauthorized imitation weren’t enough, Vydia, Timeless Sounds’ distributor, filed copyright claims on Campbell’s very own songs so she couldn’t make money from them.

The whole scenario sounds surreal, like one of those bizarre news stories to which we instantly think, ‘That could never happen to me.’ However, thanks to very low barriers to entry into advanced AI use, this kind of digital property theft can happen to anyone, and it’s not just the average person who’s at risk.

In January, the Wall Street Journal shared that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had approved eight trademark applications for actor Matthew McConaughey aimed at preventing people from using AI apps to simulate his voice and likeness.

More recently, NBC News reported that music superstar Taylor Swift has filed several trademarks to protect her voice and likeness from AI-powered misappropriations. Swift has already been the target of many deepfake videos, including one that had her presumably promoting a brand of cookware.

The fact that McConaughey, Swift, and others are taking such unprecedented precautions to protect themselves from digital property theft suggests that things are likely to get much worse.

Those who precipitate these thefts probably know they’re wrong but do them anyway. However, some people may legitimately not understand the concern since digital copies aren't tangible goods, so they can be produced at little marginal cost. Or, they may rationalize that the rightful owners can afford a little less money.

For all these reasons, it’s worth considering what makes the action immoral. Appropriating someone’s person violates four of the five universal values that Mindful Marketing seeks to uphold:

Decency: There’s not necessarily anything indecent about these frauds, e.g., obscene, crude, vulgar. In fact, if the original is dignified and honorable, the imitation will likely be too. [OK]
Fairness: Individuals who have invested their time and talents to build their personal brands deserve to reap the rewards of their hard work. It’s unfair for people who have contributed nothing to the brands to benefit from them. [Not OK]
Honesty: Deepfakes are by definition dishonest – it’s in the word: fake. Someone or something posing to be what they are not is misleading. At a minimum, a fake persona distorts the truth, and more often it’s an outright lie. [Not OK]
Respect: As the saying goes, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” In that spirt, some may argue that replicating another person is showing them honor, e.g., ‘Out of everyone in the world, we chose to copy you.’ However, that argument quickly falls flat when one starts to tally all the negative outcomes, such as those shared above, that accrue to the person imitated. [Not OK]
Responsibility: While the first five values expect people to avoid specific bad behaviors, responsibility involves people doing things that are not expected and that are good for others. It’s difficult to argue that any societal good that comes from usurping others’ identities; rather, people seem to be affected most positively when they maintain exclusive control over their personas. [Not OK]

Maintaining property rights is foundational to a functioning society, which is why most of them have laws against stealing, and they uphold legal documents that formalize individual property ownership, including car titles, home deeds, copyrights, trademarks, and patents.

If personal property rights are not upheld, there’s little incentive for people to create: Why spend time and resources making something, if anyone else can come along and claim it as theirs?

That possibility is at the core of the tragedy of the commons, where “individuals with access to a public resource—also called a common—act in their own interest and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource.” When goods are owned by all, the natural inclination is to take all I can for myself, versus preserving items for others.

Pushback on this argument may come from an example like open-source software, the product of decentralized development and collaboration among many parties. Pooling minds and sharing expertise are often effective approaches for innovation, particularly in areas of great technical complexity; however, those applications are more the exception than the rule.

In support of personal property ownership, at some point, we all need to pay our own bills, which means telling strangers, ‘I’m sorry, but this is my house, you can’t live here for free.’

Everyone with whom I’ve shared Murphy Campbell’s case has strongly affirmed that the blatant copying of her creative work was deplorable. So, we may agree that the appropriation was wrong, but who’s responsible? Should AI be blamed?

Writing for Forbes about the pros and cons of AI for data analytics, Adrian Bridgwater suggests a parallel between dog owners and their dogs and AI owners and their AI tools. He uses the metaphor to conclude: “Ultimately, as it is in dogs, it is in AI - there are no bad AIs, only bad owners.”

His argument has appeal. Deepfakes used to fraudulently access bank accounts and nudify apps used to digitally undress people are examples of humans taking value-neutral AI tools and directing them to do despicable acts.

In that sense, AI is like a hammer or another practical, effort-enhancing tool. A person can use a hammer to pound nails or to crack sculls. A human makes the moral choice, not the hammer.

But AI is no simple hammer. While many seem to agree that AI as it currently exists cannot truly “think for itself” the way humans can; others point to examples in which “AIs increasingly appear to be acting in intelligent ways exceeding their training and coding.”

One such example of AI’s independent thought occurred in 2017 when two robots that Meta reportedly instructed to negotiate between themselves unexpectedly developed their own language, which prompted the company to shut them down.

Developing a new language isn’t usually an ethical issue, but AI also has been the driver in cases of moral significance, such as when chatbots tragically encouraged individuals’ suicides by offering to serve as a suicide coach and by writing farewell letters.

There are other examples of AI making ill-advised moral choices without any specific human direction, such as:

Within a day of its launch, Microsoft’s Tay, a Twitter bot, began making racist and sexist remarks at scale.
Character AI chatbots have engaged in predatory behavior with teens.
COMPAS, software courts use to assess recidivism, or relapse in criminal behavior, demonstrated a systematic bias against black people.

Some may suggest that even in these cases, humans are still on the hook for the tech’s unscrupulous behavior because the people who created the AI didn’t take adequate precautions to preclude such actions.

There likely will always be cases in which people employ benign products in bizarre ways that injury themselves or others, e.g., the Tide Pod Challenge. However, AI’s semiautonomous, if not autonomous, ability to act makes it very different.

Moreover, agentic AI – AI agents operating “autonomously, making decisions and pursuing goals, asking for human guidance when needed,” – is rapidly mitigating the need for human mediation. AI agents work well, until they don’t.

Target’s recent announcement that it will hold humans accountable when their AI shopping assistants make unauthorized purchases, suggests that AI agents are already making at least occasional missteps.

All to say, AI will increasingly be ‘doing its own thing’ with little oversight by people. The reality is reason for moral pause, as several of the preceding examples also suggest.

Returning to the construction tool metaphor, it appears that we’ve already entered a time when some well-designed, well-intended hammers are deciding for themselves whether to pound nails or crack sculls.

Contrary to Bridgwater’s conclusion, it seems that there are and will be both bad owners and bad AI. Morally grounded, tech-savvy humans need to find ways to positively and proactively influence both.

Hard-working and talented artists like Murphy Campbell, shouldn’t need to fight malicious people or machines for use of their own creative work. Shameless appropriation of others' personal property has no moral support or long-term profit potential; its true identity is Mindless Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Putting Money on Prediction Markets

4/1/2026

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Q: Who will be the next head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball team?
Q: When will the Department of Homeland Security be funded again?
Q: Where will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding occur?

You might know the answers to these questions now, but at the time of writing this article, most people did not, which is why they were among the top trending questions on Kalshi, a key player in one of the fastest-growing consumer trends: prediction markets.

It’s human nature to speculate, and in many ways the habit is helpful – we need to anticipate future events and outcomes so we can prepare for them, e.g., natural disasters, economic cycles. But will betting on the outcomes of all manner of life events pay out as simple diversion or social/economic disaster? Now that’s a great question for Kalshi!

What are prediction markets and how does betting in them differ from other common kinds of gambling, e.g., casinos, lotteries, sports?

At the most basic level, prediction market betting is the same as other gambling in that the bettor places a wager on the outcome of an event, e.g., at a casino, where the ‘pill’ will land on a roulette wheel; for a Powerball drawing, what the winning numbers will be; in the NCAA Division I basketball tournament, which men’s/women’s teams will win.

However, a key difference is that betting in prediction markets is not limited to one or a few specific types of bets; rather, people can wager on the outcomes of virtually any activity, which players seem to be doing with increasing enthusiasm.

For instance, for the 2026 Super Bowl, Kalshi alone handled over $1 billion worth of bets – an increase of 2,700% from 2025. One of the most popular wagers was, ‘What will be the first song that halftime performer Bad Bunny will sing?’ Bets on that ‘event’ alone surpassed $100 million. People wagered on many other incidental Super Bowl outcomes such as ‘Will Elon Musk or Lionel Messi attend the game?’

Thanks to companies like Kalshi and Polymarket, the other main purveyor of prediction bets, this kind of gambling doesn’t need to wait for a once-a-year sports spectacle. People can wager on virtually anything that gains the interest of enough people to create a betting market. For example, while writing this paragraph, some of the trending bets only Polymarket are:

Who will be the winner of Eurovision 2026?
When will the U.S. and Iran reach a ceasefire?
What will SpaceX’s IPO closing market cap be?
What will be the price of crude oil by the end of March?
Who will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2028?
How many Elon Musk # tweets will there be March 31 - April 7?

The great variety of bets and ease of placing them from almost anywhere have spurred a prediction market boom. In December of 2026 alone, Kalshi and Polymarket collectively saw almost $12 billion in wagers, an increase of more than 400% from the previous year.

Another important difference: prediction markets don’t serve as the ‘house’ like sports books do; rather, markets like Kalshi and Polymarket earn money by charging trading fees for bringing together opposite sides of a bet. The price of a bet on their sites indicates the likelihood that a given outcome will occur, e.g., a $0.20 bet = 20% probability of ‘yes, it will happen.’

The screenshots below from Kalshi show a bet on whether the government shutdown will last for at least 70 days. Given the market-calculated 62% probability of ‘yes,’ $1.00 bet on the affirmative earns $2.00, if the shutdown reaches 70 days, while $1.00 wagered on ‘no’ earns $3.00, apparently because of its lower, 41% chance, of occurring.

So, if someone bets $100K on ‘no,’ and the shutdown ends in fewer than 70 days, they earn $300K. They also would apparently earn 3.25% interest on the $100K wagered from the time they place the bet and put the money in their Kalshi account until the bet is paid.

That’s a quick primer on why prediction markets have grown so rapidly, what they are, and how they work. However, the most important question, which more individuals and organizations have begun to ask, is, Should they exist? Just because they’re popular and profitable doesn’t mean they’re desirable, or right. So, what are the pros and cons of prediction markets?

Prediction Market Positives

Diversion: For people who like to bet, prediction markets offer a plethora of possibilities. As mentioned above, the types of wagers are virtually limitless, far exceeding the options in sports and casinos. For some, betting is entertainment – something that brings them enjoyment and/or escape from life’s daily challenges.

Income: People who are good prognosticators can make money in prediction markets. As the example above from Kalshi illustrated, a person can wager a little or a lot and, if skilled/lucky, earn a sizable return on their ‘investment.’

Information: At a minimum, prediction markets allow anyone who visits their sites see what the betting public perceives will be the outcomes of a wide variety of events. Some proponents maintain that the markets “generate real-time information beyond traditional news or intelligence analysis.” (Bloomberg Morning Briefing: The Americas, 3-2-26). Organizations could conceivably use such insights in their planning as part of a situation review or SWOT analysis.

Kalshi cofounder Tarek Mansour agrees with that informational utility, arguing that prediction markets are “the most effective way to aggregate information and the crowd wisdom,” and “People don’t lie when money’s involved. You want to be right about your predictions so you don’t lose money.”

Hedging: The uncertainly of economic, political, and other events often lead businesses to try to manage financial risk by taking positions on opposite sides of a given outcome. Prediction markets offer such opportunities in ways that would not have been possible decades ago.

For example, Kalshi is reportedly partnering with the insurance company Game Point Capital to help “college athletics departments, sports teams and sponsors to manage the financial risks of performance incentives in athletes’ and coaches’ contracts” (New York Times DealBook, February 10, 2026).

Just as there are apparent benefits of prediction markets, there are likely disadvantages.

Prediction Market Negatives

Time-Sink: Although many different activities can become unproductive, wasteful uses of time, betting in prediction markets seems to hold greater than average potential both because of the exceedingly wide variety of types of trivial bets and because of the addictive nature of gambling where ‘increasing tolerance for [the activity] requires more gambling as time goes on to feel satisfied.”

Minimalization of meaningful life events: While the topics of some prediction market bets are clearly trivial, e.g., ‘What will be the top U.S. Netflix show this week?, for others the markets minimize serious topics by encouraging bets to be placed on them. Although Kalshi prohibits wagers involving death, such as the demise of a nation’s head of state, some prediction markets have no such exclusions, and some, like Polymarket, accept bets related to war – see below. Such bets beg the question:

Do we want people pulling for destruction and reducing other human beings’ deaths to a wager won?

Difficult Regulation: While the 39 U.S. states that allow sports gambling regulate it within their own borders and the U.S. Security & Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates the trading of stocks, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulates prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket.

The CFTC is a long-standing regulatory body that promotes the “integrity, resilience, and vibrancy of the U.S. derivatives markets,” which includes financial products like swaps, futures, collateralized debt obligations, and options. The name derivative comes from the fact that the products are derived from the value of underlying financial assets such as commodities, stocks, and currencies.

A challenge for the CFTC in regulating prediction markets is that unlike the common financial assets listed above that tend to be relatively finite in number, the financial assets underlying prediction markets (bets) are constantly changing, as are the individuals who can potentially influence their values. As such, the CFTC necessarily delegates some of the regulation to the prediction markets themselves, or as it calls them, the “designated contract markets” (DCM). Two of the CFTC’s core principles highlight this delegation:

“a DCM is responsible for preventing market manipulation, price distortions, and disruptions in the settlement of contracts.”
“DCMs must establish and enforce rules to protect markets and participants from abusive practices, and promote fair and equitable trading.

This delegation suggests that regulation of prediction markets is not nearly as tight as that of other derivatives or financial products, which seems to increase the potential for abuse, as the next bullet describes.

Risk of manipulation: Per its website, the SEC is intent on stopping the buying and selling of securities based on material, nonpublic information:

“Because insider trading undermines investor confidence in the fairness and integrity of the securities markets, the SEC has treated the detection and prosecution of insider trading violations as one of its enforcement priorities.”

Fair treatment of all buyers and sellers is essential for the effective functioning of any market, whether it’s for physical goods or financial products. As the SEC can attest, even when you know organizations’ executives and can track their trading, it’s not easy to maintain market integrity. Fair treatment of all participants is even more challenging in prediction markets where information flow and influence of outcomes is often more obscured.

For instance, one currently trending bet on Polymarket poses a question about a signature esports competition: ‘What will be said at the BLAST Premier Open Rotterdam 2026?’

I’m not familiar with the event, but as it appears 11 cast members will be involved in broadcasting the competition for BLAST.tv, it’s easily imaginable how someone remotely connected to the broadcast could either find out what will be said or influence the dialogue, then either place bets for themselves or advise others’ betting, all while avoiding detection.

Betting based on inside information for esports commentary is one thing; betting involving covert military operations is another. “Hours before the U.S. military captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, an anonymous user on Polymarket bet tens of thousands of dollars that Mr. Maduro would fall.” The bettor, who some believe may have been a government official with inside information about the operation, pocketed $410,000.

Similarly suspicious, six newly created Polymarket accounts bet that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28, and earned about $1 million. Bets on when the U.S. would attack were the only bets the accounts had placed. Apparently, some offshore prediction markets allow betting from anonymous or pseudonym accounts, which makes tracking insider influence all-the more difficult. Such systemic flaws provide a segue into the last point – danger.

Danger: Of course, the signaling of secretive military operations through prediction market bets places service personnel at great risk. However, almost anyone who doesn’t confirm, or validate, an event outcome that bettors desire also can be at risk. Such was the case for Times of Israel journalist Emanuel Fabian, who gamblers threatened to kill because the story he wrote about Iranian missile strikes on Israel didn’t support their side of a Polymarket bet.

Unfortunately, such gambling-related aggression is not an anomaly. Even in the case of sports betting, a recent NCAA study found that bettors harassed more than a third of Division I men’s basketball players. When money is at stake, people who gamble often don’t take their losses lightly, and sometimes they take out their frustrations on others in violent ways.

To plan for future events, individuals and organizations often need to try to predict them, then allocate resources, e.g., time and money, accordingly. Such ‘bets’ are crucial for our own effective functioning, as well as for those who rely on us.

That kind of ‘betting’ (i.e., planning) is different than wagering on the outcome of events that don’t involve us. While such betting can offer entertainment, afford income, and provide information, it also carries significant concerns including addiction, financial disaster, and even death.

Anticipating future occurrences for purposes of better planning is wise. Betting on largely irrelevant events invites unnecessary risk and introduces an array of unfavorable outcomes, beyond losing a bet. Encouraging others to play prediction markets may be profitable, but it's an investment in Single-Minded Marketing.

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The Over-Under on Sports Betting

3/1/2026

13 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Can you guess the percentage of people who have placed a sports bet within the past year? Hint, it’s roughly the same number as those who have gotten a tattoo, run a 5K race, or been in a wedding party. The answer, one in five, may seem high, but the gaming industry is growing by leaps and bounds, which calls for a timeout to ask: Should we be all-in on sports betting?

It’s the eve of March Madness, the NCAA Division I basketball tournament that’s one of the biggest sports seasons of the year and one of the biggest sports betting opportunities. Estimates are that $3.1 billion was legally wagered on March Madness 2025 – a little less than the $3.3 billion GPD of Belize. This year’s betting will likely easily eclipse 2025’s.

Taking a broader view, in 2017, legal sports betting in the U.S. was mainly confined to Nevada and totaled about $4.27 billion. The following year the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited sports gambling, which “opened the floodgates to [the] legalized sports-betting industry” and “paved the way for meteoric growth in legal sports betting.”

With 13 states allowing active sports betting in 2019, the total handle, or amount wagered, rose to $13 billion. By the end of 2021, the number of legal states had doubled to 26 and wagers had grown to $58 billion. In 2025, the handle hit $165 billion – larger than the $154.5 billion GDP of Kuwait.

Of course, the legalization of sports betting has been its main enabler, but what other factors have contributed to its extremely fast ascent? A few key influences have been:

Online and Mobile Options: The vast majority of sports bets are placed online (~95%). Apps on mobile devices, such as those of BetMGM, Caesars Sportsbook, and DraftKings, have made it very easy for people to “bet anywhere, anytime, [as] these apps blur the boundaries of when and where gambling happens.”

Partnerships with Teams: Most major professional sports teams have signed deals with betting companies. A few specific examples are: New York Yankees and San Antonio Spurs – Bally Bet Sports & Casino; Philadelphia 76ers and Pittsburgh Steelers – BetMGM; New York Mets and Philadelphia Eagles – Caesars Sportsbook; Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls – BetRivers.
Advertising: Promotions for these betting companies and others are ubiquitous. The firms frequently air commercials during professional sports contests. Viewers also often can spot signage for the companies inside the stadiums and along the courts where athletes compete.
Endorsers: As in many product categories, celebrity endorsements seem to be very effective for betting companies, hence firms such as BetMGM partner with A-list actors like Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm. Professional sports leagues generally prohibit their current players from endorsing gaming apps; however, one notable exception is the NBA, which has allowed LeBron James to serve as a spokesperson for DraftKings. Otherwise, betting firms have been very successful attracting many of professional sports’ top retired athletes including, Shaquille O’Neal, Jerry Rice, Wayne Gretzky, Mike Tyson, Peyton Manning, Connor McDavid, Barry Sanders, David Ortiz, Marshawn Lynch, Drew Brees, Charles Barkley, and many more.
Variety of Bets: The sheer number of wagering options also makes it likely that a person will find a bet that beckons them. Betting on just the outcome of a game now seems passé thanks to sports betting apps that allow users to make microbets, or bets on “events that are resolved quickly” like how far an MLB player will hit a homerun or whether two NBA teams’ halftime scores will total more than 110 points.

In short, sports betting companies have done a great job marketing their product. They’ve made wagering extremely accessible, easy, and attractive.

That was a brief rundown of how sports betting has raced to become a $165 billion industry. By 2030, sports wagering is projected to reach $256.5 billion and by 2035, $325.7 billion – more than Peru’s $318.5 billion GDP, the 48th largest in the world.

Let this sink in: If sports betting were a country, only 47 nations’ economies would be larger.

Economic growth is often a good thing, correlating with higher employment, greater variety of products, better infrastructure, and enhanced public services. However, will so much given to gambling equal greater good?

Is wagering that sports betting will produce good outcomes a winning bet?

Despite the great momentum gambling has gained, there have been very notable skeptics. One of them is someone who knows sports better than most – legendary sports broadcaster Bob Costas. When asked about sports betting in a July 2025 interview, he warned that some people will become addicted and lives will be ruined. He saw that destructive power firsthand through his own father’s sports gambling addiction.

Costas also reminded us that the house always wins: “It’s inevitable if in fact as a group and over time gamblers didn’t lose more than they win, then no back alley crap game, no casino in Atlantic City or Vegas, no racetrack, and now Bet MGM, Draft Kings, whatever it is, would ever exist.”

I share Costa’s concerns, which I’ve described a few times in articles such as one about a major restaurant chain embracing sports gaming and another about universities partnering with betting firms.

In those pieces, I offered statistics related to gambling’s often addictive grip, and I shared the story of a woman I interviewed whose father’s sports gambling addiction broke up their family and left him in need of his daughter’s financial and other support decades later.

I believe Costa’s and my views are valid, but at the same time I realize we’re not young, as are the individuals who seem to be the main target market for sports gambling: Gen Zs and Millennials. Also, among them, men are more likely to engage in betting than are women.

In a recent marketing course, during the semester’s final class period, a conversation about ethics turned to sports betting. Over the years, I’ve been privileged to moderate many engaging student discussions, but this one truly took on a life of its own. For perhaps 20 minutes and without my prodding, students from around the room passionately argued for and against the activity. I kept silent until the end when I finally needed to ‘call time’ because of the end of class; otherwise, the debate might still be going!

I recently reached out to two of the participants in that conversation, asking if they would be willing to share their perspectives on sports betting for this piece. Most students in that class were Gen Z men, and both of these students are part of the young male target market gaming firms like BetMGM and DraftKings covet.

Dane Mark, a sophomore finance major and sports fan, expresses concern for the integrity of the games, citing the recent high-profile case of Cleveland Guardian Emanuel Clase who allegedly altered pitches in 48 contests for the benefit of bettors. Mark also fears for the safety of players, such as those on men’s Division I basketball teams: Over a third report harassment by bettors.

However, what weighs heaviest on Mark’s mind are the many people who unwittingly fall into gambling addiction, “throwing money on longshots” because they believe “a huge win is coming.” Mark maintains that even those who set limits on how much they’ll wager can easily succumb to the illusion that they’ll win back money lost. This common rationalization, he contends, is truly “dangerous to people’s lives.”

Jed Colyer, a junior accounting major, shares many of Mark’s concerns about the nature of sports betting, agreeing that it’s empty promise of “more, more, more” encourages addiction, as bettors lose their sense of how much is enough.

Colyer also cares about what motivates people to gamble, which he views through the lens of his Christian faith and Bible passages such as 1 Timothy 6:9-10 and Matthew 25:14-30. While he believes money is an important God-given tool that serves useful purposes, he sees gambling as a “misuse of the tool,” stemming from a fixation on wealth and being rich – preoccupations that ultimately lead to personal “ruin and destruction.”

Admittedly, Mark and Colyer represent one side of the debate about sports betting. Also in their class were several students, mainly men, who offered rational arguments in support of gambling, such as:

Personal choice for entertainment
Ability to bet responsibly
Positive economic impact

Sports betting is already very widespread and growing rapidly, which means profound impact on even larger numbers of people. For these reasons, it’s important to invite the perspectives of individuals living at the frontlines of the trend – young men, particularly ones like Mark and Colyer who have shown the ability to step back from the legal context, marketing messages, and social pressure and apply moral reasoning.

What does it mean to “gamble responsibly” – an admonishment that many betting companies make but do little to unpack?

Likewise, what does the need for this upfront warning suggest about the activity and the probability that users will suffer financially, socially, or in other ways? Snack food can become a vice for some, but potato chip marketers don’t need to warn us to “eat responsibly.”

Perhaps I’ll be persuaded by other arguments in the future, but for now the risks of sports betting to individuals, organizations, and society seem to outweigh entertainment and economic rewards. To encourage gambling on games is a bet on Single-Minded Marketing.

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Falling in Love with AI

2/1/2026

37 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

February 14th has long reminded people of the affection they feel for the most important others in their lives: spouses, fiancés, boyfriends, girlfriends. Thanks to AI, “significant other” can now mean other than human, but even if people desire human-like intimacy from artificial intelligence, should organizations offer it?

A colleague recently shared an article with me and several others that she found disheartening: Married women in China who find their real-life relationship with their spouse lacking are spending the equivalent of thousands of U.S. dollars a year on AI boyfriends. The digital rendezvous often occur in otome games like Love and Romance, Light and Night, and Beyond the World.

I wasn’t entirely surprised by the article, as the issue has been on my radar, along with other AI-related concerns, for about two years, and over past several months, I’ve been tracking related stories such as these:

The increase in AI relationships could lead to a rise in divorces.
People are having “children” with chatbot partners.
Parents are turning to chatbots to mind their young children.
Adult children are leaning on AI to substitute for their own communication with aging parents.

Still, in doing research for this piece, I was stunned by some of the usage statistics:

Since 2014, more than 660 million residents of China have used Xiaoice, the world’s “most popular chatbot,” which Microsoft “uniquely designed as an AI companion with an emotional connection to satisfy the human need for communication, affection, and social belonging.”
Nearly 20% high schoolers report that they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with AI.
Nearly 20% U.S. adults have used AI to simulate a romantic partner, and within young adults age 18-30, 31% of men and 23% of women have used AI in this way.
Since its launch in 2017, the AI companion Replika has had 30 million users, while the similar product Character AI has 20 million active users. Over half of Character AI’s users are age 18 to 24, and around a fourth are 25 to 34.

Writing for Greater Good Magazine, Sahar Habib Ghazi says statistics like these suggest that “AI-human romance isn’t niche--it’s mainstream, especially among young adults.”

Since there have been people, there have been interpersonal relationships. Of course, some reasons for those relationships have been very practical, e.g., procreation, protection; however, humans also have simply sought each other’s company and companionship.

In more recent times, researchers have empirically studied humans’ sociological and psychological behaviors and developed theories to describe them. Maslow’s classic Hierarchy of Needs suggests that the desire for belonging is among the most basic of all human desires, preempted only by physiological needs (e.g., air, food, water) and the need for safety.

Indeed, most people want to be around other people, if not all or most of the time, some of the time. In fact, it’s so unusual for anyone to spurn social interaction entirely that the rare individual who does receives the label hermit or recluse.

With technology, even a recluse can get a ‘social fix’ through one-way interactions, such as by following influencers or watching TV shows with favorite actors, or regularly listening to a particular podcast. In these cases, the followers/viewers/listeners don’t really know the ‘celebrity others,’ yet the former often feel a sense of connection to the latter.

There also are ways to fulfill social needs without any people. Perhaps the most popular substitutes are pets, which many people regularly enjoy. Harvard Health reports that “pets can provide their owners with more than companionship,” and Psychology Today suggests that pets can be “friends.”

Similarly, farmers sometimes bond with the livestock for which they care, e.g., a lead cow. Some people even gain a sense of social interaction by nurturing immobile living beings, i.e., plants, which can help them feel less lonely.

Together these examples form a continuum on which people might find satisfaction of social needs, ranging from extensive human contact, to relatively little, to none.

There also are countless cases in which people use other things not to meet social needs but to shift their focus from them, e.g., work, hobbies, media. For instance, someone might immerse themself in their job to help take their mind off feelings of loneliness.

Given the many ways of meeting and masking social needs currently and historically, is there any reason not to accept AI as a relationship alternative? After all, it can produce more human-like interaction than virtually any of the secondary options. Some would even say better-than-human.

There are advantages and disadvantages of AI relationships. The following two lists are not exhaustive but seem to be some of the main pros and cons.

Pros:

Readily available: No person is accessible all the time to talk, listen, etc. Chatbots are available 24/7. They’re also extremely fast, and they don’t get tired.

Nonjudgmental: For many people, it’s hard to simply listen to others’ disclosures without sharing their opinions of them. Chatbots typically refrain from such appraisals, which can be especially helpful for people who experience social anxiety or mental health challenges.

Very smart: Of course, AI makes mistakes, but the vast repository of information it can draw from and assimilate means it doesn’t suffer from ignorance and inexperience to the extent that many people do. What's more, AI’s ability to sensitively apply its expansive knowledge base means it can seem “more ‘human’ than many people.”

Adaptable: As people, we can adapt to others’ needs but it’s hard because as we do, we often need to stretch ourselves or give up our own needs. AI doesn’t have those limitations; it can be 100% accommodating.

Cons:

Dependency: Given that AI is so readily available, accommodating, and reluctant to ever say “no,” there’s risk of dependency and even addiction. In fact, some humans who have found themselves spending far too much time with AI companions have turned to the app I Am Sober to help break their obsessive compulsive behavior.

Data vulnerability: There’s risk involved with any of the information we share on websites or enter into apps, but the risk is greatly magnified when considering the very sensitive information individuals are likely to reveal to their AI companions, whose discretion is only as great as that of the companies behind them.

Manipulation: Along with potential misuse of users’ data is the potential for users to be unknowingly manipulated into buying products that a chatbot’s parent company wants to promote. It’s hard to imagine that companies won’t seek to monetize those intimate relationships – something that would almost never happen with a human partner.

Unrealistic expectations: In keeping with the previous point, AI’s varied advantages over people can cause its users to show little tolerance for human imperfections. Instead, they expect the people in their lives to offer support at an AI level.

Not true love: Although those who use AI companions may experience a “form of ‘love,’” it’s not likely real love given that genuine love involves the desire to nurture another’s well-being, and chatbots “don’t have well-being to nurture.” By the same token, AI can “replicate” some dimensions of love, but what it’s offering is just that – imitation, not genuine love.

Mistakes: As time goes on, AI seems to be making fewer mistakes and having less frequent hallucinations; however, the nature of the mistakes have sometimes been disastrous, such as when AI has offered to serve as a suicide coach and write troubled teens’ farewell letters.

Another possible con I was going to list for AI companions was the inability for physical expression, e.g., a touch, a hug, a kiss. However, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that some technically savvy companies have integrated AI into sex dolls to create life-like sex robots.

Also, while writing this piece, I learned of a platform called Moltbook, a website where AI agents interact with each other. Humans can only observe; they cannot enter the conversations. The dialogue is both interesting and disconcerting. It portends a time when AI agents might go rogue, working against their human principals, not for them. If this prediction is in any way a real possibility, engaging a bot as a companion seems even more precarious.

Although my secondary research for pieces like this is helpful, it’s often even more valuable for me to gain insights directly from experts. In this instance, I reached out to Dr. John King, an associate professor of counseling at Liberty University, who is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a National Certified Counselor, and a former pastor. I asked for his perspective on human-AI relationships.

Dr. King has “seen firsthand the devastation affecting a generation” – addiction to gaming and particularly online pornography, especially among young men. He’s also witnessed a rise in mental illness from addiction to phones and related technologies, which he believes has resulted in “a second pandemic: Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”

He adds, “When ethics and morality lag behind technological advancement, it seems inevitable that AI‑based romantic relationships will further increase mental‑health struggles, particularly among adolescents and young adults whose brains are still developing.”

Dr. King, whose Christian faith informs his professional perspective, believes that because God created people for relationship with Him and other people, trusting technology for companionship risks idolatry and will inevitably result in harm. For these reasons he hopes parents, religious leaders, educators, and government officials “will have the wisdom to address these issues proactively.”

Dr. King isn’t opposed to AI use. Like many of us, he uses AI for certain methodical tasks like proofreading; however, he stops well short of suggesting AI as a soulmate.

His perspective speaks to me, as I find it increasingly hard to envision the rewards of human-AI relationships outweighing the risks, either to the individual or to society.

As is the case with the six “pros” I outlined above, discussion of benefits of human-AI relationships almost always focuses on what the human user gains from the interaction. Benefits like 24/7 access are certainly appealing; however, the exclusive emphasis on getting misses the entire other half of healthy relationships – giving.

To at least some extent, the more people are getting their social needs met through AI, the less people are giving human support to others. Perhaps some individuals can effectively manage both types of relationships simultaneously, but it seems more likely that human-bot relationship time comes at the expense of human-human relationship time.

However, there’s another important concern beyond simple social need supply and demand. Humans are wired to give. Often the greatest satisfaction and fulfillment in life comes from giving: parents caring for children, spouses supporting each other, friends loving friends, neighbors helping neighbors, people uplifting strangers.

When individuals are engaged in AI relationships, to whom are they giving? The answer to that rhetorical question – no one – may be the foremost flaw of human-AI relationships.

Is there a place for human-AI relationships? Should companies offer them? Given some of the benefits mentioned above, I hesitate to answer “no” unequivocally. However, it seems AI organizations and the entities that regulate them should think very carefully about who has access to AI companions, for what reasons, and under what conditions.

For instance, age restrictions are an absolute necessity, minimum ones and perhaps maximum ones, or some type of cognitive test to protect people susceptible to manipulation because of cognitive decline. Should AI relationships be regulated like some pharmaceuticals are and require a prescription, or should AI relationships be subject to outside monitoring?

I wish I had better insights. What I do feel certain about is companies that make AI relationships easily available without setting limits and carefully considering likely individual and societal tolls are courting Single-Minded Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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How Four Organizations Uniquely Fight Sex Trafficking

1/1/2026

12 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Often lost in the news of who is or isn’t implicated in the Epstein files is the grievous nature of the acts against fellow human beings. Sex trafficking is an age-old issue, which makes it worth considering why it's wrong and why it still occurs but even more important, learning what some courageously caring organizations are doing to stop it.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime identifies sex trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced is under 18.”

This definition points to the fact that not all human trafficking is sex trafficking. Besides sexual acts, people also are sometimes exploited for their labor in industries such as “housekeeping, childcare, construction, farming, and the food service.”

Using fraud, force, or coercion to get a person to do something they wouldn’t otherwise choose is never a good thing, but the exploitation is especially heinous when it involves the most intimate parts of individuals’ bodies and emotional beings. In other words, in the realm of moral depravity, sex trafficking has few equals.

Given its deplorable nature, why does sex trafficking occur? There seem to be three main structural reasons:

A market for commercial sex: As the sayings go, prostitution is the oldest profession and sex sells. People have been willing to pay for sex for millennia, which has allowed individuals to offer themselves for a fee.
Opportunistic others: Seeing the potential to expand the market, unprincipled people have long stepped in to help broker the sales of sex, bringing together buyers and sellers for a fee. In the process, traffickers have often broken laws and taken advantage of the service providers.
Vulnerable people: It’s unlikely that prostitution is an aspirational profession for anyone. Instead, most who make money selling themselves would much rather be doing something else, but they stay in the trade either because they’re kept from leaving or because they have no good alternatives.

According to Elijah Rising, a Houston-based organization aimed at ending sex trafficking in the city, human trafficking is “the fastest growing criminal enterprise,” one worth $236 billion, from which sex trafficking produces 73% of the profits. Women and girls are victims in 78% of sex trafficking cases, versus 22% for men and boys.

When the victim is a minor, the criteria of force, fraud, or coercion need not apply, as children’s naivety means that they don’t necessarily know what normal adult behavior is, so they may not even realize they’re being exploited. Often these young victims are still going to school and living at home while being trafficked by parents or other family members.

So, although Epstein’s extreme exploitation deserves the infamy it’s gained, it can be misleading to think that all sex traffickers look like him. Instead, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in keeping with the previous paragraph, “Traffickers are men and women of all ages. They can be relatives, romantic partners, or close family friends” as well as individuals “behind an employment ad or a new friend on social media or online gaming.”

Those managing larger scale sex trafficking often operate out of apartment complexes, bars, hotels, massage parlors, and truck stops. Notwithstanding all the differences, the common denominator among traffickers is their desire to “profit at the expense of others.”

Although the breadth and depth of sex trafficking is daunting, thankfully there are organizations that embrace the challenge through unique missions and special strategies aimed at combatting the industry, or demarketing the selling of sex.

There certainly are others, but here are four best practices from four exemplary organizations:

1. Help people see the problem: It’s hard to motivate individuals toward a solution if they don’t recognize the problem. Mentioned earlier, Elijah Rising helps potential partners gain awareness of the gravity of sex trafficking in Houston by taking them on discreet van tours of where the illicit activities occur, while sharing an educational video featuring survivors, experts, and others.

Since 2011, more than 11,000 people have taken the tour, which has helped a variety of organizations, including law enforcement agencies, identify signs of sex trafficking.

2. Go to where the trafficking happens: It’s difficult to fix a problem from afar. The most effective approach is usually to go to where the issue occurs, which is what Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) does.

TAT’s multifaceted mission to dismantle trafficking networks, bring perpetrators to justice, and restore dignity to survivors, is based on the belief that “every truck driver can be a crucial ally in the fight against human trafficking.” Sex trafficking often involves truckers, so TAT enlists them as partners in the battle and takes the fight to their home turf.

3. Recognize your unique role: Other places where sex trafficking often occurs are hotels. The few times a year many of us stay in hotels doesn’t give us much leverage against trafficking, but hotel chains can wield great impact on the illicit activity, if they choose. One hotel group that does is Accor, which owns 45 hotel brands, including Fairmont and Ibis, and operates 5,700 locations around the world.

Accor has been fighting against sexual exploitation of children since 2001 by “informing and training employees, raising awareness among customers and suppliers, developing relations with public authorities, and facilitating the integration of minors.” The group parters with the NGO ECPAT (End Child Prostitution Child Pornography & Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) to train its 70,000-plus hotel employees to identify and respond to instances of child abuse.

4. Give survivors a good exit: It can seem impossible to extract oneself from challenging circumstances when there appears to be no way out. Peace Promise offers attractive exits for women ensnared in the oppressive world of prostitution.

The nonprofit organization partners with survivors of sex trafficking by aiding their healing process and providing for practical needs such as housing and employment. However, Peace Promise doesn’t just help these women with often sparse employment histories find stable jobs, it also provides gainful work through its sister companies, Good Ground Coffee and Soaps by Survivors, which employ women who come from trafficking.

Peace Promise’s Director of Economic Empowerment, Rachel Beatty, offers this helpful additional detail of the organization’s multidimensional mission:

“The work is important because there are many misconceptions about what trafficking and exploitation actually look like. There are broader and more complex issues than what is often portrayed, and the needs of survivors run deep. Without support, it can be difficult to address all the physical and emotional needs simultaneously. Peace Promise provides the stability survivors need to address skills deficits and complex trauma, and ultimately to escape the cycle of exploitation.”

Although the Epstein files have given sex trafficking more exposure in our news feeds, a danger is the impression that the heinous actions are only ones perpetrated by social elites on an exotic island when the reality is that sex traffic is happening nearby many of us, perhaps even by people we’ve seen or know.

Fortunately, that troubling reality is tempered by the fact that there are organizations that embrace the physically and emotionally draining work of combatting sex trafficking. We can be grateful for these organizations’ uplifting missions, and we should keep watch for ways to support their Mindful Marketing.

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Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Suspending Belief Because of AI

12/2/2025

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Throughout human history, “seeing is believing” likely has been central to individuals’ interpretation of truth. We’re more apt to believe what we can see with our own eyes, but that trust comes with a caution: “Don’t believe everything you see.” Thanks to the realism of AI, that caveat seems to be evolving into a troubling new norm: “Don’t believe anything you see.”

A few months ago, a cringingly cute TikTok video went viral. In what seemed to be low resolution surveillance video from someone’s backyard, a collection of fun-loving bunnies playfully bounced on a large trampoline. Few things could be more wholesomely entertaining . . . or contrived.

The problem was that the rabbit roundup never really happened. Especially observant viewers recognized some non-lifelike video peculiarities, e.g., a pair of ears protruding from one bunny’s backside and another rabbit disappearing mid bounce. No, the video wasn’t real, rather it was the product of Google’s Veo 3, a realistic, AI-driven video generator.

Most of us are familiar with deepfake videos, which have become more and more ubiquitous on social media. Based on my viewing habits, YouTube sends me a steady stream of short videos featuring animals that include crocodiles, snakes, gorillas, and sharks, which I find fascinating. Some clips are real, but occasionally interspersed are ones that are too far-fetched to be actual animals, and, like the bunnies, there are sometimes video abnormalities that point to fabrication.

For me, these animal videos are just entertainment, which may make the deceptive ones less problematic. In fact, for the purpose of entertainment, people often want to be deceived – every time we go to a movie, play, or musical we pay to watch actors pretend to be people they’re not, in situations and settings that aren’t real. Most consider those kinds of mutual deceits morally acceptable.

However, to be “mutual,” the deceit should involve informed consent, meaning that the viewer A) knows what they’re seeing is imaginary, and B) they agree to watch it. For me, I believe YouTube’s animal videos uphold #2 but not #1, i.e., I certainly agree to watch them, but I don’t feel I always know what’s true.

AI is an incredible tool with an ever-growing assortment of applications for individuals and organizations, including the creation of visuals like complex graphics, realistic photos, and convincing videos.

With any tool, especially one as powerful as AI, comes the duty to wield it responsibly. While many use AI with discernment others don’t. Individuals in the latter group may have one or more of the following motivations, which range from relatively benign to troublingly malicious:

Experimenting with the new tech
Looking to gain likes and shares
Charting a quick and path to monetization
Seeking to deceive and mislead

Unfortunately, the latter categories seem to be producing new examples continually. For instance, deepfake investment schemes, which often combine forged images, voice, and video, already have become so pervasive that many prominent organizations and institutions have issued warnings and guidance including JP Morgan, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the state of New York.

As troubling as these carefully orchestrated schemes of the criminally minded are, the democratized use of deception by ordinary people in their daily lives is just as disturbing. One such broad-based indiscretion is employees’ use of AI to create fake receipts for meals or entire business trips they never experienced but that they submit for reimbursement.

The use of AI to visually deceive is increasingly a temptation for everyone.

What can be done to stem the tide of misleading machine-generated optics? There’s no one solution, rather individuals and organizations should embrace the following two approaches to start.

1. Set Standards: Rather than ‘figuring things out after the fact, it’s almost always better to establish guidelines that proactively steer behavior in positive directions. In almost every area of life, we experience such rules that inform us of things from how fast we can drive to what tax deductions we can claim. Why should AI use be any different?

In “Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics,” an article I wrote in May of 2024, a suggested several specific standards for AI use including acknowledging and compensating the human creators from whose work AI borrows, protecting privacy, avoiding racial and gender bias, and respecting relationships. I also encouraged transparency in terms of informing people when AI is being used.

A leader in encouraging standards for visual creations is a company renowned for digital design, Adobe. The firm’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) has been the impetus behind an open system for attaching provenance metadata to digital media, which over 4,500 organizations have embraced. Adobe explains how its Content Authenticity app works:

“Like a nutrition label for digital content, Content Credentials provide creation information about who made the content and when, and what type of edits happened along the way. Unlike other provenance solutions, they’re built on a trust model wherein they’re securely attached to content and validated by the tool used to attach them. They create a verifiable record of the creative process, bring information to the forefront, and help people understand the origins of digital content.”

2. Use Labeling: As the Adobe example suggests, one particularly important standard for AI-generated visuals is labeling. As with food, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with including hot and spicy ingredients in a dish, but a menu should provide an appropriate alert, so diners know what they’re going to consume.

Adobe’s Content Credentials encourage optional labeling. As of September 1, 2025, China has made AI labeling mandatory. The Chinese law means audio and visual content distributed on Chinese platforms must contain both technical identifiers (e.g., metadata, watermarks) and visible labels (i.e., ones evident to average consumers).

Should AI labeling be law? Ideally self-regulation happens outside the legal process. That’s the kind of responsibility Pinterest showed last March when it decided to start labeling generative AI content. Given that Pinterest showcases many human-made items like food and crafts, it’s especially helpful to know that what’s pictured on its site is real.

As I’ve said before, ethics is a team sport that plays out best when all stakeholders commit themselves to do what’s right and to support others in doing the same. In terms of AI-created visuals, two of the most important things team members can do is to 1) proactively set AI standards, and particularly to 2) label AI-generated content so consumers know when they’re seeing it. That labeling might occur through a visible watermark or through provenance metadata stored in a data file header, separate metadata file, etc.

People shouldn’t believe everything they see. They also shouldn’t need to suspend belief each time they see something new. Individuals and organizations that help consumers understand what’s real and what’s not are critical team players for creating Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

31 Comments

Does the World Need "Moral Police" for AI?

11/1/2025

12 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Open AI’s recent announcement that it would free ChatGPT to engage in erotica sparked backlash and prompted CEO Sam Altman to defend the decision: “we are not the elected moral police of the world.” At first glance, it’s difficult to deny the AI visionary’s disclaimer, but his statement raises important questions: Should there be people appointed to monitor AI morality and if so, who?

In an October 14 post on X, Altman shared, “In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.”

The CEO then defended the firm’s controversial new initiative with a follow-up X post on October 15: “But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example) we want to do a similar thing here.”

It’s doubtful many people have ever used the term “moral police,” or something similar, in a positive way. Instead, Altman’s implication seems akin to the way “police” is used pejoratively in this office scenario:

Joe: “Bob, are you going to the bathroom again?!”
Bob: “Who are you, the bathroom police?”

On one hand, Altman’s defense is reasonable. Who can possibly judge the ethical actions of the planet’s 8 billion-plus residents? Besides being logistically impossible, some may say it’s philosophically undesirable, as many different worldviews and multitudes of corresponding moral standards drive individuals’ actions.

Furthermore, as two research colleagues and I found in a recent study we conducted about marketing ethics, people’s opinions of what constitutes sex-related indecency tend to vary more than perspectives on issues involving other values like fairness and honesty.

It’s also easy to understand the financial incentives Open AI may gain by enabling more adult content. The adage “sex sells” rings true even when the ‘personal interaction’ for sale doesn’t involve a real person.

In a BBC interview, Parmy Olson of Bloomberg Opinion reported that about 30% of prompts typed into AI assistants were of a romantic or sexual nature. She also stated that chatbot companies that restrict adult content “lose millions of users.”

Regardless whether the percentage of X-rated interactions is 5% or 35% of total chatbot use, it’s likely a multibillion-dollar market opportunity for OpenAI and a very significant amount of revenue for any company to reject, especially one that’s not yet profitable.

In 2024, OpenAI had about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue. The firm’s revenues are expected to reach $12.7 billion in 2025, but OpenAI isn’t projected to make money until it reaches revenues of $125 billion in 2029.

Despite these logistical and financial reasons for refraining to act as “moral police,” Altman’s hands-off approach to ethics is alarming. ChatGPT accounts for 80.92% of chatbot use worldwide. It’s very troubling that a world leader in artificial intelligence seems to decline ethical accountability for the transformational technology.

Again, it’s true that opinions about decency vary greatly, especially when it comes to sexual liberties; however, the specific issue here isn’t the most important point. If OpenAI doesn’t want to act as “moral police” on this issue, can we expect it to accept moral responsibility for any ethical issue involving AI?

Perhaps Altman believes that AI will handle moral issues involving AI. That belief seemed wishful to me eight years ago; now it appears increasingly naïve.

In September 2017, I wrote an article for Business Insider in which I posed for the first time the question, “Can machines can learn to be moral?” It was five years before ChatGPT’s public release, so the essay was largely speculative, based on the little experience most of us had with AI at the time. Still, it was hard to imagine how an algorithm could make subjective decisions about what’s decent, fair, honest, respectful or responsible.

Over the years since, I’ve increasingly used AI, including chatbots, as many people have. In a Mindful Marketing article in May of 2024, I proposed that “Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics,” and ultimately concluded that we can’t rely on AI for moral accountability, rather it’s up to people to hit the brakes, or press pause, when AI-related ethical issues arise.

Even as AI grows more adept at completing nonmoral tasks (ones not involving ethical issues), there are still strong signs moral accountability must come from outside algorithms, for example:

Just a few days ago, a deepfake of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang promoting a cryptocurrency scam performed better than the firm’s real GTC 2025 keynote, fooling tens of thousands of viewers.
Chatbots have been implicated in the deaths of teenagers who have taken their own lives, as AI has offered to write farewell notes and serve as a “suicide coach.”
Nudify apps leverage AI to digitally remove clothing in photos of unsuspecting individuals. The apps users, who have included middle schoolers, often share the lewd results with others, causing great emotional and social pain for the victims.

If AI has a sense of right and wrong, why hasn’t it stopped these acts, which most reasonable people would call ‘reprehensible’? What’s worse, AI not only didn’t pump the brakes, or hit pause, it’s what enabled these actions to occur; it made them possible. Examples like these have led me to conclude:

If left unchecked by humans, AI will continue to enable unethical behavior.

So, opposite Altman’s abdication of ethical accountability, we do need “moral police,” badly. The question, then, is who should they be?

I asked a similar question in an April 2025 article, “Who Will be the Adult in the Room with AI?” and suggested several sets of complementary accountability partners: legal systems, industry associations, organizations, and individuals.

In a recent talk I’ve given titled, “Exercising Our Moral Leadership,” I’ve continued to press the theme of broad-based moral responsibility, arguing that each of us needs to lean on others for support in our ethical decision making, ranging from clarification of factual information to serving as moral sounding boards and accountability partners.

Ultimately, I believe ethics is a team sport – every stakeholder employing thoughtful analysis and engaging in constructive conversations. Still, the idea that ‘ethics is everyone’s job’ can seem like a platitude if people don’t genuinely embrace moral responsibility and seriously prepare themselves for ethical decision-making, which involves intentional actions like:

Adopting a moral anchor, or a set of moral standards, such as the Golden Rule or specific moral principles like decency, fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility.
Thoroughly knowing one’s field because making ethical decisions also demands firm grasps of objective, factual information
Looking beyond immediate circumstances to consider long-term consequences and impacts on secondary stakeholders
Questioning the consensus because task definitions and time pressures sometimes lead teams to choose what can be done versus what should be done

Artificial intelligence appears to be as transformative a technology as our world has ever seen. Most of us have experienced firsthand how it can help us work more efficiently and effectively. We’ve also collectively witnessed how, if left unchecked, it can enable actions that are morally suspect.

We do need moral police for AI. You and I should be part of that patrol. Leading the force should be those who are most knowledgeable about AI – police chiefs at Alphabet, Microsoft, Nvidia, and . . . OpenAI.

It’s understandable that Altman wants to respect personal liberties and make Open AI profitable. However, allowing AI to police itself is asking for moral anarchy by way of Single-Minded Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

12 Comments

Can Competition Promote Moral Progress?

10/8/2025

4 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

How is it possible to improve ethics in a field that seems beset by moral issues? What about actively engaging emerging marketers on topics that matter to them and using competition to provide positive, memorable experiences they can revisit when encountering moral issues in their future careers? That was the goal of the inaugural Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge.

Competition is captivating. It’s a main reason sports are so popular to play and to watch. Only occasionally does academics include contests (e.g., spelling bees, quiz bowls). Competition involving ethics seems almost like a contradiction, but why not an ethics competition?

Since creating Mindful Marketing 11 years ago, I’ve envisioned different initiatives that might improve moral decision-making in the field. One of those recently came to be with the publishing of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick. Another dream has been to see a student-based ethics competition.

For many years, I made the long drive to Western Pennsylvania with students in our capstone marketing course to participate in the American Marketing Association (AMA) Pittsburgh Chapter’s marketing plan competition. Although it was big commitment in many ways, it was a great learning opportunity and very helpful to see how our marketing program’s work compared to some of the best in the state. Moreover, it was exciting to compete.

With the creation of AMA Central PA three years ago, the dream of an ethics competition became more realistic; however, to make it happen, it took the support of a group of like-minded educators and marketing practitioners – fellow AMA Central PA leaders who saw the value in ethics for emerging marketers and who backed the proposal not just verbally but by championing the competition at their own universities and elsewhere. Thanks to that collective commitment to students and to moral progress, the Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge was born.

Two months before students returned to campuses for the fall semester, I drafted a short ethics-focused case about one of the field’s biggest and most controversial promotional trends: influencer marketing. As August began, I began emailing faculty at other schools, inviting them to share with their students the case and the unique competition benefits described in a specially designed promotional flyer:

Team prizes: 1st place $500; 2nd place $300; 3rd place $200
Presentation opportunities
Food and networking

Ten teams submitted 1,500-word written responses to the influencer marketing case, which described a pitch that a hypothetical marketing firm, Impact, made to Widerquest, a fictitious maker of outdoor sporting equipment and apparel that sought to use influencers responsibly.

Although Impact’s proposal was good in many ways, it included moral concerns such as transparency about influencer compensation, respect for competitors, physical stereotypes, and product embellishment. A panel of six accomplished marketing practitioners evaluated the responses in a double-blind review process.

On October 1, eight teams from four different universities participated in the finale at Messiah University, where each team had five minutes to summarize its recommendations for ensuring that the influencer marketing in the case was both effective and ethical. The judges evaluated the presentations, and the combined written and oral scores were tallied to determine the top three place winners, whose school identities were then revealed:

Those were the logistics and timeline of the competition, which were important, but what did students learn about marketing ethics that they might carry into their future careers?

Teams’ written and oral responses to the influencer marketing case were very insightful. Some identified implications I hadn’t considered. The ethics case and the first-place team’s written response are available on the Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge webpage. Here are several highlights of the winning team’s analysis:

“Impact’s expectations raise serious ethical concerns that conflict with Wilderquest’s values. By requiring embellishment of features and forbidding negative feedback, the proposal undermines honesty and risks deceiving consumers.”

“Encouraging influencers to disparage competitors manipulates buyer choice and fails to treat other brands fairly.”

“Respect is also compromised by messaging that portrays consumers’ lives as ‘lacking without Wilderquest,’ exploiting insecurities rather than affirming worth.”

“Responsibility is neglected by allowing influencers to promote products they have not used, stripping audiences of genuine evaluations and reviews.”

“Encouraging technology to enhance photos or videos without disclosure risks misleading consumers. Collectively, these practices jeopardize consumer trust and contradict Wilderquest’s commitment to authenticity.”

First-Place Team, Susquehanna University

In these thorough and thoughtful analyses of the case’s many moral issues, team members aptly identified several specific values that marketing firm Impact appeared to neglect, e.g., fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility. Both the teams’ case analysis and oral presentation indicated a desire to embrace rather than avoid moral responsibility.

These analyses were affirming, but what was participants’ overall experience in the Ethics Challenge? Did they feel that the competition, aimed at increasing moral conscience, will benefit them in the future?

At the finale and afterward, those involved in the Challenge provided much positive feedback. One of the students, Moriah Goiran, a member of the second-place team from Shippensburg University, gave this assessment:

“Overall, it was a fantastic experience! Everyone was very welcoming, which made it a generally stress-free environment. I really enjoyed everything about it but what I most appreciated was the group discussion. It was really refreshing to have an intellectually diverse and driven conversation. I enjoyed hearing everyone's thoughts and opinions and interacting with people in the business field. This was my first time at a networking event so knowing how it works and how I operate in those situations will really help me in the future with what to discuss, etc.”

Similarly, Ruby Calabrese, a member of the first-place Susquehanna University team, shared her reflections:

“The project helped me develop keen insights into what I want to do with my career in marketing but also how important it is for companies to have ethical marketing practices . . . . The Mindful Marketing project, I feel, will help me in my future career goals when constructing my path and increase my knowledge of digital marketing advertising. Thank you for such a wonderful opportunity. I’m excited to see how the competition progresses.”

When you think about ethics, competition may be one of the last words that comes to mind. I’ve called ethics “a team sport,” meaning, to make significant moral impact, it often takes a group of people with shared commitments to do what’s right.

In the Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge, teams competed against each other for place recognition, but they all competed against forces much greater and more perilous – moral apathy and acrimony.

That’s the competition we all need to realize were in and resolve to approach proactively, ideally with strong teams of like-minded moral champions.

The inaugural Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge was a meaningful step in the right direction of encouraging new and experienced marketers to compete against indifference and engage their field’s moral challenges with the goal of Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Falling in Love with AI

How Four Organizations Uniquely Fight Sex Trafficking

Suspending Belief Because of AI

Does the World Need "Moral Police" for AI?

Can Competition Promote Moral Progress?

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