Unethical Advertisement, Essay Example

Advertisements are mostly creative efforts that are to attract consumer’s attention to their brands for them to buy and consume the product. Advertisement is always at a loss between capturing the prospective customers and the violation of business ethics as well as violating the ethics governing competition practices. Ethics in advertising is a borderline issue that could swing either way. The determination between what is right and what is wrong is a hard call with no clear difference between acceptable and unacceptable practices (ezinarticles.com).

Key among the considerations used to determine whether an advertisement is ethical or unethical is the question on whether the advert misleads the public about the product being advertised and whether it is damaging to the competition. Damaging adverts often lead to legal tussles which at times result in courts banning such adverts especially where the aggrieved parties are the competition which decides to complain by way of law suits.

An example of unethical advertisement is the one carried out by Pepsi. In the advert, a young boy (too short to use the drink vending machine) steps up to the machine to buy drinks. Due the height disadvantage, the boy reaches out and pushes coins into the Coca cola slots and two cans of Coca-cola pop out. He uses these drinks as the stepping platform to reach the Pepsi slots which are higher up the vending machine (youtube.com). This way the young boy demonstrates that the Coca cola drink is not fit for consumption but can only serve the purpose of being a stepping for one to reach the real drink which is Pepsi. This is not only unfair for Coca cola’s image but also quite insulting since it makes coca cola seem cheap and unfit for human consumption.  Advertisements that infringe on the brand rights of the opposition are unethical and need to be controlled to ensure fair business practices (BPP Learning media 2009). This means that Coca cola can front a legitimate complaint against the use of their cans in the advert.

Works Cited

BPP Learning media. International commercial law. London. BPP Publishers. (2009) 87-89

Emillie, Chen. ‘’What is considered unethical in advertising?’’. Ezine articles. 20 September 2010. <http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Considered-Unethical-in-Advertising?&id=4494260>

You Tube. Coca cola against pepsi. 20-09-2010<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAP2yVsgI6c>