DCS- Online Ethics

Ethics and Regulation are “hot” words in the advertising industry, they refer to regulating content and the way they talk to people.  As of march 1^st 2011 The Uk code of non-broadcast advertising expanded to include online, relating to misleading advertising, the protection of children and social responsibility. The CAP code can be found at http://www.cap.org.uk/The-Codes/CAP-Code.aspx.

Ethics are important to any company as they need to rely on consumers having trust in their brand so that the can therefore be loyal.  If a brand has any negative publicity regarding ethics or social responsibility then they are likely to see it affect their brands status and customer following.  They will also be very unlikely to attract any new customers. Now that online advertising has become increasingly popular, companies also have to worry about everything they do in their online adverts but also on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Social media can be a good way to gain brand awareness for charities, there are many ways in which they can do this, by having a page where people can donate to a cause, having an intereactive application where you do something which will raise or donate money or just by having a pag to make people aware of what the cause does.

The website , http://www.squidoo.com/top10facebookcharityapps has compiled a list of the top 10 charity applications on Facebook and each one has different ways which people can get involved with donating or raising money for the cause.

I personally think that social media can be a good way to advertise your brand but you need to make sure you are ethical and show you know your consumers and can relate to them.  However, I don’t think that brands that use a “world disaster” to gain publicity for their brand are very ethical with using online media, for example with the search engine Bing, asking people to retweet a message with their name in, saying they will donate money to the Japan Tsunami appeal everytime someone does, on Twitter.

References:

http://www.cap.org.uk/The-Codes/CAP-Code.aspx.

 http://www.squidoo.com/top10facebookcharityapps

DCS- Digital Activism

“Activism the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations or protests etc. “ (Dictionary.com)  There are many ways to show activism, but as the digital world has continued to grow, it is more commonly used online. . The meta activism project builds a toolkit that allows online potential activists to become politically and socially active. Mary Joyce ( Mcmanus, 2010) said that the “practice of using digital technology for political and social change” Facebook and Twitter amongst other social media platforms can be used as a means of protesting and using digital activism. A good example of how Facebook has been used as a way of trying to actively change a social norm was in 2009 when there was a Facebook campaign launched to get “Rage against the machine” to number 1 instead of the X Factor winner. The group claimed that they were fed up of the predictability of the music charts and the success of “The X Factor”. According to the creators of the campaign Jon and Tracey Morter the campaign started out as a “ silly idea that makes you laugh in your own home” ( BBC News, 2009) These platforms are often very cost-effective and bale to reach many people at the same time. 

Digital activism follows a hype cycle :

The hype cycle has 5 stages,  the technology triggers a buzz, there is a peak of inflated expectations, a trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment and a plateau of productivity.

In regards to Twitter a recent article on the BBC News page discussing Oprah winfrey’s first tweet on air during her programme, which led to a 43% increase in traffic to the Twitter website  because eof the Oprah effect. However, Twitter has only just peaked in popularity but one of the co-founders Mr Stone said that “ if the early response to the service had not been so positive, it would probably not have survived” ( Shiels, 2009)

Is digital activism a new way to express feelings for change and actually get a result at the end of it? Or is it just a way of causing nuisance? Let me know what you think.

References:

Dictionary.com, definition of Activism. Available from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/activism [ Accessed 20th march 2011]

Macmanus, R., 2010. Digital Activism: an interview with Mary Joyce Avaiable from: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/digital_activism_an_interview_with_mary_joyce.php [Accessed 20th march 2011]

Shiels, M., 2009 Can Twitter survive the hype cycle? BBC News  Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8015777.stm [Accessed 20th march 2011]

DCS- Is there such thing as absolutely private?

Privacy if often described as the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one’s private life or affairs. With today’s growing technology is it possible that anything is truly private?

Take Facebook for example , there are so many different elements which come under “privacy settings”, you have to go every single thing separately , wall posts, photos etc and check if you want friends to be able to see them, friends of friends as well or everyone.  Although up until recently they had sort of generic privacy settings which just had everything under one heading and you chose who could see it. However, when it was switched to the new privacy settings it didn’t alert you and you didn’t realise that it had changed the settings. I only found out because someone said something to me about it and I looked and had to change all my settings because it was automatically set so that everybody could see everything on my page.

It’s a bit worrying to think how easily someone could gain access to details of your life through something like Facebook. I personally used to put a lot of things on Facebook without even thinking about it, but after hearing some horror stories on the news I now think twice about it. You hear stories about people saying that they’re going on holiday on Facebook and then coming hoem to find it that they have been burgled because it was evident on Facebook that no-one was going to be there.

 Big news articles in recent years concerning privacy online have been things like the Wikileaks, "The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies" (Leigh, 2010) and in 2007 there was the “lost” disk of 25million UK Child benefit recipients personal details.( BBC, 2007) These stories show the casual nature in which sensitive information is dealt with.

Yet after these horror stories we still willingly put things on Facebook and enter our bank details online to various websites.

So with the complex and fast moving area is it always going to be possible to know if something is actually going to be kept private if it says it is? Well I think in the short term the answer is no.

References:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/privacy
Leigh, D., 2010 US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis Guardian.co.uk Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis [Accessed 13th march 2011]
BBC News., 2007 UK families put on fraud alert. BBC News.co.uk Available from : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7103566.stm [Accessed 13th march 2011]

DCS- Product placement- good or bad?

As of the 28^th February this year, product placement will now be allowed in the UK. This means that brand can pay to have their products featured on a television or radio programme. Obviously, as with every from of advertising there are a set of rules which coincide with this, which can be found at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/commercial-references-television/. So the question here is , is this a good thing or a bad thing that it has been allowed in the UK? And will it lead to certain brands dominating the market?

Well the first piece of product placement was on “This Morning” and it was by Nescafe, it signed a £100,000 deal to feature its Dolce Gusto coffee machine for 3 months in the kitchen area. Now having watched the clip I don’t think it’s actually too obvious that it has been placed there on purpose. Being honest, I didn’t know it was by Nescafe either it just looked like a normal coffee machine that could have been bought from Asda. Now if all product placement is going to be this subtle is it really going to be a problem? Well I don’t think so because if you think about it,  in everything we watch films, soaps and even documentaries there are products being used , so what’s the difference if a brand has paid to have that product there?  No I don’t think there is going to be much difference.

However if we think about the fact that certain brand may try to dominate the market through the use of product placement then it’s a different story.  For a strong brand such as Cadburys then product placement can simply reinforce brand awareness and subtly target their audience in ways they feel necessary. However, a less well-known brand may struggle with using product placement successfully because they may not be able to afford to compete with stronger brands to reach their target audience.

I think that product placement has good points and potential bad points, but I think it is definitely something to monitor and watch over the first few months of use, to see if it can achieve anything for specific brands. 

References:

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/commercial-references-television/.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/advertising/nescaf%C3%A9s-dolce-gusto-first-product-placement-advertiser/3023909.article