Category: + Stewardship

Who will be the Adult in the Room with AI?

4/1/2025

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

“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.

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

19 Comments

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.

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

59 Comments

Resolving to be More Moral

1/5/2025

4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 Comments

A Decade of Very Demure, Very Mindful Marketing

10/1/2024

3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 Comments

How Should Companies Handle Underconsumption?

9/1/2024

9 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does underconsumption resonate with people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9 Comments

Making Money from People Who Talk Funny

6/29/2024

4 Comments

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

“Don’t make fun of the way others talk.” It’s a rule most of us learn early in life, but apparently not all advertisers have adopted it. Humorous ads can be entertaining and effective, but is it okay for them to poke fun at the speech patterns of specific people groups?

As a marketing professor, I probably pay more attention to advertising than most people do, which sometimes leads to seeing similarities among ads and noticing interesting trends. I recently saw several video spots, all from different advertisers, each lampooning the ways specific nationalities/ethnicities communicate:

It’s important to note that each portrayal is intended to be funny, which is certainly common for national ads – think Super Bowl commercials. But like beauty, humor is in the eyes and ears of the beholder, so when do commercials move from silly/stupid, to annoying/irritating, to distasteful/objectionable, to repugnant/offensive? Or, more specifically, when does mocking people’s accents become unethical?

Like communication in general, humor is highly contextual, which is why there are inside jokes that only people aware of a specific backstory understand. Mocking accents can be acceptable and even desirable in certain contexts of social intimacy. For instance, two friends – one from New York City and the other from Boston – might playfully tease each other about their different food preferences, favorite sports teams, and distinct ways of speaking.

With advertising, backstories aren’t between just a few people; rather there’s common knowledge and shared experiences among people regionally, nationally, or even globally, some of which are positive and others, negative. Advertisers should be especially sensitive to the latter.

At some point in their lives, most people probably have had someone comment on the way they talk, perhaps in a complimentary way or maybe critically. However, some people endure daily comments about their accents that often turn into ridicule and even racism. Unfortunately, it’s not hard to find examples of such verbal abuse online, like the following:

Terry Nguyen is an effective writer, but she thinks twice before speaking because she sometimes mispronounces words, which came from growing a home with two Vietnamese parents who spoke rough English.
Sharada Vishwanath tells the story of a classmate imitating her Indian accent, which began as lighthearted and fun but quickly changed to annoying and offensive, as the agitator mentioned the words curry and cheaper.

Belittling people because of the way they talk can be “linguistic racism,” which in work environments may cause those targeted to refrain from speaking and to miss opportunities for professional advancement.

So, do the commercials mentioned at the onset represent linguistic racism? Possibly. An important distinction is whether depictions are of race vs. ethnicity vs. nationality. Another issue is that not all accent imitation is the same – as mentioned earlier, the interpretation of any communication is partly a function of the backstory, or broader context.

Historically, in many English-speaking western nations, people of color from places like Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been the recipients of far more accent abuse than Europeans whose first language is not English. For Terry and Shandra, mentioned above, criticism of their speaking is not a one-off experience but a regular occurrence.

Over the past century, television shows and movies have cast Asian, Black, Latino, and Native American actors and often had them speak broken and improper English, which has contributed to shameful stereotypes of people of color being less intelligent and more socially inept.

One common troupe is that of an Asian who adds “ee” to the ends of words (e.g., “talkee”), omits definite articles (e.g., this, that), and replaces L’s with R’s (e.g. Herro instead of Hello). In one of its final scenes, the classic Christmas movie A Christmas Story employs this Asian stereotyping.

Indians are also frequently stereotyped for a particular style of English speaking. Such accent mocking is what led The Office’s Kelly Kapoor in Season 1 to slap her bigoted boss Michael Scott. For decades, the animated TV show The Simpsons lampooned Indians through its reoccurring character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, until he was finally removed from the show in 2017. Imitation of Indian accents is so common that there is a word for it – brown voice.

Ridicule is bad enough, but “At worst, linguistic racism can lead to deprivation in education, employment, health and housing,” as benefits and opportunities are sometimes withheld from those who talk differently. Perpetuating negative perceptions easily leads to social stigmas that carry significant physical and economic consequences.

However, mockery of the accents of French, Dutch, Germans, and other Europeans who are not native English speakers is not only much less common, when comments about their accents are offered, they usually take on a different tenor. Their speech is more often complimented as sounding cute, sexy, or sophisticated, whereas that of Asians and Indians tends to be criticized for grammatical errors and pronunciation mistakes.

So, does this asymmetry in experience make it acceptable to mock Europeans’ accents? I’d like to offer three reasons why it does not:

1. People are still hurt. Isabelle Duff, a native of Ireland whose job took her to London, recounts how she often felt harassed by coworkers who continually imitated her Irish accent. Scottish actor Billy Boyd, who played “Pippin” in Lord of the Rings, refuses roles, common in scripts, that call for an incomprehensible Scottish accent, which is an unfair and demeaning stereotype of Scots. A similar example is the unintelligible babble of Sesame Street’s Swedish Chef, who many Swedes don’t find funny.

2. Wrong for one should mean wrong for all. There aren’t many examples in ethics where compelling cases can be made that it’s okay to harm certain groups of people, but not others. A proponent of capital punishment might argue it’s right to execute murders but not others; however, murders aren’t a distinct, demographically identifiable people group. Also, unlike Scots, Irish, and Swedes, murderers have done things that arguably warrant differential treatment.

3. Don’t imply permission. People expect consistency. If a parent tells one child they can stay up late, their sibling will expect the same privilege. So, if it’s acceptable to mock Scots, some people will deduce that it’s okay to mock Indians too. The safest approach is to not offer any basis for making that inference by maintaining that it’s inappropriate to mock the speech of any people group.

When we open our mouths to speak, funny things sometimes come out. It’s okay to laugh about those silly sounds and statements with people we know, in the right context, and with pure intent.

However, the standards that fit individual incidences cannot be morally stretched to cover broad cases involving the accents of entire people groups. Although it may seem funny and be effective, advertising that mocks the speech of any race, ethnicity, or other demographic should be considered “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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

4 Comments

Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics

5/3/2024

10 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These experiences have led me to wonder:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Comments

All Play: How Companies Can Make More Inclusive Toys

9/13/2023

10 Comments

A collection of play balls, some containing icons for sound, touch, and smell

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

Toss-Across, Evel Knievel, Simon, Big Wheel – the most popular toys of the 1970s offer a trip down memory lane for many of us who were kids during that unique era. We probably didn’t think then that some children weren’t able to enjoy these common playthings because of certain physical limitations. Over the past 50 years, the world has become more welcoming in many ways, but have toy makers kept pace with the inclusivity trend?

Legos have been fixtures in family rooms for at least a few decades. The tiny bumpy bricks provide appropriate challenge and fun for children from four to 14 and beyond. Kids who can’t see also can snap together the blocks to build shapes and structures, but they haven’t been able to appreciate the variety of colors or visualize their finished work in all the ways that sighted children can.

In 2019, the Lego Group conceived a creative way to bridge the participation gap by using the bricks’ raised knobs to represented braille letters. For the last few years, the company distributed its Braille Bricks selectively – mainly to individuals and organizations teaching children with visual impairments. Recently, the firm made the 287-piece set widely available for purchase, so blind and sighted members of any family can enjoy playing with and learning from the uniquely inclusive toys.

Mattel also has done a good in making its iconic Barbie doll more inclusive. For decades, the company has added dolls of different races and ethnicities to the collection, and in more recent years, it’s introduced dolls with disabilities and different body types.

Product inclusivity is a great thing. It’s hard to imagine products being ‘too inclusive,’ especially one’s targeted toward children.

As I’ve spoken with college students about product inclusivity, some have said they didn’t care whether their Barbies looked like them or not, but others really appreciated having dolls whose skin colors and other physical attributes mirrored their own.

Jason Polansky, one of my former advisees who is totally blind, has worked in employee recruitment roles for Microsoft and Whole Foods and now has a position as an unemployment claims interviewer with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. We had many good conversations when he was a student and more since he graduated several years ago, but I never thought much about his childhood – what it was like to grow up blind – and I certainly didn’t think of the toys he played with, so I recently asked him about them.

Polansky said he mainly liked playing with tactile toys such as Legos, Duplos, and Geomags, as well as a braille/tactile Battleship game, a Connect 4 game with holes in the black checkers, and braille Uno cards. He also enjoyed audible toys like a talking trivia globe, a puzzle map of the United States, a talking clock, and "two buckets full of dinosaurs and reptiles."

Sound was a mixed blessing for Polansky. Although he enjoyed listening to cassette tapes and AM/FM/shortwave radio, the same sounds sometimes created a problem when they kept him from hearing other noises in his environment that he needed to hear. In fact, when he was about six, he went through a stage in which many extraneous sounds scared him for that reason.

Sadie McFarland is one of my current advisees. Because of optic nerve hypoplasia, she has no vision in her right eye and limited functional vision in her left one, which means she is legally blind. Although McFarland reflects fondly on playing with Barbies and a variety of other toys and games when she was a child, her attention now as a college marketing major is drawn to the lack of playthings designed for children with disabilities, especially those with vision impairments.

Even as she credits brands like Barbie and American Girl for making dolls that “give beautiful nods” to individuals who have prosthetic devices, use wheelchairs, and have diverse skin tones, she laments that companies in the toy industry have done relatively little to represent blindness.

McFarland recommends making dolls whose eyes move sporadically, mimicking nystagmus, placing a white cane in the doll’s hand, and equipping it with a guide dog in harness. She adds that blindness also can be identified with certain types of glasses.

As an adult, McFarland still loves to play games but often finds them challenging because “at least 75% contain items with text that is nearly microscopic, even to the working human eye.” Some of her suggested fixes are to provide braille instructions and scorecards and to create tactile boards and differently shaped pieces. She also recommends reaching out to organizations like the National Federation of the Blind and American Printing House for the Blind, which can provide useful insights into meeting the needs of blind consumers.

It's nice to imagine a world in which more companies heed such advice and genuinely attempt to make products, especially toys, accessible to a broader range of people; however, the reality is that companies need to pay vendors, make payroll, and provide ROI to shareholders, all of which may appear to preclude satisfying some niche markets.

Of course, companies can gain goodwill be serving underrepresented people groups, but is it right to expect companies to lose money doing so? As a corollary, the law requires organizations to make reasonable accommodations for employees with special needs, unless doing so represents an undue hardship.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have an either-or decision. Several years ago, Polansky and I coauthored an article titled, “How Serving Blind Consumers Creates Competitive Advantage.” We summarized a main takeaway in this statement: “The same services that meet the unique needs of blind consumers often ‘delight’ other customers, thereby differentiating a brand and even offering competitive advantage.”

Since blind people lack at least some degree of sight, marketers must appeal to other senses like touch, smell, and taste. Of course, most sighted people also have these senses, and they similarly appreciate things that feel good, smell nice, and taste good. So, by integrating more senses for the benefit of blind people, marketers also increase their appeal to other consumers and differentiate themselves from competitors who don’t do the same.

McFarland maintains, “Play is a universal language that must be kept fully accessible for every child and child at heart.” Hopefully, increasingly creative toy design will see the introduction of more toys that tap into multiple senses for both inclusivity and profitability, which can be considered a playful approach to “Mindful Marketing.”

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

10 Comments

Is Extreme Tourism Worth Its Costs?

7/3/2023

11 Comments

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

How far are you willing to go for fun? For some, it’s battling the traffic and crowds at busy summer beaches. For others, it’s climbing over ice and fighting to breathe on an expedition up Everest. Depending on one’s taste and budget, either one of these experiences can be a great time, but as extreme tourism increases, it’s time to ask, are extraordinary leisure activities worth their costs?

By now, most have heard of the Titan submersible’s ill-fated excursion to explore the sunken Titanic. When I first learned that OceanGate’s record-setting sub went missing enroute to the wreckage that lies 2.37 miles below the surface of the North Atlantic, I assumed it was a scientific expedition. Only after additional news reports did I realize that the five passengers passed away on a pleasure trip.

Regardless of the reason for the voyage, it’s tragic that these individuals lost their lives. It’s frightening to think of a sub imploding; hopefully, their passing was quick and painless. Still, the nature of the trip has caused some to question whether such a tour should have been offered, given its inherent risk.

Many people have jobs that require them to risk their lives each day such as: first responders, miners, loggers, construction workers, oil and gas workers, electrical power line installers and repairers. These brave individuals are typically well-trained and well-aware of the danger in their work, which they do to serve others, as well as for income. Leisure activities, in contrast, are by definition discretionary.

While everyone should have recreational time in which they can refresh their body and mind, there are many things people can do that require minimal cost and pose little or no risk, from reading, to walking in a park, to playing pickle ball. So, why does anyone need to do extremely dangerous activities like:

Free climbing – climbing a rock face with no ropes
Base jumping – parachuting from a fixed structure
Bull running – jogging with horned bovines
Big wave surfing – boarding on swells that reach 50 ft. or more

Of course, everyone is wired differently in terms of the recreational activities that bring them pleasure. While some like low-key, passive leisure (e.g., watching movies), others enjoy the physical exertion and competition that comes from playing a sport (e.g., tennis, football). Still others crave much more, like:

Experiencing an extreme adrenalin rush
Seeing or doing something that few others have seen or done
Testing one’s physical and mental limits

Before becoming vice president for finance and administration at Martin’s Famous Potato Rolls and Bread 12 years ago, Scott Heintzelman had a successful two-decade career in public accounting, including a long tenure as a CPA firm partner. For many people in his position and stage of life, the most leisure energy they’d expend would be on a round of golf. However, just before the age of 50, Heintzelman ran his first marathon, then soon turned his attention to triathlons. Over the past five years he's completed 13 Ironman races.

Heintzelman’s friends, family members, and others sometimes say he’s crazy to needlessly put himself through the months of grueling training followed by the body-breaking 140.6-mile competitions, which culminate with him crying upon crossing the finish line. So, why does he choose to recreate in such an extreme way?

Heintzelman says he likes testing himself mentally and physically and adds that enduring pain, delaying gratification, and overcoming negative thoughts have helped him become more disciplined, focused, and resilient – qualities that serve him well in other areas of life.

As the preceding suggests, participating in an Ironman certainly comes with physical costs. It also comes with some significant financial ones such as $1,000-$5,000 for a race-quality bike, $800 for travel expenses, $150 for a 6-month gym membership, and a $600-$800 race entry fee.

Still, these costs pale in comparison to an ultra-extreme sport like high-altitude mountain climbing, for which participants pay “around $100,000 or even more for the privilege to get to the world’s highest peaks.” In the process, there’s real risk of life altering injuries and death from falls, extreme cold, and oxygen deprivation, where above 8,000 meters, “there is so little oxygen that the body starts to die, minute by minute and cell by cell.”

This year, 12 climbers have died on Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, and regrettably, five more who are missing and likely dead will make 2023 “the deadliest year ever.” One of the reasons for the increase in fatalities is overcrowding, as more inexperienced guides and climbers have made for a record number of climbing permits and caused traffic jams on already very challenging slopes. At times, queues of climbers enroute to the summit have looked like lines of vacationers waiting for a popular Disney World ride.

There are reportedly more than 50 companies that offer guided tours on Everest. Great supply is usually good for consumers, as added competition typically means more options and lower prices. Those things are true to some extent for Everest, but they’ve also meant a dangerous lowering of standards for climber competence and safety, to the point that certain companies will “take absolutely anyone up the mountain, regardless of experience, and cut corners on safety standards.”

One company that’s particularly notorious for taking human life lightly is Seven Summit Treks. Unlike other firms that usually limit their expeditions to 20 people, Seven Summit “is known to take as many as 100 climbers up the mountain — many of whom are unprepared for the altitude and physical exertion.”

The company also offers a VIP Everest Expedition “designed for those seeking to summit Mt. Everest in the utmost comfort and convenience” whether they are “an experienced climber or a first-timer for 8000er.” The expedition includes lessons at Everest basecamp on “ice wall climbing, ladder crossing, and other techniques that will be required for the ascent” – skills you’d think anyone who hopes to climb the world’s highest mountain would have already mastered.

This piece has gone from the depths of the sea with the recent OceanGate tourism tragedy to the heights of the earth with lives lost seeking to summit Everest. So, what do these two elevation extremes and all the options in between mean for those providing extreme leisure activities? Here are three potentially helpful considerations:

1) It’s hard to judge what leisure is too costly and risky: I would generally describe myself as cost-conscious and risk-adverse, which makes me want to point my finger at others spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and risking their lives to do things like deep ocean exploring and high-altitude climbing. Then I remember that I’ve done some leisure activities that others might consider too expensive and risky.

More than a decade ago, when my wife and I visited Kauai, we took advantage of what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to view the breath-taking island by helicopter. The nearly $200 we spent per ticket certainly could be considered excessive for the 50-minute ride. Likewise, flying inside canyons on the rugged Napali coast had risk. Then again, anyone who flies or drives anywhere for a vacation could be accused of incurring unnecessary cost and risk.

The point is, it’s difficult to draw a clear line between what is and isn’t excessive leisure. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be a line or that anything should go but rather that it might be helpful to consider factors like cost relative to the individual’s income, if not per capita income, as well as the percentage of instances of severe injuries or death for those who engage in the activity.

2) Leisure interest can lead to scientific discovery: Sometimes people’s leisure leads to discoveries that benefit much larger groups of people. For instance, amateurs have documented unique animal behaviors and even discovered new species.

People pursing their recreational passions also have played significant roles in advancing fields like avionics and computing. Most recently, companies including SpaceX are leveraging what they’re learning from offering space tourism to create the potential for dramatically faster point-to-point travel on earth, such as a flight from New York City to Shanghai that might only take 40 minutes.

3) Consumers’ safety is critical: Ultimately, what matters most for companies marketing recreation of any kind, including extreme tourism, is safety. Of course, before people participate in dangerous activities, organizations must clearly communicate the risks. It’s fine to ask participants to sign waivers; however, those releases should never become substitutes for taking every reasonable step to ensure that individuals simply looking for a pleasurable leisure experience don’t return injured or dead.

It seems that the two extreme tourism companies mentioned above have both fallen short of this critical standard. Since OceanGate’s Titan submersible exploded, many have reported that there were serious safety concerns surrounding the structural integrity of the deep-diving craft. Similarly, beyond Seven Summits Treks’ questionable onboarding practices described above, the firm’s owner resists rules for who should or shouldn’t enter into Everest’s death zone; instead, he recommends, “If [people] have enough energy, they can go.”

As Baby Boomers and Gen Xs look for a last hurrah and experience-driven Gen Ys and Zs gain disposable income, it’s likely that demand for extreme tourism will continue to increase. Companies that want to capitalize on this trend should ensure that the benefits they provide to clients are proportionate to the costs they incur. In addition, others outside the exchange shouldn't be asked to bear costs (e.g., environmental degradation, rescue costs) without receiving benefits.

Above all, organizations must do everything possible to ensure their clients’ safety. In an often-unpredictable natural world complicated by periodic human error, safety can seldom be guaranteed. However, at 3,800 meters below sea level or 29,000 meters above it, companies should have air-tight models for returning their clients safely; otherwise, they’re liable for “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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

11 Comments

Why Did the PGA Stop Keeping Score with LIV?

6/20/2023

5 Comments

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

“If you can’t beat them join them.” This old adage, suggesting that adversaries become allies, has been used to describe everything from Vichy France aligning with Nazi Germany to Apollo Creed training Rocky Balboa. Now a very surprising real-life sports pairing has made ethics appear expendable or at least raised the question: Is it okay to have a moral change of mind?

The Professional Golfers’ Association’s (PGA) decision to merge with LIV Golf was a move that virtually no one expected. Even professional golfers and analysts who cover the game were shocked by the news. The PGA’s sudden change of heart, which went from viewing LIV as a bitter rival to a bedfellow also represented for many an epic moral capitulation.

Over the past year, the PGA and LIV have been “at war.” The PGA had threatened to suspend golfers who defected to LIV and even ban them for life. Why such acrimony? Of course, no organization wants a new competitor, especially one that steals its product (golfers) and commandeers its place (golf venues).

However, the PGA’s disdain for LIV was rooted in more than competition-fueled conflict. Many in the veteran golf association, as well as others, took issue with LIV’s funding source – the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, the nation of origin for 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks and a country known for human right abuses.

In an interview just a month ago, the PGA’s CEO, Seth Waugh, was heard “trashing” LIV Golf ahead of the PGA Championship. How is such a seemingly irreconcilable relationship so suddenly repaired? One ESPN piece, “How the shocking PGA Tour-LIV Golf deal went down” details the events leading up to the proposed merger and its players, while another describes how the unification, which also includes the DP World Tour (Europe), might solidify the sport long-term.

This Mindful Marketing article doesn’t pretend to know what’s best for the future of professional golf; rather, it aims to ask a more general philosophical question: Was it okay for the PGA to have a moral change of mind?

Of course, it’s not organizations but the individuals that manage them who make decisions, including ethical ones. Most of us have experienced that our initial inclinations are not always optimal. As evidence, we’ve all mistakes and often realized later the option we should have selected.

Imperfect decision-making is a thread that has run continually through human history and often involved ethics. For instance, decisions in favor of racial segregation in the U.S. in the 19th- and 20th century are ones that most Americans now reject, as are the choices that kept women from voting until 1920.

Realizing the error of one’s way and self-correcting a moral stance is a good thing. However, it’s also important to help others understand the reason for the reversal. Intelligent, inquiring people want to know not just that a judgment that was A is now B but why it’s changed That’s where moral reasoning helps.

In a moral argument, a person first identifies a moral standard then suggests one or more alleged facts, which lead to a conclusion, or moral judgment. A month ago, it seemed that many PGA supporters/LIV detractors morally reasoned along the lines of the following:

Human rights should be upheld. (moral standard)
Saudi Arabia has not upheld certain human rights. (alleged fact 1)
LIV Golf’s funding come from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. (alleged fact 2)
LIV Golf’s funding source taints the league. (alleged fact 3)
It’s wrong for professional golfers to play for LIV. (moral judgment)

Then, without notice, the PGA reversed course, announcing its merger with LIV and thereby introducing a new moral judgement: It’s fine for professional golfers to play for LIV.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with having a moral change of heart, especially if it’s the result of ethical enlightenment. However, others deserve to know what changed the moral judgment, which is where the PGA fell short of the cup.

A year ago, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was invoking the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a main reason to reject LIV. Now, he will reportedly serve as CEO of the newly created company.

Monahan and the PGA have offered little evidence that their change of heart had anything to do with recognition of either a more compelling moral standard or more salient alleged facts such as, ‘Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights is improving’ or ‘Where money comes from doesn’t matter as much as what’s done with it.’

Moreover, it appears that the PGA has made a wholesale change in its moral decision-making from principle-based ethics, or nonconsequentialism, to outcome-based ethics, or consequentialism. Evidence of this philosophical shift can be seen in recent statements from the PGA and Monahan that focus not on upholding specific moral principles but on prioritizing outcomes for the game of golf, for instance:

“We are pleased to move forward, in step with LIV and PIF’s world-class investing experience, and I applaud PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan for his vision and collaborative and forward-thinking approach that is not just a solution to the rift in our game, but also a commitment to taking it to new heights. This will engender a new era in global golf, for the better.”

Understandably, given what’s transpired, this explanation has failed to reach the green for many of the tour’s most important stakeholders. Many top professional golfers, have felt blindsided by the decision and left to wonder what inspired it. Rory McIlroy, the third ranked golfer in the world, said he was surprised by news of the merger, he felt like a “sacrificial lamb,” and he hated LIV and hoped it would go away.

Similarly, hall of fame golfer Tom Watson sent a letter to Monahan questioning the merger Watson also acknowledged that his skepticism about the new structure has been “compounded by the hypocrisy in disregarding the moral issue.”

If the merger goes through, professional golf, with its strong new financial backing and consolidation will likely thrive. However, the PGA’s pivot has left a moral divot that will not be easily replaced.

It’s the prerogative of any person and professional sports association, to have a moral change of heart. However, when such happens, it’s also important to say why. By not explaining how it so quickly arrived at a very different moral judgment about LIV, the PGA hit the ball into a bunker of “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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

5 Comments

<<Previous

Who will be the Adult in the Room with AI?

Birkin vs. Wirkin: Are Knockoff Products Ethical?

Resolving to be More Moral

A Decade of Very Demure, Very Mindful Marketing

How Should Companies Handle Underconsumption?

Making Money from People Who Talk Funny

Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics

All Play: How Companies Can Make More Inclusive Toys

Is Extreme Tourism Worth Its Costs?

Why Did the PGA Stop Keeping Score with LIV?

Editor

Archives

Categories