Advertising and Promotion

Ethics are moral principles and values that govern the actions and decisions of an individual or group (Belch 731). It’s no surprise that some commercials and/or advertisements are ethically questionable at best. For this blog, I will explore 3 different advertisements and analyze their lack of ideally ethical consideration. The first ad is Reebok’s    “Cheat on your girlfriend, not on your workout”     poster. This is a perfect example of advertising as offensive or in bad taste (Belch 734). It's a controversial ad which was originally intended to motivate gym goers in a German Gym. Instead, it produced a detrimental stigma for Reebok and was quickly removed from display as a result of widespread complaints. One letter sent from Cheaterville.com (a site that publicizes cheating partners) in response to this poster read: " This form of advertising shows a dishonest and disrespectful attitude towards women and your company should be ashamed to have even placed ...

Marketing is all about testing the effectiveness of different means, methods, and styles of advertising. Pretests are measures taken before an advertising campaign is implemented (Belch 609). There are two categories of pretesting: laboratory methods and field methods. In laboratory test, people are brought to a particular location where they are shown ads and/or commercials (Belch 610). Laboratory methods of pretesting consist of consumer juries, portfolio tests, physiological measures, theater tests, rough tests, concept tests, readability tests, and comprehension and reaction tests (Belch 609). Consumer Juries (Belch 613) - uses consumers representative of the target market to evaluate the probable success of an ad. Consumer juries may be asked to rate a selection of layouts or copy versions presented in pasteups on separate sheets. Portfolio Tests (Belch 615) - a laboratory methodology designed to expose a group of respondents to a portfolio consisting o both control and tes...