TO: Professor Grigelevich and Professor Greco
FROM: James, Angel, Kareem, and Antonio
DATE: 4/16/2012
SUBJECT: Advertising Demographics
INTRODUCTION - James Curry
The topic we have been researching as a group is how advertising is effecting certain demographics. We have chosen to focus on different groups and different things that are being advertised. For example, we have covered for-profit colleges and how they target misguided individuals luring them into spending money they do not have on a near worthless education. This topic is important for many reasons and is a widespread issue that people need to be informed of. The reason it is so important is because every day we are smothered will a different forms of advertising. While riding the subway the walls of both the stations and cars are covered in advertisements, the TV shows we watch have subliminal advertising and the commercials themselves are forced upon us. Many companies take advantage of how impressionable people are by targeting certain age groups and ethnic groups. Watching any day time TV station will allow a viewer to see advertisements for for-profit colleges or other training institutions that are aimed towards unemployed and under educated people. With promises of financial aid and a "guaranteed" job after graduation those individuals being targeted are likely to fall for the advertising tricks of for-profit colleges. It is not just for-profit schools that we are focusing on; we are also looking at the way clothing companies advertise to potential consumers and whether or not the way they go about it is can be viewed as ethical. This is an issue that is relevant now more than ever especially with the current state of the economy. It is essential that people are educated on the way companies advertise to their target groups so that they do not fall victim to false promises or over priced low quality goods. Our main goal through our research is to educate and inform people on the potential risks they may face due to false advertising and whether or not companies are advertising their services and goods in an ethical manner.
FINDINGS: James Curry
For-profit colleges are often times organizations offering programs in various career fields that do not require a full four year degree to obtain a career in. Some programs that for-profits offer are, dental assisting, medical assisting, massage therapy, culinary arts, and many other different types of majors. While the education in itself may be beneficial it is the way the for-profit colleges advertise their programs that is detrimental to nearly all attendees of these schools. In an article written by Mary Beth Marklein, she describes a student that attended a for-profit institute, Everest College. This student had graduated from Everest with a 3.9 GPA and was accepted to a pre-med major at a state university. Everest had promised her that all of her credits would transfer and that she would seamlessly be able to continue on with her education. Unfortunately, the recruiters from the school did not inform her that none of their promises were true and that she would be left with a thirty thousand dollar bill for a degree that she would not be able to continue working on (USAtoday.com), This story is an alarming idea that many people need to take notice of. For-profit college attendance has been skyrocketing in recent years mainly due to the economy, need for education, and the flexibility and ease of attendance the schools offer. I personally know someone who graduated from ITT tech with a degree in industrial design and was unable to transfer any of his credits or even find a job in his field because a proper four year degree was a necessity to obtain employment. The school had guaranteed that all of his credits would transfer to a comparable program at Wentworth, while at the time that may have been true the school told him after WIT would not accept him that their "transfer agreement" had changed and there was nothing else that the would be able to do for him. After watching several clips on YouTube of commercials for various for-profit colleges it does explicitly state that "some or all credits may not be transferable to an accredited institute". That way of advertising in a way is not unethical because they do in fact inform the viewer and potential student right away that credits may not be of any use if they are looking to transfer. What is unethical though is the countless horror stories of students who were told false promises that they would be able to transfer their credits. Here is an example of a commercial from ITT technical institute, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2n_bzoHf9k, at the very end of the commercial it does in fact say "credits are unlikely to transfer". It's obvious what the point of the commercial is right after watching it. ITT tech is showing an accomplished United States Marine Corps veteran and his happy family which they most likely believe to be all due to the education he received at ITT. Veterans are unfortunately a target of for-profit schools ever since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reason being is that the Post 9/11 G.I. bill, a bill that allows veterans to attend college for nearly free thanks to their service, has reached a worth of over nine billion dollars. For-profit schools, like the University of Phoenix, have marketed themselves as "military friendly" in order to take advantage of the G.I. bill. Veterans often choose schools like Phoenix because of their ease of attendance, mostly online classes, and the wide range of programs that they offer. Veterans may be more apt to choose internet courses because of different factors like PTSD or feeling out of place at a college with students much younger than themselves.
Findings: Kareem Daniels To be or not to be like Mike, that is the question. When it comes to basketball and the greatest of all time there is only one who almost unanimously comes to mind. Michael Jordan. Everyone wants to be like Mike. My research looked at the Nike/Jordan sneaker line for their advertising schemes and targeting tactics. It wasn’t long until I figured out that at first the targets for the shoes where males around 25 and under, student-athletes, or just regular boys playing ball at the local basketball court. Pretty much anyone who wanted to be like Mike was a target, but was it the shoes? Tracing back commercials I began to see just how they got there point across. They showed lots of flashes of the shoes because of course that was the main focal point, they wanted to sell shoes but the fact what Jordan was doing had nothing to do with the shoe had to be brought up; that is what they tried to get across in the first few commercials. It wasn’t until the commercial for the fifth shoe in the Jordan series where Mars Blackmon also known as Spike Lee repeatedly asked Michael Jordan if it was the shoes that made him so great and Mike repeatedly said no but the most interesting part wasn’t until the end of the commercial when Nike had a little comment for the viewer putting “Mr. Jordan’s opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Nike.” Meaning that though Michael says it’s not the shoes that make him good his opinions on what makes him the best does not reflect that of Nike. Saying it’s the shoes so go and buy them. This helped answer my research question because it shows where the Nike/Jordan brand stand ethically. One of Terkels quotes was “the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people” and that is what this company is preying on, and that is unethical because it is not the shoes that make a person as good or better than Michael Jordan it’s the hard work put in. Nikes comments after the commercial threw any ethical leverage they had out the window. The work issue that this topic focuses on is ethics. Many people purchase products because their sellers misrepresent these products and that is unethical and can have different effects on the lives buyers. This relates to the Terkel quote “status... becomes important… society, they feel, looks upon them as lesser.” Status can be viewed as a big thing to the Nike/Jordan brand, why just in 2007-08 about 40 of the top 50 signature basketball shoes sold were Jordan styles. Michael Jordan’s success on the court has had such a tremendous effect on his status off the court that to many kids to teenagers, even some adults, look upon other shoes as lesser brands. This carries over to how people view each other. In many schools all across the country if you don’t have the latest Nikes and Jordan’s you are looked down upon. In today’s society the difference between cool and uncool is a jump man/check sign away. It goes even further to kids getting jumped for their shoes even people being killed. Hip-Hop artist J.Cole even briefly addresses the subject using it in one of his lines in a song called Nobody’s Perfect feat. Missy Elliot, he says “I step over piranhas, death over dishonor. They killin people for J's, that's death over designer.” This issue connects to today’s society and current times because just a few months ago during the holiday season Jordan released another pair of shoes, the concord 11’s. The media attention quickly went from how many people stood outside stores for the shoes to the amount of chaos caused by the shoe. “Customers engaged in fights and vandalism. A Jersey man was stabbed during a brawl that broke out while people were waiting in line to buy the shoes. A mother was arrested for leaving her two children, ages 2 and 5, in the car while she went inside a mall to buy a pair of Jordan’s in Georgia. And gunshots rang out at one mall in California, causing thousands to be turned away” (espn.go.com). The ethics of the advertisement is important to me, my family, and my community is because they are not bad shoes, with the help of Looney Tunes, Spike Lee and etc. the Jordan brand is not aimed at the same demographic it issued to be. It is more widely popular and for that reason many more people in my community would want to purchase these Jordan shoes; my brothers and I may even want to purchase the shoes but when all is said and done and a person is walking out of the mall or down the street with these shoes, what’s to say they won’t end up on the news just like Mike, but for a completely different reason.
Findings: Angel Fernandes
The research conducted and the information gleaned has helped to provide a thorough response to our topic question. The topic concerns the origin of advertising ethics and it’s implementation throughout the various mediums of advertisement. Through my research, I have learned that advertising is an integral part of success for any business, making it subject to the social moral code that is more commonly referred to as ethics. Marketing or advertising, has been subject to the brunt of society’s criticism, due to consumers feeling as if advertising through various plots and schemes misled them. Most businesses acknowledge ethics when marketing their products however there are corporations that blatantly ignore their ethical obligations to both consumers and potential consumers. Situations where companies tend to do this the most occur when advertisements are targeting a very specific demographic; for example, children. Children lack the proper life experience to be able to pass sound judgment on advertisements; this makes them highly susceptible to the aggressive advertising of corporations such as McDonalds, Burger King, Toysrus and etc. The issue of corporations targeting is important to families and communities everywhere; nobody takes kindly to a corporation attempts to exploit their children through aggressive advertisements. The topic relates mostly to the Terkel quotation: “status…becomes important…society, they feel, looks upon them as lesser.” The correlation that exists between the topic and this quotation lies in the attitude that corporations take on devise how to effectively advertise. Corporations that violate the code of ethics in advertising usually do so because they need to meet quotas and/or they are in fierce competition with other corporations and need to sell as much as they can to save face in the business world. The welfare of the customer is absent from this mentality that certain corporations have and it is this absence that leads to unethical advertising. One company that is much more notorious for its unethical practices than unethical advertising, is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is known to advertise and sell products that are manufactured in sweatshops “The children report being routinely slapped and beaten, sometimes falling down from exhaustion, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, even some all-night, 19-to-20-hour shifts, often seven days a week, for wages as low as 6 ½ cents an hour. “ ("Children Found Sewing Clothing For Wal-Mart, Hanes & Other U.S. & European Companies." 1). By ignoring its corporate social responsibility to the workers that suffer to manufacture these products, one can draw the conclusion that the advertisement and sale of such products is in itself, a violation of Wal-Mart’s obligation to business ethics. The issue of unethical advertising is a hot topic in current events and news. Tobacco companies are constantly catching flak over their misleading ads because the general populous is in a state of heightened awareness, and as a result, is calling corporations out on their advertisements. My sources taught me many things about the concept of advertising, as well as the role that ethics plays in advertising. By taking on this project, I learned that most businesses do in fact have an ethical code that they try to adhere to, and that there is an organization called the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business that is recognized amongst businesses for stressing the importance of ethics when it comes to business practices. I also became aware of how difficult it can be to quantify how ethical an ad is due to the fact that advertising is a grey area when it comes to ethics; very rarely is an advertising dilemma an issue of black and white ethically.
Make sure group members write their names next to the sections they complete; this is the only way Professor Greco and I can accurately track individual grades. This should be done for the written report, the annotated bibliography, and the powerpoint slides.
FROM: James, Angel, Kareem, and Antonio
DATE: 4/16/2012
SUBJECT: Advertising Demographics
INTRODUCTION - James Curry
The topic we have been researching as a group is how advertising is effecting certain demographics. We have chosen to focus on different groups and different things that are being advertised. For example, we have covered for-profit colleges and how they target misguided individuals luring them into spending money they do not have on a near worthless education. This topic is important for many reasons and is a widespread issue that people need to be informed of. The reason it is so important is because every day we are smothered will a different forms of advertising. While riding the subway the walls of both the stations and cars are covered in advertisements, the TV shows we watch have subliminal advertising and the commercials themselves are forced upon us. Many companies take advantage of how impressionable people are by targeting certain age groups and ethnic groups. Watching any day time TV station will allow a viewer to see advertisements for for-profit colleges or other training institutions that are aimed towards unemployed and under educated people. With promises of financial aid and a "guaranteed" job after graduation those individuals being targeted are likely to fall for the advertising tricks of for-profit colleges. It is not just for-profit schools that we are focusing on; we are also looking at the way clothing companies advertise to potential consumers and whether or not the way they go about it is can be viewed as ethical. This is an issue that is relevant now more than ever especially with the current state of the economy. It is essential that people are educated on the way companies advertise to their target groups so that they do not fall victim to false promises or over priced low quality goods. Our main goal through our research is to educate and inform people on the potential risks they may face due to false advertising and whether or not companies are advertising their services and goods in an ethical manner.
FINDINGS: James Curry
For-profit colleges are often times organizations offering programs in various career fields that do not require a full four year degree to obtain a career in. Some programs that for-profits offer are, dental assisting, medical assisting, massage therapy, culinary arts, and many other different types of majors. While the education in itself may be beneficial it is the way the for-profit colleges advertise their programs that is detrimental to nearly all attendees of these schools. In an article written by Mary Beth Marklein, she describes a student that attended a for-profit institute, Everest College. This student had graduated from Everest with a 3.9 GPA and was accepted to a pre-med major at a state university. Everest had promised her that all of her credits would transfer and that she would seamlessly be able to continue on with her education. Unfortunately, the recruiters from the school did not inform her that none of their promises were true and that she would be left with a thirty thousand dollar bill for a degree that she would not be able to continue working on (USAtoday.com), This story is an alarming idea that many people need to take notice of. For-profit college attendance has been skyrocketing in recent years mainly due to the economy, need for education, and the flexibility and ease of attendance the schools offer. I personally know someone who graduated from ITT tech with a degree in industrial design and was unable to transfer any of his credits or even find a job in his field because a proper four year degree was a necessity to obtain employment. The school had guaranteed that all of his credits would transfer to a comparable program at Wentworth, while at the time that may have been true the school told him after WIT would not accept him that their "transfer agreement" had changed and there was nothing else that the would be able to do for him. After watching several clips on YouTube of commercials for various for-profit colleges it does explicitly state that "some or all credits may not be transferable to an accredited institute". That way of advertising in a way is not unethical because they do in fact inform the viewer and potential student right away that credits may not be of any use if they are looking to transfer. What is unethical though is the countless horror stories of students who were told false promises that they would be able to transfer their credits. Here is an example of a commercial from ITT technical institute, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2n_bzoHf9k, at the very end of the commercial it does in fact say "credits are unlikely to transfer". It's obvious what the point of the commercial is right after watching it. ITT tech is showing an accomplished United States Marine Corps veteran and his happy family which they most likely believe to be all due to the education he received at ITT. Veterans are unfortunately a target of for-profit schools ever since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reason being is that the Post 9/11 G.I. bill, a bill that allows veterans to attend college for nearly free thanks to their service, has reached a worth of over nine billion dollars. For-profit schools, like the University of Phoenix, have marketed themselves as "military friendly" in order to take advantage of the G.I. bill. Veterans often choose schools like Phoenix because of their ease of attendance, mostly online classes, and the wide range of programs that they offer. Veterans may be more apt to choose internet courses because of different factors like PTSD or feeling out of place at a college with students much younger than themselves.
Findings: Kareem Daniels
To be or not to be like Mike, that is the question. When it comes to basketball and the greatest of all time there is only one who almost unanimously comes to mind. Michael Jordan. Everyone wants to be like Mike. My research looked at the Nike/Jordan sneaker line for their advertising schemes and targeting tactics. It wasn’t long until I figured out that at first the targets for the shoes where males around 25 and under, student-athletes, or just regular boys playing ball at the local basketball court. Pretty much anyone who wanted to be like Mike was a target, but was it the shoes? Tracing back commercials I began to see just how they got there point across. They showed lots of flashes of the shoes because of course that was the main focal point, they wanted to sell shoes but the fact what Jordan was doing had nothing to do with the shoe had to be brought up; that is what they tried to get across in the first few commercials. It wasn’t until the commercial for the fifth shoe in the Jordan series where Mars Blackmon also known as Spike Lee repeatedly asked Michael Jordan if it was the shoes that made him so great and Mike repeatedly said no but the most interesting part wasn’t until the end of the commercial when Nike had a little comment for the viewer putting “Mr. Jordan’s opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Nike.” Meaning that though Michael says it’s not the shoes that make him good his opinions on what makes him the best does not reflect that of Nike. Saying it’s the shoes so go and buy them. This helped answer my research question because it shows where the Nike/Jordan brand stand ethically. One of Terkels quotes was “the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people” and that is what this company is preying on, and that is unethical because it is not the shoes that make a person as good or better than Michael Jordan it’s the hard work put in. Nikes comments after the commercial threw any ethical leverage they had out the window. The work issue that this topic focuses on is ethics. Many people purchase products because their sellers misrepresent these products and that is unethical and can have different effects on the lives buyers.
This relates to the Terkel quote “status... becomes important… society, they feel, looks upon them as lesser.” Status can be viewed as a big thing to the Nike/Jordan brand, why just in 2007-08 about 40 of the top 50 signature basketball shoes sold were Jordan styles. Michael Jordan’s success on the court has had such a tremendous effect on his status off the court that to many kids to teenagers, even some adults, look upon other shoes as lesser brands. This carries over to how people view each other. In many schools all across the country if you don’t have the latest Nikes and Jordan’s you are looked down upon. In today’s society the difference between cool and uncool is a jump man/check sign away. It goes even further to kids getting jumped for their shoes even people being killed. Hip-Hop artist J.Cole even briefly addresses the subject using it in one of his lines in a song called Nobody’s Perfect feat. Missy Elliot, he says “I step over piranhas, death over dishonor. They killin people for J's, that's death over designer.” This issue connects to today’s society and current times because just a few months ago during the holiday season Jordan released another pair of shoes, the concord 11’s. The media attention quickly went from how many people stood outside stores for the shoes to the amount of chaos caused by the shoe. “Customers engaged in fights and vandalism. A Jersey man was stabbed during a brawl that broke out while people were waiting in line to buy the shoes. A mother was arrested for leaving her two children, ages 2 and 5, in the car while she went inside a mall to buy a pair of Jordan’s in Georgia. And gunshots rang out at one mall in California, causing thousands to be turned away” (espn.go.com). The ethics of the advertisement is important to me, my family, and my community is because they are not bad shoes, with the help of Looney Tunes, Spike Lee and etc. the Jordan brand is not aimed at the same demographic it issued to be. It is more widely popular and for that reason many more people in my community would want to purchase these Jordan shoes; my brothers and I may even want to purchase the shoes but when all is said and done and a person is walking out of the mall or down the street with these shoes, what’s to say they won’t end up on the news just like Mike, but for a completely different reason.
Findings: Angel Fernandes
The research conducted and the information gleaned has helped to provide a thorough response to our topic question. The topic concerns the origin of advertising ethics and it’s implementation throughout the various mediums of advertisement. Through my research, I have learned that advertising is an integral part of success for any business, making it subject to the social moral code that is more commonly referred to as ethics. Marketing or advertising, has been subject to the brunt of society’s criticism, due to consumers feeling as if advertising through various plots and schemes misled them. Most businesses acknowledge ethics when marketing their products however there are corporations that blatantly ignore their ethical obligations to both consumers and potential consumers. Situations where companies tend to do this the most occur when advertisements are targeting a very specific demographic; for example, children. Children lack the proper life experience to be able to pass sound judgment on advertisements; this makes them highly susceptible to the aggressive advertising of corporations such as McDonalds, Burger King, Toysrus and etc. The issue of corporations targeting is important to families and communities everywhere; nobody takes kindly to a corporation attempts to exploit their children through aggressive advertisements. The topic relates mostly to the Terkel quotation: “status…becomes important…society, they feel, looks upon them as lesser.” The correlation that exists between the topic and this quotation lies in the attitude that corporations take on devise how to effectively advertise. Corporations that violate the code of ethics in advertising usually do so because they need to meet quotas and/or they are in fierce competition with other corporations and need to sell as much as they can to save face in the business world. The welfare of the customer is absent from this mentality that certain corporations have and it is this absence that leads to unethical advertising. One company that is much more notorious for its unethical practices than unethical advertising, is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is known to advertise and sell products that are manufactured in sweatshops “The children report being routinely slapped and beaten, sometimes falling down from exhaustion, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, even some all-night, 19-to-20-hour shifts, often seven days a week, for wages as low as 6 ½ cents an hour. “ ("Children Found Sewing Clothing For Wal-Mart, Hanes & Other U.S. & European Companies." 1). By ignoring its corporate social responsibility to the workers that suffer to manufacture these products, one can draw the conclusion that the advertisement and sale of such products is in itself, a violation of Wal-Mart’s obligation to business ethics. The issue of unethical advertising is a hot topic in current events and news. Tobacco companies are constantly catching flak over their misleading ads because the general populous is in a state of heightened awareness, and as a result, is calling corporations out on their advertisements. My sources taught me many things about the concept of advertising, as well as the role that ethics plays in advertising. By taking on this project, I learned that most businesses do in fact have an ethical code that they try to adhere to, and that there is an organization called the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business that is recognized amongst businesses for stressing the importance of ethics when it comes to business practices. I also became aware of how difficult it can be to quantify how ethical an ad is due to the fact that advertising is a grey area when it comes to ethics; very rarely is an advertising dilemma an issue of black and white ethically.
Make sure group members write their names next to the sections they complete; this is the only way Professor Greco and I can accurately track individual grades. This should be done for the written report, the annotated bibliography, and the powerpoint slides.