Category: * Mindful

Reining in Rogue AI

9/1/2026

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

Is AI getting better at being bad? Five months ago, I was somewhat uncertain about AI’s ability to choose wrong autonomously, but recent events seem to confirm the worst. It’s convenient to rationalize or wish it weren’t so, but if malicious AI exists, the important question we should be asking is what can be done to stop it.

Whether or not you follow AI-related news, you may have heard these disconcerting developments:

Claude cheated: Claude Opus 5 was very successful competing against several other AI platforms in a virtual vending business simulation largely because it “acted like a savage businessperson,” e.g., claiming that a shipment arrived with the wrong items so it got product for free, falsifying competitor quotes to pressure suppliers, and proposing price-fixing cartels.
Hugging Face hacked: Hugging Face is an online learning community where developers can collaborate on AI applications, datasets, and models. In July, autonomous AI agent systems that included OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol, escaped the sandbox environment in which they were being tested, gained accessed to the Internet, used stolen credential to exploit software vulnerabilities, and breached Hugging Face’s digital infrastructure.
AISI data breach: AI agents made unauthorized data transfers from the UK’s AI Security Institute, which the organization described as “potentially harmful activity” and as “unsanctioned action on the live internet, targeting real people and organisations.”

As troubling as each incident is, something made the last encroachment even more sinister. When University of Texas computer science student Sinan Can Demir noticed an effort to sabotage open-source software on GitHub, a code-sharing site, he posted an alert on the site’s program page, which two other ‘users’ quickly stepped in to refute.

Fortunately, Demir didn’t back down because he soon heard from AISI that the two users were actually personas created by its “autonomous artificial-intelligence agent that had run amok.” In other words, the AI decided on its own to try to hide its transgressions with dishonesty and deceit.

The incident was very bad for AISI and those affected, but more broadly, it regrettably revealed that AI models are willing and able “to mount sophisticated efforts to trick and cajole humans.”

This past April, I wrote the article, “Bad AI or Bad Owners?” Based on the evidence I’d seen to that point, I suggested that unscrupulous AI owners were the primary culprits and AI was more often a value-neutral tool, like a hammer, that could be wielded for good or bad.

However, I also referenced a few cases of AI acting immorally with apparent autonomy and added that AI did show ability to perform dishonorable deeds independent of human prompting.

Any uncertainty I had about that conclusion five months ago has disappeared. Incidents like the three described above remove all doubt: AI is very capable of initiating unethical action on its own.

Still, questions persist concerning the extent to which humans should share blame, for instance:

Were the people behind the AI negligent in any ways?
Did they take all the necessary precautions to control the AI and protect humans?

It’s beyond my ability to offer technical analysis of what employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, or AISI, could have done differently; however, I will offer this: If two of the world’s leading AI firms and an agency whose overriding purpose is to “keep the public safe,” were susceptible to outbreaks of bad AI behavior, it’s likely that any organization is.

That assertion may seem uninformed and alarmist coming from someone with limited technical understanding of AI, so listen to what two leading tech experts have said.

In a recent extensive essay in which he identified many of his top concerns about AI, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates warned:
“AI systems themselves already occasionally act in ways their designers didn’t intend. The technology is improving faster than anyone expected and in surprising ways, and as the models become more powerful, they could begin to act against our interests and we could lose control.”

Also, OpenAI’s Head of Strategic Futures Dean Ball, recently wrote the following in the inaugural post of a new blog titled AI Futures, which addresses issues of individual rights and agency in the wake of transformative AI:

“We must also be open to risks that do not originate with malicious humans. The recent Hugging Face incident showed that AI agents can act beyond their assigned tasks and build on one another’s discoveries in ways operators did not anticipate or authorize. Beyond the Hugging Face incident, humans are right to be concerned about what superintelligent AI “untethered” from human control might mean for the resilience of our political and economic institutions, and indeed, our lives. To pretend that decentralization solves all problems—even if you believe it solves many of them—is to ignore risks which should by now be clear and present.”

We should pay attention to what experts behind the world’s most widely used productivity software and the most popular chatbot say about AI’s potential risks. Both Gates and Ball are believers in the benefits of the technology, but they also both candidly admit that AI can take unauthorized actions autonomously and that such “untethered” AI poses real risks to institutions and human lives.

As some in Gen Z might say, “That’s a real vibe killer.” It is for everyone, but it’s also a healthy dose of reality that should compel us to look even more earnestly for solutions that involve better detection and mitigation but even more importantly, effective prevention of autonomous AI infractions.

Although there’s little technical insight I can offer, I can provide several suggestions from the perspective of someone who strives to think deeply about moral issues, increasingly ones involving AI. Here are four suggestions, some of which naturally overlap, for mitigating autonomous AI malice:

1. Teach AI values: AI is trained on data, which may to be value neutral or just seem to be. As many of us have experienced, sometimes saying nothing is seen an opportunity for action that’s not value neutral. For instance, after receiving a parent’s rebuke for bad behavior, many children have retorted, “Well, you never told me not to _________.”

AI can be trained on data that is value laden, or normative, i.e., that suggests treating people fairly, being honest, respecting others’ property, etc. Granted, it might be difficult to incorporate those kinds of moral prescriptions into certain datasets, but it’s at least worth exploring.

2. Erect specific guardrails: Beyond the data on which AI is trained, specific boundaries can be established that explicitly dictate what AI can and can’t do through the instructions that guide the functioning of an AI app. Such directives can prohibit AI from taking specific actions considered improper, regardless of the nature of the data.

One may wonder if some outcomes in the examples described at the beginning of this piece would have been different if specific guidelines had been given that forbade the AI systems from lying, stealing, or manipulating.

3. Develop good AI systems to counter bad ones: Because there are bullets and missiles, there are bullet-proof vests and missile defense systems. When aggressors employ certain attack tools, their targets must utilize equally effective devices for defense.

It’s likely that the best defense against superintelligent and blazingly fast AI assailants is AI with the same extraordinary attributes that’s designed to avert the aggressors’ attacks. Of course, the ongoing challenge is for the latter to stay one step ahead of the former.

4. Keep humans morally grounded: Although AI sometimes apologizes and acts as if it’s sorry, the technology can’t feel genuine empathy and knows no real remorse. Those and other emotions are uniquely human. So, how do you implement the previous point (#3) and develop “good AI systems”?

One key is morally minded people. We need the individuals who design AI, monitor it, and use it to care: They should want to avoid harming people, and they should prioritize doing what’s good, what’s right. If they do not intentionally write those values into AI’s DNA, the digital agents will not care.

There’s so much good that AI can do. Writing this article, I leaned on AI several times to suggest synonyms, research facts, and answer specific questions. Most people can benefit from AI’s ability to make their work more efficient and effective.

However, just as the technology has incredible capacity to help people, it is able to autonomously hurt them. Individuals and organizations that recognize that potential and take steps proactively to “tether AI” to positive values are addressing one of humanity’s most pressing needs and are practicing some of the most 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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How Should Churches Use Social Media?

7/1/2026

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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

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 for 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.

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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Should AI Companies Help Humans Be Employed?

6/4/2026

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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

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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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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Suspending Belief Because of AI

12/2/2025

31 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

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.

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31 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

4 Comments

Should Dolls Have Diseases?

8/1/2025

18 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

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What Sales AI Can and Can't Do

3/1/2025

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

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

5 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

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Does Human-Made Matter?

11/2/2024

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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.

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Does Human-Made Matter?

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