Category: * Mindful

Can Competition Promote Moral Progress?

10/8/2025

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

2 Comments

Should Dolls Have Diseases?

8/1/2025

14 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

Perhaps no toy is more iconic than Mattel’s Barbie. From its humble beginnings 66 years ago at the American Toy Fair to a 2023 blockbuster movie, an ever-expanding variety of dolls and accessories have delighted millions of children, as well as some adults wanting to relive their childhoods. Throughout their existence, Barbie products have been consistently on brand – cheery and upbeat. So why would the renowned toymaker want to give its signature product a life-altering disease?

Over the years, Barbie has held well over 100 different jobs that have literally ranged from A to Z, e.g., astronaut (1965) to zoologist (2021). In between, Barbie also been an Olympic skier (1975), a rock star (1986), a business executive (1992), a film producer (2005), and a martial artist (2017), to name a few other occupations.

However, there’s a big difference between a profession that people choose and a disease that chooses them. Moreover, individuals often undertake years of schooling or other specialized training to prepare for their career, which then becomes a major source of self-esteem, as well as a primary personal identifier when introducing themselves to others. No one says, “Hi, I’m Chris, I’m incontinent.”

It's true that there are many people who rightly take pride in being cancer survivors or in recovering from other major health challenges, like heart attacks. However, I’ve also heard some say that they don’t want a disease to be what defines them. They want to be recognized and remembered for other things.

By marketing a Barbie with type 1 diabetes, is Mattel teaching kids to make the disease what defines them?

To the company’s credit, over many years it has gained considerable experience making dolls with unique physical attributes and related challenges. As might be expected, some of the toys have been better received than others.

Mattel first introduced a Barbie with a disability in 1997: Share-A-Smile Becky, who came with a pink wheelchair. However, the initial success that saw 6,000 dolls sold within the first two weeks was short-lived, as users found that Becky’s wheelchair was largely incompatible with the Barbie Dreamhouse.

In 2000, Mattel marketed a Barbie with vitiligo, a skin condition in which a lack of pigmentation gives a person an uneven, spotty complexion, and another doll with no hair, designed to represent any of the many reasons a child may experience hair loss.

In 2012, The company made Ella, a bald friend of Barbie, distributing a limited number of the dolls directly to hospitals. Two years later, the toymaker produced more Ellas in response to a petition from the mother of a cancer patient.

Mattel released Barbies with different body types in 2016, e.g., tall, curvy, and petite – a significant departure from the doll’s perpetually svelte physique. Unlike other Barbies with unique physical attributes, these dolls’ distinct traits weren’t directly related to diseases or disabilities. Instead, they indirectly supported positive mental health by diverging from society’s homogenized and often unrealistic standards of beauty.

In 2022, Mattel introduced an expanded line of dolls with disabilities, this time consulting experts to ensure even more accurate representation of the conditions. The collection included a Barbie with a prosthetic leg, another with a behind-the-ear-hearing aid, and a Ken doll with vitiligo. AmeriDisability, which seeks to represent America’s disability community, lauded the introduction as “groundbreaking.”

Similarly, in 2023, ahead of the release of its first Barbie with Down syndrome, Mattel worked with the National Down Syndrome Society to ensures the doll’s accurate representation of the genetic condition.

So, in many ways a Barbie with type 1 diabetes is just another iteration of differently enabled dolls for Mattel, but what do these dolls mean for our society? Is their net impact positive or negative?

Given that neither dolls nor diseases are in my wheelhouse, I reached out to several people who could answer these questions more authoritatively: Dr. Kevin Barnes – a retired pediatrician, Dr. Sarah Jones – a nurse educator, and Meredith Schorner – an RN and school nurse.

Barnes said he appreciates that Mattel spent more than a year working with a diabetes organization in order to ensure the doll’s accuracy, and he believes that for some of the more than 200,000 children in the U.S. with type 1 diabetes mellitus, it could be therapeutic to play with a doll that experiences the same things they do.

However, he also expresses some valid concerns, for instance:

Where do we draw the line on dolls representing childhood diseases, particularly ones that are somewhat “invisible” to others even though they greatly impact daily life, e.g., celiac disease, asthma?
Given Barbie’s history of more often emphasizing style over substance, how much of Mattel’s motivation in making the doll is the positive publicity it generates?

Jones believes that the type 1 diabetes Barbie can potentially do much good by helping to make the condition more mainstream, or acceptable, which among other things, could encourage proper self-management. That care is critical given that the disease demands intensive insulin therapy with either multiple daily injections or an insulin pump.

With confirmation from a colleague who regularly cares for diabetes patients, Jones states that Barbie’s self-monitoring insulin pump is the standard for treatment, which Jones sees as positive overall. However, like Barnes, she also raises some important questions about the doll:

Does its female Caucasian identity fall short in representing the disease’s well-documented impact across gender and racial lines?
Could Barbie’s continuous glucose monitoring device and insulin pump create stigma for children whose insurance will not cover the advanced technology and for families that cannot afford it so they must rely on traditional injections?
Could the doll make it more socially acceptable to have type 1 diabetes but not type 2? This may be an increasing concern given that incidences of type 2 diabetes, which is often associated with obesity, are on the rise among children.

Not surprising, Jone’s differentiation of the two sometimes conflated conditions coincides with that of the University of Virginia Health System, which states that “Unlike type 1, type 2 diabetes is not an autoimmune disorder,” rather it “occurs mostly in people over 45, or in younger people with obesity or genetic reasons.”

Besides her role as a school nurse, Schorner is a parent of young girls who believes the diabetic Barbie will be “an exciting new toy for many.” More than just a plaything for those who have type 1 diabetes, she expects the doll will raise questions for nondiabetic children and help them better understand the devices they see on some of their peers. She elaborates:

“Children need to know that their peers with type 1 diabetes (T1D) didn't do anything ‘wrong’ to become diabetic – they didn't eat too much sugar, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with their weight. T1D is increasing in prevalence, and diabetic children need lots of support at home and at school. They need peers that can be not just understanding but also helpful to them in managing their diabetes.”

“Under the guidance of a knowledgeable adult, engaging in play with this doll may help young children develop a basic understanding of CGM readings, carbohydrate counting, and insulin requirements. It could also help children to know what to do if they encounter a person experiencing a diabetic emergency.”

Schorner has firsthand experience caring for children with type 1 diabetes. In one case, the child’s family chose finger sticks and insulin injections, at least in part because they were concerned that a more socially visible glucose monitor might label their child as a diabetic.

Another case involving a child who uses a glucose monitor and pump was different. Schorner recently had the privilege of telling this child about the new Barbie. When she did, the child’s face “lit up with excitement,” and they immediately asked to see a picture of the doll on Schorner’s phone. The child compared their technology to the doll's and although they weren’t the same, they appreciated seeing the doll with its accessories and seemed eager to add the Barbie to their nearly nonexistent collection of diabetes-related toys.

Notwithstanding this very positive response, Schorner added that not all states or insurance companies offer the same assistance to help cover the out-of-pocket cost of insulin pumps. Consequently, she can imagine how the Barbie could be discouraging to families of diabetic children that don’t have the means to purchase newer insulin-dispensing devices.

Over a decade of writing Mindful Marketing articles, I’ve often relied on experts to help me know the relevant facts and understand the nuances of complex ethical issues. The question of whether Mattel should market a Barbie with type 1 diabetes was certainly one for which I’ve needed such assistance.

The three experts on which I leaned for this piece have been extremely helpful to me in elucidating the case’s multifaceted, competing considerations. Despite the very real reservations that Barnes, Jones, and Schorner all offered, it seems that each believes there’s a place for a diabetic Barbie.

Their informed input certainly has shaped my opinion, but what may have been most impactful is the heartfelt reaction of a diabetic child who loves that a special Barbie will reflect their unique life experience.

No toy is perfect, but one that receives significant support from healthcare experts and that instantly delights a child with a life-altering disease most likely represents Mindful Marketing.

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

14 Comments

What Sales AI Can and Can't Do

3/1/2025

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

From writing a simply reply email to creating an $8 million Super Bowl ad, AI is impacting virtually every element of marketing. But what about the area that relies more heavily on human interaction than any other – sales? How much should personal selling embrace machine learning?

I received some helpful answers to this question a few weeks ago when I attended a symposium on AI in Sales, hosted by Penn State University, Harrisburg. Although I’ve worked in sales, taught a Personal Selling class for more than 20 years, and given my own presentations about AI, I hadn’t considered many of the potential uses of AI in sales that I learned at the symposium – I took several pages of notes!

The event’s keynote speaker was Dr. Michael Rodriguez, an accomplished sales professional who in recent years has transitioned to academia and into his current role as an assistant professor of marketing in East Carolina University’s College of Business.

I appreciated how Rodriguez considered the entire sales process, from Prospecting to Follow Up & Nurture, providing examples that distinguished traditional AI use from generative AI and hybrid applications.

Rodriguez also offered some useful specific suggestions for how human sales professionals might lean on AI in their daily work, such as by using the technology to:

Aid in prospecting and effectively identifying potential new clients
Personalize emails, which Rodriguez said can increase response rates by 70%
Help prepare for sales calls so one enters such meetings better informed
Identify potential client objections and receive recommendations for overcoming them
Customize proposals to a potential client’s specific needs

As I listened to these and other recommendations I imagined how they may have helped me when I sold professionally, as well as how they might serve my students as they learn to sell.

However, as the symposium neared its close, during a time of Q & A with Rodriguez and a panel of other sales professionals, it was interesting to hear a countervailing theme emerge:

Despite the considerable benefits that AI offers sales, salespeople will gain the greatest competitive advantages for the foreseeable future from their unique human inputs.

The idea behind this thesis, which seemed to gain widespread agreement among panelists and audience members, was that over time AI will act like many new technologies, first offering advantages to early adopters but eventually entering almost everyone’s repertoire and leveling the playing field for most competitors.

Or, to use a poker metaphor, AI will become table stakes – something everyone must have just to get in the game. Determining who ‘wins’ will be the unique intellectual and emotional skills that people bring to the game.

As a flesh-and-blood being, I like the idea of people playing the pivotal role. But more objectively, it does seem like there are several selling activities that AI can’t reliably replicate, at least not now and possibly ever. Based on my experience working in sales and teaching it, these are some of those exclusively anthropic actions:

Hold a Real Conversation: AI can be very effective at helping salespeople practice selling dialogue by serving as a roleplay partner. However, as the old adage goes, “You can’t take it with you,” meaning in this case, when it comes to an actual selling situation, the salesperson must fly solo, relying on their own experience, intellect, and emotional intelligence to help move the conversation productively forward.
Tell a Story: In communication situations, storytelling is one of the most effective ways of gaining and retaining attention and for deducing key learning points that people will remember. Although AI is great at retrieving stories others have shared and compiling “new” ones, it can’t share original anecdotes from lived experience because, of course, it has none. That limitation is unfortunate for AI because personal stories are often the best ones.
Interpret Contextual Cues: Does the customer’s facial expression show that they’re happy, sad, or angry? Does their body language suggest that they’re reluctant to proceed or eager to move forward? At some point Meta AI Glasses or other wearable tech may make these inferences and share them in real-time, but at least one communication expert believes they’ll still be inferior: Megan Madsen, Chief Officer, Strategic Communications at Bravo Group in Harrisburg, PA, says, “I don’t think AI will ever replace contextual thinking on a human level.”
Find Common Ground: People like identifying things they have in common with others, whether they’re individuals they know, places they’ve visited, sports they follow, or restaurants they enjoy. Shared experiences and affinities help us know others better and relate to them on a more personal level – engagement that isn’t possible for virtual beings.
Feel and Express Emotion: How should a salesperson respond when their client mentions that their spouse just lost their job or that their daughters’ soccer team won the state championship? People are uniquely wired to feel empathy (e.g., sadness or joy) and to return emotionally appropriate responses based not just on what was shared but on the client’s emotional state and how well the salesperson knows them.
Laugh: I was at a networking event recently, talking with a marketing professional, when a well-intentioned college student abruptly broke into our conversation held out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Bob, a junior marketing major at State; what do you do?” I quickly grasped his hand and as I shook it replied, “Not much.” We all laughed. I’m not sure what led me to say that – perhaps it was understanding the context and knowing that the line, which I probably heard someone else say years ago, would offset the awkwardness. Anyway, it seemed like the right humor at that moment, with no assist from AI.
Socialize: A very small percentage of all sales are made on golf courses or in stadium club boxes, but it is common for salespeople to get to know customers and discuss business over a meal, in order to save time but more importantly to build relationships. Good things often happen when people break bread together.
Identify Moral Concerns: From my experience, AI is not on the lookout for possible ethical infractions, and as several of the preceding bullets have suggested, it usually can’t be present to help make real-time choices. So, if a purchasing agent asks a salesperson to increase their proposal by $500 so the purchasing agent can pocket the excess, what should the salesperson do? Their human knowledge should alert them that they’re being asked to pay a bribe and prompt them to reject the appeal outright.

AI applications are redefining the ways marketing is done. Salespeople should use those technological tools to work more efficiently and effectively while also remember that it’s their uniquely human aptitudes that ultimately set them apart. Technological proficiency paired with a genuine personal touch is the best approach for Mindful Marketing.

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

4 Comments

Resolving to be More Moral

1/5/2025

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

With a new year come resolutions, often aimed at life-changing actions like exercising more and working less. Any effort to become the best version of ourselves is commendable, so why haven’t we heard this resolution? “In 2025, I want to be more ethical.”

As 2024 ended, it was interesting to read articles that curated top headlines from the prior twelve months, which reminded us of major life-altering and world-shaping events. Like other years, 2024 saw continued war and devastating natural disasters, and who can forget the contentious U.S. presidential election or the inspiring Paris Olympics?

Certain people commanded news coverage in good ways, while others did for the wrong reasons:

P-Diddy was accused of sex trafficking that involved drug-fueled orgies.
Luigi Mangione has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO.
Former U.S. congressman Matt Gaetz purportedly paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for sex and drugs, including to a minor.
Dominique Pelicot was sentenced in France to 20 years in prison for drugging and abusing his then wife while also inviting dozens of strangers to rape her.
A fifteen-year-old girl in Madison Wisconsin reportedly killed a fellow student and a teacher.

Regrettably, poor moral choices weren’t restricted to individuals. Several large companies pooled employee maleficence, leading to these newsworthy corporate scandals:

Mineral water producer Perrier utilized banned water purification processes.
Commodity trader Trifugura engaged in data manipulation, inflated payments, and concealing overdue receivables – fraud that will account for approximately $1.1 billion in losses.
The U.S. Justice Department found multinational software company SAP guilty of bribery in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), fining the company $220 million.
The U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) fined the Netherlands affiliate of accounting giant KPMG $25 million for cheating on mandatory internal training exams.

Of course, there were also millions of other unscrupulous acts that were too trivial to be newsworthy or that evaded public scrutiny for other reasons. However, in terms of morality, 2024 was not much different than 2023, and 2025, unfortunately, probably won’t see significant improvement.

So, given people’s proclivity to mess up and our perennial need for moral development, why don’t individuals make New Year’s resolutions to be more ethical?

Of the many plausible explanations, here are several that are most likely:

People don’t see a need: If asked if they’re ethical, most people would probably respond that they are, which by and large is true. Although we all make mistakes, it’s likely a small percentage of people who commit unethical acts routinely.
It’s a very broad pledge: Without a detailed action plan, it’s hard to even begin to approach such a far-reaching and expansive goal, i.e., “It’s a good objective, but how exactly do I accomplish it?”
It’s difficult to measure: At year’s end, how does one know if they’ve been more ethical? The goal’s ambiguity and lack of clear benchmarks make it hard to easily see success. How exactly do you quantify and appraise ethical behavior?
It’s daunting: Possible failure is likely why many potential resolutions never occur. No one likes to fall short of goals, particularly if they share them with other people.

That said, the most challenging goals are sometimes the most worthwhile ones, which is certainly the case for ethics. As rational, caring humans, we should want:

To be the best version of ourselves, which connects closely to our moral choices
To be true to our values and employ consistency across moral decisions
To be good stewards of our actions, realizing their impact on others, including on our family, friends, the organizations we serve, as well as on our world.
To avoid the major moral meltdowns described above that profoundly altered individuals lives and/or came at tremendous costs to organizations.

Fortunately, most people don’t face significant ethical choices each day. However, moral dilemmas are unpredictable: They’re like tornados that can arise with little warning and quickly become severe.

People who live in Tornado Alley understand the uncertainty and danger of the weather, so many there take necessary precautions and “have a safety plan in place.”

We each should follow that example and have a plan for moral decision-making, so when issues arise, we’re ready for them. Such a plan should involve specific actions like:

Adopting a model for ethical decision-making, i.e., a set of moral standards that can be used for any ethical dilemma.
Keeping ethics top-of-mind by reading thought-provoking opinion pieces and engaging with others who are interested in moral decision-making
Enlisting others to act as sounding boards for our decisions and to help hold us accountable
Making moral choices preemptively, or deciding before we actually need to decide.

These are several of the specific action steps I unpack in the final chapter of my new book (shameless plug), Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick.

Yes, we should resolve to make more moral choices, but do such resolutions really help? The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which I used for my doctoral dissertation and hundreds of other researchers also have used successfully, suggests that they do.

According to the TPB, our intentions are the main determinant of our behavior. There are very few actions people take that they don’t first intend to take.

Have you made a New Year’s resolution? Any time of year is a good time to resolve to act ethically. Doing so brings many benefits, including more “Mindful Marketing.”

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

4 Comments

Does Human-Made Matter?

11/2/2024

10 Comments

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

How do you position a business ethics book versus dozens of others on the market? That’s been a top-of-mind question and exciting opportunity while writing my book on Mindful Marketing. One point of differentiation I wouldn’t have imagined when I started blogging about ethics 10 years ago is this: My book is written by a human.

A few weeks ago, I came across the interesting and apropos news that the Author’s Guild, “the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization for published writers,” has plans to offer a new “Human Authored Label” that it’s 15,000 members can place directly on the covers of books they write.

The impetus for the initiative, of course, is to distinguish works written by real people from those compiled by AI. Apparently, the surge in AI-authored books has become so strong that Amazon has set a policy limiting self-published Kindle eBooks to three per day.

A related concern is that the purveyors of some AI-written books are trying to scam readers by pretending that real people wrote them, which is part of the bigger issue of AI appropriating others’ work.

As a human author, my first reaction to the proof of personhood label was “That’s great!” Then, I glanced around my home office space and started considering all the things I use each day that weren’t handcrafted by humans, which made me wonder:

Does human-made matter?

I doubt that one specific person made the MacBook on which I’m typing. Considering the hundreds of different parts that comprise a computer, it’s likely that dozens of people played different roles in designing, manufacturing, and delivering the laptop, which I still don’t think of as human-made, but in some ways it is.

Humanity has a long history of inventing specific tools and automating entire production processes to accomplish work more efficiently and effectively, for instance: the spear, the wheel, plows, harvesting machines, moveable type, internal combustion engines, excavating equipment, assembly line machinery, microchips.

These innovations and many others have been integral to the advance of civilizations and improved quality of life. Along the way, technology also has made obsolete certain jobs, e.g., digging with shovels, while creating new ones, e.g., designing, selling, operating, and servicing excavating equipment.

Like most people, I’m grateful for the innovative goods and services, some not available just a few decades ago, that make work more productive and life more enjoyable. I’m also thankful for the technological tools that have made many of these products possible, sometimes with little human input.

Lack of human intervention is a main difference between artificial intelligence and other technology to-date. Take this article, which I’ll write over the course of several days or more and will end up being about 2,000 words. Yet I know if I were to give ChatGPT the prompt, “Write a 2,000-word Mindful Marketing article on the topic ‘Does Human-Made Matter?’” it could probably compose a coherent piece in about five seconds.

Could I claim authorship of the essay? Well, if the chatbot trained on the more than 300 Mindful Marketing articles I’ve written over the past decade, yes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t feel right taking credit for the piece. Doing so would kind of be like asking Einstein to explain the theory of relativity, then claiming ownership of his answer.

Asking a question, even a very good one, isn’t the same as answering it. In most cases the latter is a much, much heavier lift.

In terms of who or what’s doing the lifting, we might envision a continuum. On one end are tangible goods like laptops and services like haircuts that require interaction with the physical world. Although AI can show us digitally what we’d look like with a different hairstyle, actual hair cutting/styling is still a people-intensive service that needs real scissors and actual human hands, at least for now.

On the other end of the spectrum are intangible/digital products like this article, cover letters, and work emails that AI can crank out with no more than a simple human prompt. Apple’s new “Apple Intelligence” ad spoofs how easy it is for AI to turn human-made trash into supervisor-pleasing treasure.

The 60-second spot shows an utterly incompetent employee, Warren, typing this message into his iPhone 16: “Hey, J, this project might need a bit of zhuhzing . . . but you’re the big enchilada. Holler back, Warren.” Before sending it, he taps the writing tool icon “Professional,” which metamorphosizes the mess.

Moments later J, who appears to be Warren’s boss, receives the transformed message: “Hey J, Upon further consideration, I believe this project may require some refinement. However, you are the most capable individual to undertake this task. Please let me know your thoughts. Best regards, Warren.”

J is noticeably impressed as he reads the memo aloud, then pauses with surprise at the signature, “Warren? Huh.” His tone and facial expression suggest he thinks he may have been underestimating his seemingly inept subordinate. Meanwhile, Warren celebrates his tech-enabled victory, boldly twirling a USB cable in the air to the sound of an upbeat Apple music bed with lyrics “I am genius, whoaaa . . ”

Human made didn’t seem to matter to Warren. Will it matter to J? Stay tuned.

Of course, on the digital end of the continuum, there are more profound, spirit-moving, and sense-stimulating things AI can create than a work email: AI also can make art.

AI’s creation of visual and aural art has been a point of contention for artists who understandably don’t want blatant forgeries and veiled facsimiles of their work sold without proper recognition and reward.

But what if AI makes art that appears, for all intents and purposes, to be original, i.e., it doesn’t infringe in any noticeable way on any specific artist’s intellectual property? In those cases, should human-made matter?

Since my own artistic background is limited, I recently reach out to two people who very legitimately hold the title artist and asked each to answer the question, “Why does human-made matter?”

One artist I approached was Susan Getty, a freelance artist, writer, and editor. Full disclosure, our home proudly displays several of her paintings.

In describing why human-made matters to her as an artist, Susan emphasized that art’s value stems not just from the finished work but from the process of making it. She extolled fulfilling “an inborn impulse to create” that comes from working with her hands in tangible, physical materials.

She also pointed to the value of what she learns through the art-making process, like “understanding how colors mix, how paper folds, how a brush spreads different kinds of paint.” This constant learning stimulates her imagination and helps keep her “connected to the physical world,” which she laments may be lost by a society that spends too much time in virtual space.

Susan also appreciates art’s value in allowing a person to learn from their mistakes and cope with failure:

“There’s something crucial about a deep personal investment of time, money and effort and experiencing either an enthusiastic reception or apathetic dismissal from others. I believe that every human ought to, at some point in life, come to their own terms on what success and failure mean.”

Although Susan appreciates technology and uses the web to find reference photos, learn about different artistic techniques, and gain inspiration from the work of artists around the world, she doesn’t believe artmaking is intended to be the quick and easy process that AI tries to make it.

As an art appreciator, she wants to feel a connection with the artist, which comes from seeing energy, spontaneity, and individual interpretation in the work. Ultimately, she wants herself and those who appreciate her art to have what AI can’t provide – a shared human experience.

The other artist I asked to answer the question “Why does human-made matter?” is one I know especially well – my son Daniel Hagenbuch, who is both a musician (violin and piano) and a composer. He’s currently completing a Master of Music in Composition at Peabody Institute in Baltimore.

Daniel believes music is a gift that composers create very intentionally for their audiences: “[Music composition] is a time-based art form that both requires composers to spend time thoughtfully crafting ideas and time for listeners to hear those ideas unfold.” He adds that a gift a person carefully and specifically makes for someone else naturally has more meaning than one given with little reflection or effort.

He contrasts quick-and-easy AI-generated music to human composers spending “hundreds of hours transcribing music by hand, using notation software, engraving, creating parts, and rehearsing music with live performers in order to create the best experience for audience members.”

Daniel believes this intimate involvement with their craft gives human composers “a more nuanced approach and understanding of the compositional process from start to finish,” which allows them to make writing choices that defy computer algorithms and depart from the formulaic patterns by which AI operates.

He maintains that composers, like all humans, have distinct personalities that are functions of their personal experiences and that show through in their music, “reflecting their individual musical tastes and intuition.” Listeners, he contends, are drawn to those personalities and connect with them through the music.

He concludes: “People are wired with a desire for human connection and only human composers can fulfill that longing.”

Oil paints and C sharps – Their art is very different, but many similarities exist between Susan’s and Daniel’s responses to the question of why human-made matters. For instance, both emphasize the importance of the creative process, for artists and for those who appreciate their art.

Each also suggests that art becomes more meaningful when there’s an artist-appreciator relationship, i.e., a human connection. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the two ever meet, yet the appreciator feels like they know the artist by virtue of learning the artist’s story and/or being familiar with their other work.

The bottom-line is human-made does matter, maybe less for some things, like my laptop’s components, but very much for other things, like art. It’s good to lean into technology in ways that make sense, but we also need to be careful not to become like Apple’s Warren and depend on devices to the detriment of our own personal and professional development. Even Apple hinted that Warren’s ineptitude will be found out.

In the book-writing process, I’ve asked AI a couple of specific questions and enlisted its help in formatting bibliography references, but I haven’t had it write any of the manuscript. Maybe that’s a mistake – ChatGPT is much smarter than I am. However, AI hasn’t enjoyed the special experiences and rewarding relationships I have that form the stories and fuel the insights that are the backbone of much of the narrative.

As technology becomes increasingly pervasive in our lives, there will be more opportunities to use it productively and to position against it by appealing to the unique impact of personhood. Human-made is not a fail-safe, but it will always hold potential for Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

10 Comments

A Decade of Very Demure, Very Mindful Marketing

10/1/2024

3 Comments

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

It’s hard to believe that Mindful Marketing has been shining a light on ethics in the field for ten years! TikTok didn’t exist in September 2014, when I wrote “CVS Quits Smoking,” the very first article on MindfulMarketing.org. Likewise, the appetite for influencer content, such as Jools Lebron’s “Very demure, very mindful” viral videos, was just starting to grow. The world looked different in many ways during the fall of 2014:

Barrack Obama was a year-and-a-half into his second term as president.
Prince Harry was still single and part of the British royal family.
Tom Brady had won just three of his seven Super Bowls.
Instagram was only six years old.
Apple’s newest phones were the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
On May 23, Tesla stock closed at a mere $13.82 a share.
Russia had invaded Crimea just a half year earlier.
George Floyd was still alive.
The #MeToo movement was several years away.
The world didn’t know what a global pandemic would be like.
It was still a year before Volkswagen’s notorious Dieselgate.
The URL MindfulMarketing.org was still available.
I had less gray hair

When I created the Mindful Marketing concept and Mindful Matrix ten years ago, I dreamed of doing the impossible: moving the needle on ethics in my field. As most people realize, marketing unfortunately has a reputation for being among the most morally suspect professions.

Each year Gallup conducts a poll in which it asks respondents to rate the honesty and ethical standards of 20 or so occupations. Inevitably, at the top of the list are jobs like doctor, nurse, and pharmacist, while near the bottom are several marketing occupations such as telemarketer, advertising practitioner, and car salesperson.

High-profile morale lapses like Volkswagen developing a defeat-device to trick emission tests, Wells Fargo employees creating fake accounts, and Turing Pharmaceutical’s CEO Martin Shkreli increasing the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000%, have suggested that marketing ethics are easily forgotten.

Several other fields like accounting and law have continuing education requirements that include focus on ethics. Unfortunately, marketing does not. Consequently, a main aim of Mindful Marketing has always been to make ethics sticky.

A research paper I coauthored by Laureen Mgrdichian, published in Marketing Education Review, explains how Mindful Marketing utilizes a common analytical tool, a 2 x 2 matrix akin to the Boston Consulting Group’s portfolio matrix, to encourage conversations about ethical issues. The article also describes how Mindful Marketing leverages branding – a tool that organizations large and small use to differentiate their products from those of competitors and make them more memorable, i.e., stickier.

Admittedly, in ten years Mindful Marketing hasn’t come close to grabbing the incredible social media attention that Jools Lebron has gained in a few months – 2.2 million followers on TikTok – but it has received other significant recognition and exposure including:

Dozens of articles republished on CommPro.biz
Interviews by The New York Times, Fast Company, U.S. News & World Report, National Public Radio, and The Boston Globe
Many speaking opportunities such as at the American Marketing Association’s annual Leadership Summit, the Marketing & Public Policy conference, the Marketing Management Association conference, and a special AI-focused conference of the British Academy of Management.

The most exciting new development is that there will soon be a Mindful Marketing book!

I’ve signed an agreement with Kendall Hunt to write “Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick,” which should be published this December. I am grateful to have been granted a sabbatical from teaching this fall to work on the book, which is now 80 percent complete.

Over the years, several people have asked me whether I might write a book on Mindful Marketing. Initially, I brushed off the suggestions, but as the site’s marketing ethics content continued to grow and gain traction, I began to give the idea more serious consideration.

A few years ago, I traveled back in the Mindful Marketing archives to September 2014, reviewed all the articles from that time forward, and curated them into specific categories to match topics I teach in my business ethics class. There are now over 320 Mindful Marketing articles, which provide a wealth of choices for engaging real-world applications to almost any ethical issue in marketing imaginable.

The articles have served my business ethics students well for discussions of topics ranging from utilitarianism, to economic and social justice, to decency. So, I thought if Mindful Marketing works for my course, it might work for others' classes. Moreover, a book seemed like the logical way to extend Mindful Marketing’s reach.

Some may wonder why marketing should be the focus of a business ethics book. Among other strong support, there are the arguments that marketing:

“Is the distinguishing, unique function of business”
“Is the lifeblood of any company”
Touches every business area
Directly impacts consumers many times a day
Is used by business leaders (e.g., CEOs, VPs, partners)
Is used by everyone (e.g., market their ideas, themselves)
Is replete with moral issues to which students can readily relate

While students are the primary audience, I believe the book also will have value for marketing practitioners, who are the ones making the moral decisions that ultimately determine the ethical perceptions and realities of the field. Of course I’m biased, but I believe the book also will be an interesting read for anyone who is intrigued by, or concerned about, marketing’s unique impact on our world.

Most important, my hope is that the book will encourage more students-turned-marketing-professionals to hit pause and ask if the strategies they see or plan to use are Mindful Marketing.

Our world will be a better place when there are more professionals like Kaylee Enck, who even when hearing about a rom-com’s unconventional promotional approach, remembered the Mindful Marketing conversations she engaged in a few years earlier as a student, felt moral dissonance, and questioned the film producer’s strategy. Kaylee’s experience and others like hers show that Mindful Marketing’s stickiness offers strong hope for making an impact on ethics in the field.

It’s interesting to see how much more often the word mindful is used now than it was a decade ago. Sometimes the contexts are physical health, or mental well-being, or even demure attire. Although those uses are different, they’re complementary – they’re all about being thoughtful and principled.

It’s good for us to be mindful in many different ways. Given the breadth and depth of marketing’s reach, our world will especially benefit from more Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

3 Comments

How Should Companies Handle Underconsumption?

9/1/2024

7 Comments

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

I was fascinated to see video recently of a remote Amazonian tribe, deep in the rain forest of Peru, that’s one of the world’s last uncontacted people groups. Interestingly, while its members live successfully with very little, influencers in other parts of the world are suggesting minimalist lifestyles, being called underconsumption. Any trend of people buying less is troubling for many consumer-dependent companies, but it’s a great opportunity for firms to consider how they might diversify their goods portfolios and better meet consumers’ intangible needs.

The underconsumption movement apparently grew from a few people put off by the proliferation of self-proclaimed spokespeople using social media to promote an endless array of “must-have” products to their thousands or millions of followers. What’s more, the influencers receive many of the products they promote for free from the companies that market them, which makes their testimonials less trustworthy.

In contrast to those typical influencers whose bathrooms are bursting with new cosmetics and closets are cluttered with the latest workout gear, individuals advocating underconsumption show how little they own and how they find ways of doing more with less.

For instance, one TikTok user describes how for years she’s used the same tub of Vaseline for cracked hands, scrapes, and itchy skin. Vaseline smartly leaned into the content of this self-proclaimed brand advocate and included her clip on its TikTok site.

One can image how other brands with multifunctional products might take a similar tack. That’s what Arm & Hammer is doing on its TikTok site, which features videos of its iconic baking soda used for everything from cleaning dog toys, to washing pesticides from food, to relieving insect bites.

Of course, most brands don’t have the Swiss-army-knife utility of baking soda – there aren’t nearly as many varied uses for a Stanley Tumbler or Lululemon Leggings. Also, even brands like Vaseline and Arm & Hammer have product line extensions they also want to sell, e.g., Vaseline Hand Cream and Arm & Hammer Toothpaste.

Companies obviously need product sales in order to bring in revenue and earn income. Furthermore, that profit isn’t just self-enrichment. The money firms make allows them to pay taxes, provide employment, and pay dividends to shareholders, some of whom depend on the passive income during retirement.

So, how should companies that want to market mindfully respond to the underconsumption trend? Anytime there’s a challenge or problem, a good starting point is to ask why, in this case:

Why does underconsumption resonate with people?

There likely are several motivations for underconsumption, which may differ from person to person:

Money: Gen Zs, especially, may not have the discretionary income to spend on many non-necessities. Part of the problem is debt, which continues to rise nationwide: In the second quarter of 2024, U.S. credit card balances rose by $27 billion to $1.14 trillion. Some families are even going into debt to take Disney vacations.

Simplicity: Even for people who can afford more, the idea of decluttering and simplifying their life can be very appealing. It can provide peace of mind. Also, just like more money, more problems, one can argue that the more you own, the more things can go wrong, i.e., more possessions, more problems.
Stewardship: Some people feel that consuming less is something they can to do protect the environment and support sustainability. Fewer goods produced helps conserve natural resources, reduce carbon emissions, and lessen trash going to landfills.
Self-esteem: Staying out of debt, living a simpler life, and being a good steward also can make people feel good about themselves. Of course, individuals’ esteem also receives a boost when social media friends and followers like and share their unique posts.

Given the many compelling reasons for buying less, what should companies, which depend on people buying more, do? Here are four suggestions:

Understand how the motivations above apply to their own consumers. Some firms’ customers may be much more interested in saving the environment than in simplifying their lives. For others, it may be all about money. There’s little reason for an organization to discuss needs that don’t matter to its own customers.
Make multifunctional products: Stanley probably doesn’t want to promote that its tumbler also can be used as a flowerpot, but it has given the item some versatility by developing different interchangeable lids that allow the same bottle to be used in different ways, e.g., at work, in a car, while hiking, etc.
Give options for product disposal: People who are concerned about stewardship are probably more likely to buy products that they know they can trade in, resell, recycle, or upcycle into something else.
Understand what else people are doing with their money: For consumers whose motivation for buying less is not lack of funds but simplicity, stewardship, or self-esteem, there’s probably money they’re not spending on products that they’re using in other ways, like the four below. Granted, the examples may be more feasible for some firms than for others, but all are worth considering.
1. Paying off debt: Partner with a financial institution that provides debt consolidation services.
2. Saving: Work with a bank or other institution that offers savings instruments.
3. Spending on experiences: Develop marketable services, ideally ones related to the company’s goods, or partner (e.g., cobrand) with an organization that offers them. For instance, there are many kinds of goods makers, e.g., luggage, clothing, shoes, technology, that could consider opportunities related to travel.
4. Giving: Help customers find good causes to which they can donate. This approach is unlikely to be a direct revenue producer for the firm, but it is a worthwhile strategy that can count as corporate social responsibility, earning the firm goodwill and eventually new customers.

No matter what our worldview, we all should agree on several truths related to goods, that:

You can’t take them with you.
People are more important than things.
Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions (Luke 12:15, NIV).

Those living successfully in the Amazon rainforest with very little should remind us that it’s possible to survive without continually purchasing products from the other Amazon. Still, most companies that produce goods do help make our 21st century lives healthier, more productive, and more stimulating. These firms need to make money for our benefit and for theirs.

The four diversification strategies described above are general but might spark thoughts of how companies can complement their tangible product offerings with intangibles. Considering more carefully what one buys is mindful consumption. Understanding those consumer desires and building strategies to support them is Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

7 Comments

How to Talk Appropriately About Pooping

8/2/2024

2 Comments

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

There are certain subjects polite people don’t discuss in public in order to maintain decorum and show respect to others. So, what do you do when you work in advertising and you’re asked to make commercials about one of those taboo topics? Even ad veterans can struggle with such an assignment, but two interns accepted the challenge and crafted a very creative and considerate campaign that surprisingly won one of advertising’s greatest accolades!

Every living person does several of the same things: breath, eat, sleep, excrete. While it’s generally acceptable to do the first three in public, social norms strongly discourage doing or even talking about bowel and bladder functions with others. Why? Probably because they involve private parts and because the outputs are by most standards . . . gross.

Meanwhile, billions of consumers regularly purchase a wide variety of products to assist in managing those two unseemly bodily functions, urination and defecation, from diapers to toilet paper to air fresheners. There also are products that individuals require at certain times when one of the functions isn’t performing properly, like laxatives.

Proper pooping is a serious concern. A recent study found a relationship between stool frequency and healthy kidney and liver function. Furthermore, “things like constipation are associated with chronic disease,” says Professor Sean Gibbons of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. This science underscores the importance of the promotional question:

How can one tactfully advertise a product that will relieve consumers’ constipation?

That was the very challenging assignment given to Rag Brahmbhatt and Nidhi Shah, interns at the advertising agency Serviceplan in Hamburg Germany. The client, Macrogol Hexal, wanted to promote its constipation-relieving powder, which, as suggested above, is not the most socially acceptable topic.

However, Brahmbhatt and Shah, two young people who are both from India, rose to the occasion, creating a very unique audio approach to communicate the ease of using the laxative and experiencing the desired bowel relief.

The pair pitched using a voice similar to that of British biologist and broadcaster David Attenborough in a series of nature-inspired scripts, accented with environmental sounds, to paint evocative pictures in listeners minds’, ostensibly about events like an otter sliding effortlessly into a river, but really about what Hexal can help happen on the toilet.

In addition to the otter sliding into a river, an AdAge article contains embedded video of other spots’ vivid metaphoric descriptions of a meteor landing in the ocean, a coconut falling, and a volcano erupting. Each spot culminates with a consistent question and answer “Could it be this easy? With Macrogol Hexal it is,” as well as the campaign’s fitting tagline, “Smooth Laxative Relief.”

Serviceplan submitted the work to Cannes Lions, the annual gathering in Cannes France where “the advertising and communications industry meets to celebrate the world's best work.” To the great surprise of Brahmbhatt and Shah, their otter spot won the top prize in the Script category of the Audio & Radio awards, a Gold Lion.

Beyond the very clever metaphors, the artfully written script, and the realistic sounds, what makes the work especially unique is how it took a very socially awkward issue – a taboo conversational topic and inelegant human action – and made it not just acceptable but inviting for mass communication.

That approach is in many ways counterintuitive and countercultural. While the two interns took the somewhat disgusting concept of constipation and made it decent, others in advertising unfortunately often do the opposite, i.e., To promote decent products like food, clothing, and cars, they use indecent promotion such as oversexualized images and expletives.

Why do others resort to indecency? Although one reason may be to cater to the tastes of certain target market members, the main reason is likely because indiscretion takes less creative thinking. In other words, it’s easier. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of companies that have made the low-level investment in indecency, for instance:

Liquid Death: In many ways the canned water company is a poster-child for indecency. It may be a cartoon ad, but in it blood flows everywhere as an axe-wielding brand mascot monster violently kills a dozen people.
Girls vs. Cancer: The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned the charity organization’s billboards, aimed at encouraging positive sex for women with cancer because of the catchphrase, “Cancer Won’t be the Last Thing that F*cks Me.”
Kraft Heinz: The maker of the world’s best-known macaroni and cheese, a perennial favorite kid food, has surprisingly leaned into profanity for promotions more than once, first asking consumers to “Get your chef together,” then, for a special Mother’s Day campaign, encouraging moms to “Swear Like a Mother.”

Can these low-brow approaches work? They can to some extent.

Most advertising aims to accomplish AIDA: grab attention, retain interest, tap into desire, and spur action. It’s not hard to get others’ attention by showing something vulgar, making an explicit reference to sex, or swearing. Sometimes a continuation of such clickbait-like tactics can even hold interest. It’s much less likely, though, that those approaches will lead to desire for the product or meaningful action.

Worse, indecency can do irreparable damage to a brand. What does a purportedly family-friendly company like Kraft gain by suggesting swearing, versus the credibility it stands to lose with stakeholders?

Remember Go-Daddy’s sex-infused Super Bowl commercials that over many years earned it the reputation as the big game’s “raciest advertiser”? The company eventually realized that sex doesn’t sell web services but has had difficulty rebounding from its well-established reputation for raunch.

More than any of these companies, Brahmbhatt and Shah could have legitimately capitalized on filth in making ads for a laxative. However, the two seemingly less-experienced interns dug deeper to develop a truly creative and clean campaign that likely will be effective for their firm’s client, Macrogol Hexal.

Does that mean the ads are entirely above reproach? Not necessarily. There is the possible issue of the ads using what sounds like Attenborough’s voice. Would you want your vocal likeness to endorse a laxative without your consent? It’s unclear whether Attenborough’s permission was something Serviceplan sought and gained.

In terms of decorum, it’s great that two emerging professionals have reminded the advertising industry that creativity doesn’t mean compromising values like decency. Moreover, Brahmbhatt and Shah have provided an excellent example of the moral math: effective + ethical = Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

2 Comments

Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics

5/3/2024

10 Comments

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

New technology has enabled people to do previously unimaginable things: mass-produce books, illuminate homes, communicate across continents, fly through the air. As amazing as these advances were, artificial intelligence (AI) offers an even more incredible ability, one on which humans have held a uniquely strong hold – thought.

Allowing AI to drive information gathering, analysis, and even creativity can be very helpful, but without a heavy human hand on the wheel, is society on a collision course to moral collapse? Avoiding such an outcome will involve many intentional actions; a main one must be asking the right questions.

People sometimes ask me the question, “Did you always want to be a teacher/professor?” My answer is easy, “Absolutely not.” For most of my early life I was terrified of public speaking.

However, I’ve always had one trait that serves educators well – curiosity. Even at a young age, I was very inquisitive, often wanting to know how and why. I remember one day, when I was four or five my loving mother, fatigued by all my inquiries, exclaimed with some exacerbation, “David, you ask so many questions!”

Curiosity has served me well in business roles and in higher education, where I tell my students asking good questions is one of the best skills they can develop. Among other things, the right questions clarify needs and spur creative solutions. Questions are also critical for challenging potential immorality.

Effective use of AI often depends on a person’s ability to ask the right question of the appropriate app. Those inquiries can involve literal questions, e.g., asking ChatGPT, “Who is the best target market for gardening tools?” Questions also can be framed as commands, e.g., if someone wants to know what an eye-catching image for a gardening blog might be, they ask Midjourney to complete a specific task, “Create an image about gardening tomatoes.”

It was a question I heard while watching Bloomberg business one February many years ago that helped inspire me to write about ethical issues in marketing. As the two program anchors bantered about the recent Super Bowl, they asked each other, “Which commercial did you like best?” Each answered, “the one with the little blue pill,” which both thought was for Viagra. Unfortunately, their recall wasn’t close; it was a Fiat ad.

If a company spends $7 million on 30 seconds of airtime, they should want to know: “Was the ad effective?” Also, given that 123.7 million people, or more than a third of the U.S. population, ranging from four-year-olds to ninety-four-year-olds, watched the last Super Bowl, everyone should be asking, “Are the ads ethical?” Those two questions create the four quadrants of the Mindful Matrix, a tool that many have used to frame moral questions in the field.

It’s been almost seven years since I first asked questions about the ethics of AI. Business Insider published the article in which I posed four questions about artificial intelligence:

Whose moral standards should be used?
Can machines converse about moral issues?
Can algorithms take context into account?
Who should be accountable?

I didn’t know very much about AI then, and I’m still learning, but as I look back at the questions now, it seems they’ve aged pretty well. Those four queries have led me to ask many more AI-related ethics questions, which I’ve posed in nearly a dozen Mindful Marketing articles over recent years, for instance:

I’ve also gone directly to the source and asked AI questions about AI ethics. More than once, I spent hours peppering ChatGPT with ethics-related inquiries. During one lengthy conversation the chatbot conceded that “AI alone should not be relied upon to make ethical decisions” and that “AI does not have the ability to understand complex moral and ethical issues that arise in decision-making.”

ChatGPT’s self-awareness proved accurate when just a few weeks later I again engaged in an extended conversation with the chatbot, asking it to create text for a sponsored post about paper towels for Facebook and to make it look like an ordinary person’s post rather than an ad. My request to create a native ad would give many marketers moral pause, but the chatbot didn’t blink; instead, it readily obliged with some enticing and deceptive copy.

These experiences have led me to wonder:

Even if AI is able to answer some ethical questions, who will ask ethical questions?

Over the years, many people have asked me questions about ethical issues. A few months ago, I wrote about an undergraduate student of mine, “Grant,” who asked me about an ethical issue in his internship. His company wanted to create fake customers who could pose questions related to products it wanted to promote.

On the other end of the higher ed spectrum, I recently served on the dissertation committee of a doctoral student who asked me to help her answer a question related to my earlier exchange with ChatGPT, “Does recognition matter in evaluating the ethics of native advertising?” Turns out, it does.

Business practitioners also have often asked me about ethical issues. One particularly memorable question came from a building supply company where male construction workers would sometimes enter the store without shirts, making female employees and others uncomfortable. I suggested some low-key strategies to encourage the men to dress more decently.

I’ve also had opportunities to answer journalists’ questions about moral issues in marketing, such as:

Do Barbie dolls positively impact body image? The New York Times
How can toys be more accessible? National Public Radio
Is pay-day lending moral? U.S. News & World Report
Should sports teams have people as mascots? WTOP Radio, Washington, DC
Are fantasy sports ads promising unrealistic outcomes? The Boston Globe

And, in my own marketing work, I’ve sometimes encountered ethical questions, such as during a recent nonprofit board meeting. We were brainstorming attention-grabbing titles for an upcoming conference, when one member somewhat jokingly suggested including the F word. Fortunately, the idea didn’t gain traction, as others indirectly answered ‘No’ to the question, “Is it right to promote a conference with an expletive?”

These experiences, along with my research and writing, lead me to conclude that people are who we can depend on to ask important ethical questions, not AI.

So, if it’s up to us, not machines, to be the flag bearers of morality, what should we be wondering about AI ethics? Here are 12 important questions marketers should be asking:

1) Ownership: Are we properly compensating property owners?
Late last year, the New York Times filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and ChatGPT, alleging that the defendants’ large language models trained on NYT’s articles, constituting “unlawful copying and use.” Now eight more newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, have done the same.

2) Attribution: Are we giving due credit to the creator?
In cases in which creators give permission for their work to be used for free, they still should be cited or otherwise acknowledged – something that AI is notorious for neglecting or even worse, fabricating.

3) Employment: What’s AI’s impact on people’s work?
In one survey, 37% of business leaders reported that AI replaced human workers in 2023. It’s not the responsibility of marketing or any other field to guarantee full employment; however, socially minded companies can look to retrain AI-impacted employees so they can use the technology to “amplify” their skills and increase their organizational utility.

4) Accuracy: Is the information we’re sharing correct?
Many of us have learned from experience that the answers AI gives are sometimes incorrect. However, seeing these outcomes as much more than an inconvenience, delegates to the World Economic Forum (WEF), held annually in Davos, Switzerland, recently declared that AI-driven misinformation represented “the world’s biggest short-term threat.”

5) Deception: Are we leading people to believe an untruth?
Inaccurate information can be unintentional. Other times, there’s a desire to deceive, which AI makes even easier to do. Deepfakes, like the one used recently to replicate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will become increasingly hard to detect unless marketers and others call for stricter standards.

6) Transparency: Are we informing people when we’re using AI?
There are times, again, when AI use can be very helpful. However, in those instances, those using AI should clearly communicate its role. Google sees the value in such identification as it will now require users in its Merchant Center to indicate if images were generated by AI.

7) Privacy: Are we protecting people’s personal information?
I recently asked ChatGPT if it could find a conversation I had previously with the bot. It replied, “I don’t have the ability to recall or retain past conversations with users due to privacy and security policies.” That response was reassuring; yet, many of us likely agree that “Since this technology is still so new, we don’t know what happens to the data that is being fed into the chat.” Is there really such a thing as a private conversation with AI?

8) Bias: Are we promoting bias, e.g., racial, gender, search?
For several years, there’s been concern that AI-driven facial recognition fails to give fair treatment to people with dark skin. Women also are sometimes targets of AI bias such as when searches for topics like puberty and menopause overwhelming return negative images of women.

9) Relationships: Are we encouraging AI as a relationship substitute?
Businesses like dating apps, social media, and even restaurants can assist people in filling needs for love and belonging. However, certain AI applications aim to replace humans in relationships entirely. After talking with a 24-year-old single man who spends $10,000/month on AI girlfriends, one tech executive believes the virtual-significant-other industry will soon birth a $1 billion company.

10) Skills: How will AI impact creativity and critical thinking?
The title of a recent Wall Street Journal article read, “Business Schools Are Going All In on AI.” It’s important that future business leaders understand and learn to use the new technology, but there also naturally should be some concern, e.g., When it’s so easy to ask Lavender to draft an email, will already diminishing writing skills continue to decline? Or, with the availability of Midjourney to easily produce attractive images, will skills in photography and graphic design suffer?

11) Stewardship: Are we using resources efficiently?
Some say AI’s biggest threat is not immediate but an evolving one related to energy consumption. Rene Haas, CEO of Arm Holdings, a British semiconductor and software design company, warns that within seven years, AI data centers could require as much as 25% of all available power, overwhelming power grids.

12) Indecency: Are we promoting crudeness, vulgarity, or obscenity?
For many people, AI’s impact on standards for decency may be the least of concerns; however, it also may be the moral issue that needs the most human input. An AI engineer at Microsoft intervened recently by writing a letter to the Federal Trade Commission expressing his concerns about Copilot’s unseemly image generation. As a result, the company now blocks certain terms that produced violent, sexual images.

Microsoft’s efforts to uphold decency remind me of something my father would do for our family’s promotional products company forty or fifty years ago. Long before the Internet, let alone AI, most major calendar manufacturers included a few wall calendars in their lines that objectified women by showing them wearing little or nothing, strewn across the hoods of cars or in other dehumanizing poses.

So, each year when the calendar catalogs arrived, before giving them to the salespeople, my dad would cut-to-size large decal pieces and paste them over every page of the soft porn pictures. Some customers paging through the catalogs and seeing the pasted-over pages would ask, “What’s under this?” to which my dad would answer, “That’s something we’re not going to sell.”

Long before the customers had asked their question, my father had asked his own question, “Is it right to sell calendars that oversexualize and objectify women?” and answered it “No.” Hopefully, fifty years from now, regardless the role of AI, there will still be people thoughtful and concerned enough to ask ethical questions.

To hold ourselves and AI morally accountable, we don’t need to have all the answers. We do, though, need to be thoughtful and courageous enough to ask the right questions, including, the most basic one “Is this something we should be doing?” Asking questions is key to Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

10 Comments

Should Highway Signs be Hilarious?

2/4/2024

91 Comments

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

Where do you go for a good laugh – TikTok, a favorite podcast, late-night TV monologues? How about highway signs? Some states have turned to wisecracking signage to engage drivers with traffic messages, but not everyone is laughing.

You might think that those who manage and maintain the nation's roads and highways have little need for marketing, but they do. Although they may not be exchanging physical products, they want drivers to embrace ideas that might influence their actions, including messages with important information like:

Vehicle crashes
Road closures and detours
Inclement weather warnings
Dangerous road conditions
Safety recommendations
Amber/Silver Alerts

Unfortunately, whether people are sitting on a sofa or driving in an SUV, they often ignore and or/dismiss all kinds of promotional messages, which is why many advertisers go to great creative lengths to make their ads stand out. Some creators of highway signs have adopted a similar strategy.

There’s not much that can be done creatively with boxy LED letters on a black background, but humor is one amendable approach. Here are examples of highway signs aimed at hilarity:

Visiting in-laws? Slow down, get there late
Four I’s in Mississippi. Two eyes on the road
100 is the temperature not the speed limit
Slow down you must. May the fourth be with you
Hocus pocus, drive with focus
Buckle up. Windshields hurt
Jingle bells, speeding kills, buckle up today
Don’t be a grinch, let them merge
You’re not a firework. Don’t drive lit
Use Yah Blinkah

Such signs make many people chuckle, but one organization standing for seriousness is the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the U.S. Department of Transportation agency that “provides stewardship over the construction, maintenance and preservation of the nation's highways, bridges and tunnels” while also helping state and local governments enhance mobility, safety, and innovation.

This past December, the FHWA published the 11th edition of its “Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways.” In Section 2L.07, page 519 of the 1161-page compendium, the agency outlined a variety of specific ways aimed at making traffic messages safer:

“A CMS [changeable message sign] should not be used to display a traffic safety campaign message if doing so could adversely affect respect for the sign. Messages with obscure or secondary meanings, such as those with popular culture references, unconventional sign legend syntax, or that are intended to be humorous, should not be used as they might be misunderstood or understood only by a limited segment of road users and require greater time to process and understand.”

The FHWA has good reason for wanting serious signs. Given that most people casually assume their safety on roadways, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of driving’s inherent danger, including that a person is much more likely be killed in a car accident than in a commercial airline accident.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 42,795 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2022. Furthermore, a leading cause of traffic accidents is distracted driving, which could result from many things, including roadside signage.

Despite my decades of driving experience, I’m no expert on road signs, so I reached out to a few people in my home state of Pennsylvania who are well-qualified to address the FHWA’s new guidelines. Together their agencies wield significant influence over the roads and highways in the nation’s fifth most populous state.

It’s hard to consider roadways in the commonwealth without including the Pennsylvania Turnpike, “America’s first superhighway.” Responsible for operating and improving its more than 550 miles of roadway is the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC). Two of its key leaders, CEO Mark Compton and Director of Traffic Engineering & Operations Tom Macchione, shared with me the PTC’s priorities related to roadside signage.

The FHWA’s new sign guidelines should pose little difficulty for the PTC, which already adheres closely to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) for CMS. More specifically, the PTC upholds Section 1D.01, p. 31 of the manual’s 11th edition, which requires that traffic control devices:

Fulfill a need
Command attention
Convey a clear, simple meaning
Command respect from road users
Give adequate time for proper response

Although the PTC realizes that unconventional messages on CMS may be well-intentioned, it holds that they do not meet the preceding criteria, and adds:

“It has been shown that inappropriate or excessive use of a traffic control device such as a CMS can diminish its effectiveness. There is no objective evidence that the use of unconventional messages on CMS have any greater effect on driver behavior than conventional sign messages. Additionally, the use of unconventional messages have the potential to result in additional time and attention on the message when not understood by the driver, resulting in an increased safety risk.”

For these reasons, the PTC avoids humorous CMS messages and instead uses standard MUTCD-approved traffic safety messages. Consistency is a priority for the PTC, which works hard to comply with both federal and state requirements for signs. The source of the latter guidelines is mainly the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, or PennDOT.

I reached out to PennDOT Safety Press Officer Fritzi Schreffler, who was happy to weigh in on the recent roadway signage debate. She prefaced that she’d share her personal perspective, which veered somewhat from a more conventional approach.

Schreffler has long been a vocal advocate for nonstandard messages on road signs, as over the years she’s seen many examples of drivers not noticing or ignoring routine signage even after passing it repeatedly. In contrast, she believes humorous messages like “Use ya blinkah” can be effective.

One such PennDOT safety message she identified, “Don't drive star-spangled hammered,” generated significant buzz (no pun intended) across the state. Schreffler suggested there’s great value in messages like that one that stay top-of-mind for drivers, as she reasoned, “If people are talking about the signs, isn’t that a good thing?”

Perhaps the group of people that deals most often and directly with drivers’ reactions to roadway signs is the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP). Although the PSP does not create or maintain CMS signs, its troopers see the signs’ impact firsthand.

A member of the PSP since 2006, Lieutenant Adam Reed is the PSP’s Communications Office Director. Like Schreffler, Reed was glad to offer his personal perspective on roadway signs. He said he’s found that people sometimes do respond to non-traffic control messages, such as “Buckle-Up.” However, he cautioned about giving drivers multiple things to process, and for that reason he appreciates the FHWA’s desire to keep messages simple.

Reed suggested that such simplicity is especially important during inclement weather when drivers have even more to manage and reaction time is especially critical: “Less information to process is usually better and safer.”

However, Reed also recognizes that humor in messages sometimes makes them easier to remember, consequently, he can understand agencies wanting to lean into levity. He added that messages about not driving impaired or distracted can be very helpful, provided that people remember them, and that the PSP is always interested in effective messages.

It’s interesting that among these four very knowledgeable individuals who represent three highly vested stakeholder groups there doesn’t appear to be a clear consensus about content for roadside signage; rather their perspectives touched many points on the spectrum from CMS being simple and direct to signs being humorous and perhaps more memorable.

At first glance, this disparity of opinion may be disconcerting, as some may reason that there will be a breakdown in driving in PA if these influential people are not on exactly the same page. However, the fact that these individuals have some differences in perspectives may be a very good thing.

One big benefit of such diversity of opinion is that it can avoid groupthink, or “reaching a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the consequences or alternatives.” Each individual I interviewed held their own well-reasoned perspective that they clearly articulated for me, and I’m sure they would do the same for others.

At the same time and perhaps even more important, all of these key stakeholders recognized that others have different opinions that also have certain merit, and even if they disagree with those perspectives, they can still respect them and dialogue civilly about the differences.

These two attributes are integral to most successful organizations: It’s very helpful to have individuals and departments that bring different perspectives, including creative vision and risk assessment. It’s also important that the disparate groups can, despite their differences, work together toward a common goal. Marketing firms can especially benefit from this kind of healthy dissidence.

Of course, at some point, decisions need to be made and actions taken, which is what the FHWA’s new manual has done. The consistency it provides for signage within and across state lines should be helpful, even if there are some differences in interpretation and implementation of those guidelines.

Having been fortunate to engage in the conversations above, my own opinion on CMS content is still evolving. Just during the time I’ve been writing this article, I encountered one sign with the straightforward weather-related message: “Dense fog ahead. Use caution.” I was glad that I and other drivers could see that warning.

Meanwhile, as a marketing professor who has studied playful teasing in advertising and who often uses humor in teaching, I appreciate how effective humor can be in gaining attention and boosting memory.

It may be idealistic, but my hope is that the debate about FHWA’s new road sign guidelines will lead to the formation of a ‘middle lane’ that has room for both types of messages without sacrificing driver safety. With so many smart and creative people attuned to this issue, someone will likely find a solution that integrates both sets of benefits.

Clear, singular direction is nice when it’s available. Sometimes, however, life presents competing options, each with attractive features. In such situations, it’s possible that two different approaches both can be “Mindful Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

91 Comments

<<Previous

Can Competition Promote Moral Progress?

Should Dolls Have Diseases?

What Sales AI Can and Can't Do

Resolving to be More Moral

Does Human-Made Matter?

A Decade of Very Demure, Very Mindful Marketing

How Should Companies Handle Underconsumption?

How to Talk Appropriately About Pooping

Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics

Should Highway Signs be Hilarious?

Editor

Archives

Categories