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Does the World Need "Moral Police" for AI?

11/1/2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Can Competition Promote Moral Progress?

10/8/2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First-Place Team, Susquehanna University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cracks in the Branding Barrel

9/1/2025

23 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

When you write about current ethical issues in marketing, there are sometimes trending topics you feel compelled to discuss. That’s the case with Cracker Barrel, which has stirred up two hot questions: 1) Is the company’s rebranding as unpalatable as some say, and 2) Has the “Old Country Store” cooked up something unethical?

To call the current conversation surrounding the half-century-old restaurant known for downhome southern atmosphere and comfort food a “controversy” is a bit of a misnomer. True controversies are pretty evenly split between proponents and detractors. Looking online and talking with people about Cracker Barrel’ rebranding, it’s hard to find many who like the restaurant chain’s new direction.

A basic Google search of “Cracker Barrel rebrand” produces these kinds of harsh responses:

“So Arrogant”
“The Worst Rebrand of All Time?
“How Cracker Barrel’s Rebrand Went So Wrong”

Even one of the restaurant’s co-founders, 93-year-old Tommy Lowe, has called the logo resign “pitiful.”

When I asked a couple of my classes for their thoughts, responses to the rebrand were also chilly. Most of the students are in Gen Z, not the stereotypical Cracker Barrel customer, and only a few had visited the restaurant recently, but many still voiced strong negative reactions. One student suggested the whole thing might be a PR stunt.

Although anything’s possible, I doubt the company would have 1) expected such backlash and 2) been willing to risk the long-term repercussions of things going sideways. That’s not a risk many companies would be willing to assume, particularly a restaurant as traditional as Cracker Barrel.

So, why did it decide to do such a bold rebranding? The company needed to reverse a downward slide and better position itself for the future.

On April 9, 2021, Cracker Barrel stock (CBRL on NASDAQ) traded at a high of $175.09. Since then, the stock has charted a rather consistent downward path.

About a year ago on September 6, 2024, its stock reached a low of $37.33, a decrease of $137.76, or 78.7% of the stock’s value from the April 2021 high.

The precipitous loss of equity would be concern enough, but demographics also suggest a challenging future for the restaurant chain that for many years has targeted Baby Boomers and older adults. As those customers keep aging, their restaurant visits decrease and will eventually dry up. Like any organization, Cracker Barrel must ensure there are new, younger consumers to replace the ones who age out of its products/services.

Although this generation-to-generation transition is a perennial challenge for restaurants and other businesses, significant industry changes have made life even harder for Cracker Barrel. Fast casual chains like Panera, Chipotle, and Cava are now the eateries of choice for many consumers, including Gen Ys and Zs, who often would rather not spend the time and money on a more traditional table-service meal.

In addition, food tastes have changed considerably over recent years. Comfort food for millennials is more likely to be a bowl with brown rice and falafel than a plate of mashed potatoes and meat loaf.

These trends have already severely impacted sit-down dining restaurants such as Applebee’s, Red Lobster, and TGI Fridays. Cracker Barrel likely has lasted longer because its older and more loyal customers helped insulate the company from the trends, but that insulation is now wearing very thin.

To its credit, Cracker Barrel’s rebranding has involved much more than just revising its logo, or graphic icon.

Earlier this year, the restaurant chain began updating the interiors of its dining rooms, which has included brighter colors and more comfortable seating. It also revamped its country stores to make the floorspace less cluttered and the merchandise more attractive. Finally, it added a variety of new menu items that both fit the old southern comfort food theme and appeal to more modern palettes, e.g., Nashville Hot and Honey Butter Fried Chicken.

Big market challenges usually demand bold solutions, which Cracker Barrel’s A-to-Z rebranding seems to represent. To be fair, it didn’t just slap a bandage (a more modern logo) on deeply seated problems. However, that general evaluation doesn’t mean the specific tactics it’s used are the right ones.

Since I’m Gen X, not one of the younger age cohorts that Cracker Barrel is most interested in for survival and future growth (Gen Y and Z), I spoke with a couple of people who are.

The first conversation was my son Daniel Hagenbuch, a doctoral student at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, who has a great ear for sound and eye for design. Although he hadn’t visited a Cracker Barrel store since the renovations, he’s liked what he’s seen online of the new design elements. He said the fresher paint colors and new wall décor looked more tasteful and should appeal more to younger customers, who would appreciate a more modern look. He also thought one of the restaurant’s new seasonal items, OREO Stuffed Cheesecake Pancakes looked promising. He wasn’t, however, a fan of the new logo.

Neither was the second Gen Z member with whom I spoke, Daniel Smith, a thoughtful senior graphic design major and marketing minor at Messiah University. On one hand, he understood reasons for replacing the old logo, such as its fine detail posing challenges for scaling to small sizes like those required for pens and business cards. However, his design sense also went against the new logo:

“The rebranded logo uses a modern and minimalist approach, which is not at all related to Cracker Barrel’s ‘old country store’ aesthetic. The type is surrounded by a massive, blank margin space, making it feel like it lacks character. Also, the yellow space behind the type is supposed to be a barrel on its side but is barely recognizable, making the new logo worse than the iconic original.”

His evaluation aligns with my own analysis and likely with those of other professionals. Logos shouldn’t be pictures, partly because they need to be adaptable to a variety of surfaces and imprint sizes. The first article I ever wrote made that case: “Logos Should Work on Paper, Products,” which the American Marketing Association published in Marketing News in 2001.

Nostalgia is often a complicated thing to market. Sometimes what people want isn’t exactly the ‘way it used to be’, rather it’s a blend of the past and present. For instance, some new turntables for vinyl records have Universal Serial Bus (USB) outputs even though USB didn’t exist during the golden age of turntables. USB was first introduced in 1996. By that time CDs had replaced cassettes, which had replaced vinyl records a decade or more before.

A metaphor for people’s mixed appreciation for nostalgia might be American’s tastes for international food. Although many of us say we really like Mexican food or Chinese food, individuals from those nations sometimes point out that the food in their home countries is considerably different than the versions served in the U.S., which may be blander, have less heat, etc.

To survive, Cracker Barrel’s value proposition probably needs to become a fusion of past and present in order to satisfy the desires of younger generations who lives are increasing far removed from the restaurant’s old country era. For that reason, refreshing the dining area, renovating the store, and revamping the menu are likely good things.

Revising its logo was also a good idea; however, the company’s execution fell short. The new logo was lacking in many ways. There likely could have been more input into its development and better communication ahead of its release.

Change can be hard for any of us to accept, including when it’s related to an iconic restaurant. However, it’s hard to argue that Cracker Barrel’s changes were unethical. For these reasons, the restaurant’s less-than-satisfying recipe for change tastes like Simple-Minded Marketing.

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

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Should Dolls Have Diseases?

8/1/2025

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

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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Should AI Help People Stay In Touch?

7/1/2025

16 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

When was the last time you spoke with your mom or dad? For adult children with their own families and demanding jobs, time between conversations with their aging parents can quickly become days or weeks. At a time when there seems to be a technological solution for every problem, it’s not surprising that there’s an app for that, but do we really want our moms and dads chatting with AI instead of with us?

InTouch is an internet-based subscription service that allows customers to enlist Mary, a pleasant and engaging AI agent, to have phone conversations with their aging parents. AI Touch s.r.o., a Czech Republic company that appears to own InTouch, offers several sample conversations on its website.

The site also provides some compelling rationale for the service, such as:

Stimulating the loved ones’ minds
Supporting their emotional well-being
Strengthening family connections

The company adds, “We go beyond small talk, discussing family, hobbies, memories, and even brain teasers to keep [the older parents’] mind active and spirits lifted.” The firm also promises to provide a short summary of each call so the subscriber can know how their parent is doing, or if they didn’t answer the phone.

Ultimately, inTouch aims to address a customer pain point that’s increasingly common for a particular generation of people who often must care for two sets of loved ones simultaneously: their own children and their aging parents. The caught-in-the-middle phenomenon has spawned the fitting term "the sandwich generation."

The age cohort that’s currently most likely to find itself in the middle is Generation X, whose members, born between 1965 and 1980, are 45 to 60 years old. Studies have shown that the pull of two-way caregiving places unique strain on Gen X’s time, as well as on their financial and mental health.

I am one of those Gen Xs who recently lived the sandwich experience. My father passed away less than four years ago, and my mother a little more than a year. Given a variety of physical challenges as well as worsening dementia, my mom required a particularly great amount of care in the years leading up to her passing.

At the same time, my wife and I were not yet empty nesters, and we both had demanding full-time jobs. Often it was difficult to balance the competing demands placed upon us.

Although that time was not long ago, AI agent-based services like InTouch didn’t exist then, or at least I didn’t know about them. If InTouch has been available to me, should I have used it to interact with my mother?

As just mentioned, I have firsthand experience similar to that of inTouch’s target market, which helps me envision the service’s pros and cons. However, I’m not an expert on older adults or the multifaceted social and psychological dynamics surrounding the aging process, so I reached out to someone who is.

Dr. Raeann Hamon is Distinguished Professor of Family Science and Gerontology at Messiah University. Her meaningful research, impactful writing, and influential leadership over several decades have gained her international renown. Moreover, she’s a thoughtful and compassionate person who wants the best for others.

I shared inTouch’s website with Dr. Hamon and asked if she would offer her perspective on the service. She graciously agreed.

Dr. Hamon acknowledged inTouch’s “great sales pitch” to time-strapped adult children who feel the challenge of caring for older family members, including engaging in what can be long, repetitive conversations. She pointed to the website’s promises to stimulate the mind, support emotional well-being, and reassure and connect you, which she said on the surface seem like positive applications of AI.

However, Dr. Hamon’s overriding reaction to InTouch was one of sadness and concern about AI replacing real human interaction with older family members. She explained her unease:

“The problem for me is that connections between aging adults and their adult children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, and caregivers are irreplaceable. It’s not possible to duplicate them with machines, nor should we try. In my opinion, humans need to prioritize togetherness and share the depth of feelings possible in direct relationship with each other.”

At the same time, she was circumspect, recognizing that there are unique situations that might warrant special consideration:

“Perhaps there are older adults who are socially isolated and have no extended family. Maybe this would be useful for them. But even then, I would argue that such a situation offers an opportunity for neighbors to reach out to make connections. What would we say if busy parents employed a similar AI application for interacting with their children? Where does it end?”

Ultimately, she maintained that if there is a place for a service like inTouch, “it should be for the benefit of the older parent, not the adult child.”

Dr. Hamon’s reflections resonated with me. I’m sure I speak for my sisters when I say that as we cared for our aging parents, it was always with the goal of making their later years as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. From what our parents said and showed, a large part of that enjoyment came from being with and talking with us.

In the month before my father died, I had several opportunities to drive him around the areas that used to be his sales territory for the promotional products company he started, which became our family business. As his mind was still very sharp, we had many great conversations that included fond memories of the places and people we knew.

My mother’s situation was different. Because of worsening dementia, she experienced many years of progressive mental decline that eventually challenged her to recall even the most basic facts about herself and her family. Still, she maintained a very positive attitude through her final days and continued to cherish conversations with her loved ones.

My sisters and I also treasured those times and talks with our parents. We didn’t know then how long they would last, but we realized they were limited, which made them priceless then and now.

Dr. Hamon feels the same way. Beyond her professional roles, she’s a person who has experienced many of the familial dynamics she researches, writes about, and teaches. As a daughter she says, “I would never trade a minute with either of my parents.”

These experiences of mine, my siblings, and Dr. Hamon lead me to believe that even as inTouch offers an arguably helpful service to time-strapped adult children, it may be doing a disservice to them by taking away some of the most important and meaningful interactions of their lives: time-bound, person-specific experiences and that no technology can replicate or replace.

Each day, AI gets better at imitating human interactions. As it does, more people likely will allow daily discrete chatbot inquiries to “morph into companionship.” Such an evolution seems like a precarious path for humanity.

In many ways inTouch’s intentions are noble, but as Dr. Hamon suggests, the service seems like a step down the precarious path of technological relationships replacing human ones – a course that in this case is charted by Single-Minded Marketing.

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Apps that Imagine People Undressed

5/1/2025

6 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

Disgusting, deplorable, despicable? For more than a decade, I’ve written about ethical issues in marketing, at times exposing certain organizations’ shameful strategies that have disgraced the discipline and hurt people. However, in this instance I’m at a loss for an adjective that can aptly describe the collective disdain there should be for AI that digitally undresses people: nudify apps.

Among the worst practices in marketing I’ve discussed over the years, two that immediately come to mind are Ernst & Young (EY) encouraging its employees to cheat on ethics exams (Cultures of Corruption, July 16, 2022) and Volkswagen integrating a “defeat device” in certain cars in order to trick vehicle emissions readers (Dirty Diesel was No Accident, September 26, 2015). While EY’s behavior was deplorable because of its utter irony, VW’s actions involved painstakingly planned manipulation, the likes of which is seldom seen.

However, neither of these approaches is any more appalling than the newest encroachment on moral sensibility: nudify apps.

What are nudify apps? Kerry Gallagher, the education director for ConnectSafely, as well as a school administrator, a teacher, and a mom of two, succinctly describes them as apps that “take a regular clothed photo of a person and use artificial intelligence to create a fake nude image.”

Although using a nudify app to create such images should alone seem improper, what makes matters worse is that the apps’ users routinely share the fake photos with others, often teens as young as middle school, who then use the deepfake photos to harass and humiliate classmates.

The most infamous case of such shaming occurred in June 2024 in Australia where deep-faked nude images of about 50 girls in two private schools were widely distributed. The perpetrator was a male student, formerly of one of the schools.

As one can imagine, the victims of nudify apps, who are often the last to know what’s been done, are devasted. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is “deeply concerned about the potential for generative artificial intelligence to be used in ways that sexually exploit and harm children.” More specifically, NCMEC issues a stern warning about the damage nudify apps do:

“These manipulative creations can cause tremendous harm to children, including harassment, future exploitation, fear, shame, and emotional distress. Even when exploitative images are entirely fabricated, the harm to children and their families is very real.”

It might seem that creating a fake nude image of someone would clearly be illegal, but as often happens with new technology, laws lag behind individuals’ and organizations’ actions. In the United States, a provision in the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022 made the sharing of intimate images without consent grounds for civil action in federal court, but if the images shared are fakes, i.e., not real explicit images, has the civil law truly been broken?

Regardless of that potential legal loophole, using nudify apps legally doesn’t mean doing so is ethical.

The significant psychological and social harms the images cause their victims are certainly moral concerns. However, such negative outcomes aren’t the only ethical grounds on which nudify apps should be judged. The behavior also violates at least two time-tested values:

Fairness: Every person has rights to privacy, including for their body. Even though they are not actual photographs, the images that nudify apps create look “hyper-realistic” because the algorithms that create them have been trained on “large datasets of explicit images,” which produces for viewers the effect that they are actually seeing the victim naked. It’s unfair to have the right to physical modesty ‘stripped away’ without consent.
Decency: The human body is a beautiful thing, not inherently indecent. However, over millennia, most cultures have adopted rational norms that limit physical exposure in public by prescribing what people should wear, from loincloths to leggings. Many societies have codified their norms into laws aimed at guiding behavior, like statutes against public indecency and the Motion Picture Association’s film rating system (PG-13, R, etc.). The point is, abundant precedent suggests that the primary end of nudify apps, to indiscriminately publicize human nakedness, including among minors, is fundamentally indecent.

So far the focus of this article has been on the users of nudify apps, who are certainly culpable for their shameful acts. At the same time, when the perpetrators are themselves children, it’s especially important to ask: Who else should bear responsibility? Those accountable should include:

Parents: Although it’s impossible to monitor everything one’s kids do on their laptops and phones, parents must establish at least some safety limits. Moreover, parents should model and discuss appropriate behaviors more broadly so their children assimilate values that will positively guide their daily choices.
Institutions: Schools should be proactive in addressing nudify apps with their students, letting them know that the apps are off-limits and warning students of the consequences for violations.
Government: Legislatures at all levels should consider how then can limit if not eliminate nudify apps. Some states like New Jersey are making the use of nudify apps a criminal offense.
Associations: For the benefit of their fields, professional groups can take stands against nudify apps specifically, and more generally they should clearly the communicate the values of fairness and decency that are fundamental to rejecting the apps, as well as future technology based on similar impropriety.

There’s one other set of responsible parties not mentioned above because they deserve accountability above any other – the apps’ creators.

It’s hard to imagine how the dozens of marketers of nudify apps justify their products. Maybe some rationalize, “They’re for people to nudify themselves,” but who needs to do that? In most imaginable instances, the apps’ purpose is to undress others without their knowledge or consent, then to share the sordid deepfakes with others.

As often happens in cases where business strategy goes awry, money has likely overshadowed any plausible mission for the creators of nudify apps and woefully skewed the tech entrepreneurs’ ambitions. Likewise, the apps’ creators seemingly failed to self-censure, or follow the moral mandate, Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

One entity that can’t reasonably be held responsible is AI. Artificial intelligence is basically a value-neutral tool, often used for good purposes but sometimes for nefarious ones, as nudify apps illustrate. AI largely does what it’s told to do without questioning the ethicality of the instructions, which is the obligation of people.

As I’ve found through my own experiences using AI and as the following articles expound, it’s up to humans to hit pause when potential ethical issues arise and to ask the moral question, “Is this something we should be doing?”

Abominable, egregious, heinous, indefensible, reprehensible – maybe all these adjectives are needed to adequately describe the destructive nature of nudify apps. One other descriptor that should be included is Single-Minded Marketing.

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Who will be the Adult in the Room with AI?

4/1/2025

19 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

“Like a kid in a candy store” – If you’ve ever experienced unlimited access to your most desired indulgences, you may have appreciated someone stepping in to help you ‘know when to say when.’ AI quickly has become that candy store for many whose mouths are open wide to the technology’s amazing treats but who entertain few thoughts of the actions’ broader impacts. So, who will help AI users ‘know when to say when’?

Individuals and organizations are rapidly embracing AI to enhance productivity, from personalizing emails, to providing customer service, to optimizing delivery routes, to predicting machine maintenance, to trading stocks. In fact, several of the AI examples in the last sentence came courtesy of ChatGPT.

A financial sign of AI’s rocketing popularity is the report that OpenAI, ChatGPT’s parent, expects its revenue to triple this year to $12.7 billion. That expectation likely stems in part from the current U.S. administration’s promised $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure in an industry partnership called Stargate.

It’s not surprising that AI has come so swiftly into widespread use. Criteria that predict how fast consumers adopt new products, or how quickly they diffuse into the market, suggest rapid acceptance of AI:

Relative advantage: Compared to the time and effort it takes to draft a report, create a complex image, etc., AI is much quicker, giving it a great economic advantage.
Compatibility: AI tools like ChatGPT work well with many of the productivity tools we already use, such as our smartphones’ apps, and the new technology is increasingly integrated directly into other tools.
Observability: AI is easy to see around us, from voice assistants (Siri, Alexa), to autocomplete functions (Messages, Word), to map apps (route optimization and traffic updates). We can often observe friends, family, and coworkers using those tools. The challenge, if any, is to realize that those commonplace applications are AI.
Complexity and Triability: Although AI is among the most sophisticated technologies humans have ever created, it is very easy to use, e.g., as simple as typing or speaking a command. It’s also easy to experiment with many basic AI tools, e.g., several chatbots, offer free versions, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot.

In sum, AI helps individuals and organizations accomplish two of life’s most prized goals: to work more effectively and efficiently. Beyond that practicality, many AI applications are exciting and fun. Some possess a jaw-dropping wow-factor that makes one wonder how the technology can do something so challenging so fast.

But just as too much candy can be bad for one’s teeth, too much AI is proving problematic for some of its users, as well as for individuals who barely know about it.

Even as many individuals and organizations dive headlong and uninhibited into AI, many others feel some, if not much, dissonance about its use. In a recent survey of knowledge workers that included 800 C-suite leaders and 800 lower-level employees, Writer/Workplace found a wide disparity in perceptions of generative AI, for instance:

77% of employees using AI indicated that they were an “AI champion” or had potential to become one.
71% of executives indicated there were challenges in adopting AI.
More than 33% of executives said AI has been “a massive disappointment.”
41% of Gen Z employees were “actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy.”
About 67% of executives reported that adoption of AI has led to “tension and division.”
42% of executives indicated that AI adoption was “tearing their company apart.”

Why did AI produce so much angst for these research participants? Unfortunately, the article summarizing the study’s findings didn’t identify the causes; however, I have good guesses of what some of the reasons were.

In May 2024, I wrote “Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics” which identified a dozen areas of moral concern related to AI use: Ownership, Attribution, Employment, Accuracy, Deception, Transparency, Privacy, Bias, Relationships, Skills, Stewardship, and Indecency.

Looking back 10 months later, a long time in the life of technology, it seems the list has aged well, unfortunately. There are increasingly pressing concerns in each of the areas, such as:

Ownership, Attribution, Employment: Google and Open AI recently asked the White House “for permission to train AI on copyrighted content.” Over 400 leading artists, including Ron Howard and Paul McCartney, signed a letter voicing their disapproval.
Stewardship: AI is notoriously an “energy hog” whose data centers require far more electricity than that of their predecessors. Jesse Dodge, a research analyst at the Allen Institute for AI, shared that “One query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as could light a lightbulb for about 20 minutes.” Energy production for AI is the reason Microsoft has signed a deal to reopen the infamous nuclear power plant Three Mile Island.
Bias, Indecency: In his article, “Grok 3: The Case for an Unfiltered AI Model,” Shelly Palmer compares AI models that learn from sanitized datasets to xAI’s Grok 3, which has an “unhinged” mode that doesn’t restrict “harmful content—adult entertainment, hate speech, extremism.” Using the opening metaphor, Grok 3 seems like a wide-open candy shop with no adult supervision.

Certainly, some people have practical inhibitions about AI because they’re not sure how, when, or why to use it. Others, though, likely have moral concerns, including the ones above. I believe much of that AI dissonance stems from values embedded in every person, regardless of their worldview: principles that include decency, fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility.

Granted, we don’t see these values in everyone all the time, but they’re there. Rational people know it’s indecent to show sexually explicit material in public, it’s dishonest to lie, it’s unfair to steal, etc. So when they see AI generating indecent content, creating misleading deepfakes, or appropriating others’ intellectual property, those innate values rightly spur feelings of unease.

So, back to the question that opened this piece: Who will keep rapidly advancing AI in moral check? Here are those influencers in reverse order of impact:

5) AI Itself: Over time and if trained on the right types of data, AI may become better at identifying and addressing moral issues. However, from my experience, although the technology is good at answering questions, it’s ill-equipped to ask them, especially ones involving ethical issues.

4) Laws: Clear-thinking senators and representatives often enact legislation that’s in the public’s best interest. However, given the time it takes to envision, propose, and pass such laws, they inevitably lag behind the behavior they aim to constrain, especially when the actions involve fast-moving tech.

3) Industry Associations: These organizations play useful roles in identifying opportunities and challenges that face their members. It takes time, but they often craft values statements and related documents that can help guide moral decision-making. Unfortunately, though, their edicts usually can’t be enforced the ways governments’ laws can, so compliance may be minimal.

2) Organizations: When they want to, business and other types of organizations can make decisions quickly. Morally grounded leaders can create policies to promote ethical behavior. The challenge is that even this guidance may not be specific enough for new or very nuanced moral dilemmas, and it’s usually impossible to speak into every action as it occurs.

1) Individuals: They are able to address issues as they occur and can be specially equipped for those ethical challenges. When moral issues arise, they are the ones who can and must hit pause and ask, “Yes, AI can do this, but should it?”

Rational principle-driven people, who embrace their innate senses of decency, fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility, can quickly question AI's potential ethical encroachment as they see it and pump the brakes on strategies that seem likely to violate one or more of these values.

In the candy store that is AI, each of us needs to be the adult in the room. While we need to understand and encourage the many good things AI offers, we also need to know when to say, “That’s enough.” Ensuring that AI rightly serves humanity makes for Mindful Marketing.

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Birkin vs. Wirkin: Are Knockoff Products Ethical?

2/1/2025

59 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

If “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” should one of the world’s most renowned luxury brands feel honored that an upstart company created a knockoff product and sold it to the masses through a full-line discount retailer for a fraction of the price?

Such was the “flattery” paid recently to Hermès, the French fashion house known for finely tailored leather and silk goods and other exquisitely crafted, high-priced items. The specific focus of the emulation was one of Hermès most prestigious products, its Birkin handbag, “the epitome of luxury and style, a true icon in the realm of high fashion.” Surprisingly, the flattery came through . . . Walmart.

In choosing a retail strategy, marketers often consider three levels of distribution intensity, or selectivity:

Intensive: a product is available virtually everywhere in a very wide variety of retail outlets (e.g., many snack foods are intensively distributed).
Selective: the product’s manufacturer more carefully chooses specific retailers that align with the item’s brand image and positioning (e.g., brand-named athletic apparel is often selectively distributed)
Exclusive: there are only one or two retail options for purchasing the product (e.g., new cars usually can only be purchased through the manufacturer’s own dealerships)

Birkin bags, which sell for $10,000 and up, introduce a whole new level of distribution intensity, even more restrictive than exclusive, that might be called elusive distribution.

First, Birkins can’t be purchased through Hermès own website; they must be acquired in-store, and even then, they are very difficult to obtain. Apparently, the bags are not displayed. Someone wanting to buy a Birkin first needs to establish themself as a brand-loyal customer by purchasing a significant dollar value of other Hermès products and by building a relationship with a Hermès sales associate. Only then, the strictly qualified customer might be given the privilege of buying a Birkin.

That’s the context that inspired a Chinese firm to create a knockoff bag bearing a striking resemblance to a genuine Birkin, likely with less of the fine craftsmanship and also for a small percentage of Hermès’ price. The company successfully sold many of the bags on Walmart’s website until the page suddenly disappeared, replaced by a "no-longer available" message.

However, before the knockoffs were knocked out, many people purchased the Walmart-distributed bags and posted their shrewd finds on social media, leading to a multitude of lookalike likes and shares and to the coining of the clever name: Walmart + Birkin = “Wirkin.”

Helping fuel the knockoff bags’ viral rise was a phenomenon some have dubbed “dupe culture,” which describes the trending consumer tendency of buying less expensive product facsimiles in favor of more prestigious and pricey originals.

Saving money and being content with less are often good consumer outcomes, but do they make it right for one organization to cash-in on another’s’ innovation and hard-earned reputation? To answer the moral question, it’s helpful to ask a few factual and legal questions:

Q1: Are knockoff products the same as counterfeit products?
No, while knockoff products bear some or even a close resemblance to the originals, counterfeits are designed to be as indistinguishable as possible from the real thing, including specific logos and other proprietary branding. Consequently, counterfeit products typically infringe on companies’ trademarks, making them illegal.

Knockoff products, in contrast, are not illegal, in fact, they are commonly found in all types of retail stores, including on supermarket shelves where private label, or store, brands are often placed right next to the manufacturers’ brands they emulate.

Some may argue that the intent of both product types is to deceive, but that argument is more tenable for counterfeits, whose creators want consumers to believe they’re purchasing the authentic product. While a knockoff certainly banks on perceived similarities, it’s not pretending to be the original.

Q2: Can a handbag be patented?

Of the three patent types, utility, design, and plant, a design patent is the one most applicable to a bag. Given that handbags of all types and sizes have been used for centuries for similar purposes, it’s not easy for a bag’s design to meet the criteria for “ornamentality,” which requires that “no alternative designs could have served the same function.”

Despite that challenge, Hermès does have a patent claiming unique “ornamental design” for a handbag that appears to be its Birkin.

Q3: Can a handbag be trademarked?

Trademarks can be secured for a unique word, phrase, symbol, or design used to identify an organization’s products or services. As might be expected, Hermès has trademarked the Birkin name. However, knockoffs like the “Wirkin” bag intentionally avoid using trademarked names, which shifts the question to the product itself.

Fortunately for Hermès, it also has for its Birkin bag the less often referenced trademark design coverage called trade dress protection, which is used “to protect the overall appearance of a product or company” and can include “features like color, shape, design, packaging, and more.” Like other types of trademarks, trade dress ultimately helps consumers distinguish one company’s product from another’s.

More specific to the Birkin bag, trade dress offers protection for the handbag’s overall distinct design and its unique elements, including the bag’s rectangular sides, rectangular bottom, dimpled triangular profile, and “rectangular flap having three protruding lobes, between which are two keyhole-shaped openings that surround the base of the handles.” Furthermore, “Over the flap is a horizontal rectangular strap having an opening to receive a padlock eye. A lock in the shape of a padlock forms the clasp for the bag at the center of the strap.”

Handbags have a virtually limitless number of design possibilities, but legally, no bag can combine the elements identified above, unless it is a genuine Birkin by Hermès. That’s what the law says, but what about ethics?

We always should be careful not to assume that what’s legal is ethical or what’s illegal is unethical. Historically, there have been plenty of exceptions to complete moral/legal overlap, e.g., slavery, segregation.

However, in the case of counterfeit and knockoff products, U.S. laws have considerable moral sensibility.

Of the five universal values Mindful Marketing routinely applies (decency, fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility), the operant ones here appear to be honesty and fairness. It’s dishonest for a counterfeit product to pretend it’s the authentic item – Like someone claiming a reproduction of a painting is the artist’s original work.

In addition, counterfeit products are unfair because their sellers benefit from the original designer’s hard work and creativity with relatively little effort of their own. Counterfeit products also can be considered unfair in that their typically lower quality can tarnish the image, or reputation, of the original brand, particularly among people who thought they had purchased the real thing.

In terms of responsibility, one also might argue that counterfeit products enact a broader cost on society as a whole because they disincentivize innovation and entrepreneurship.

As mentioned above, knockoff products are usually legal, unless the item walks too close to the line of the original, in which case it essentially becomes a counterfeit. However, the legality of knockoffs doesn’t make them moral; again, it’s important to view them through the lenses of the five values.

Knockoffs tend to uphold honesty in that they don’t pretend to be originals but maintain some visual/verbal separation from them. Shoppers who buy the grocery store brand of chocolate chip cookies know that they’re not getting Nabisco’s Chips Ahoy!

Fairness is more complicated and shouldn’t be evaluated as if one-size-fits all. In the case of chocolate chip cookies, even though the supermarket makes its store brand loosely resemble Chips Ahoy! by way of product name and package design, Nabisco also benefits by being allowed to sell its cookies in the store, which might represent legal consideration.

However, in many cases there is no express benefit-sharing, and to some extent, sales of the knockoff product come at the expense of the original. In these common situations, though, several other factors should be considered.

Different Target Markets: Knockoff products often cater to a distinct target market, e.g., people who want slightly different product features or a lower price point, or they don’t want to buy the name brand or what everyone else has.
Product Category Growth: The markets for most products start small and grow as more people realize the benefits the products bring. Competing products, including knockoffs, often accelerate that growth and expand primary demand, i.e., they make the market larger than it could become with just one company.
Insufficient Supply: When a product category becomes very popular and really blossoms, the market’s first mover often can’t meet all the demand by itself, so it helps to have competitors’ product offerings.
Increased Exclusivity: The presence of knockoff products tends to increase awareness of the product category and accentuate the original product’s exclusivity, e.g., Kia’s production of luxury vehicles, some of which resemble those of Lexus, probably encroaches little on Lexus’ sales but rather helps to enhance Lexus’ exclusive image.
Makes Companies Better: Few companies would say they want competition, but all benefit from it, maybe for the reasons mentioned above and certainly because competition forces them to become better. As the adage goes, “Iron sharpens iron.”

Counterfeits and knockoff products are not the same but are closely connected. The “Wirkin” bag likely disappeared quickly because it flew too close to the sun, legal and morally, i.e., it was a knockoff that too closely resembled a counterfeit Birkin. In an age of rapidly advancing AI and increasingly sophisticated 3D printing, it’s a good reminder that it’s never right to deepfake, or counterfeit, another’s intellectual or physical property.

Although there are exceptions, knockoff products can bring a variety of benefits, including ones for the original products their imitation “flatters.” Increased supply, more variety, and fair competition tend to be good things that make for Mindful Marketing.

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Does Human-Made Matter?

11/2/2024

10 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does human-made matter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Decade of Very Demure, Very Mindful Marketing

10/1/2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Decade of Very Demure, Very Mindful Marketing

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