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The beauty of having your own blog. You always get (or should I say take) a second chance at getting messages across. This one aims to repair my failures in moderating DMS’s round-table on Ethics in Marketing. To keep it brief, we failed to outline our topic clearly (this tends to always be the case with bigger-than-life topics like Ethics). Some once and for all, here’s my take on what Ethics are and how they relate to marketing! (the arrogant tone applied here serves merely to to pump up your righteous self).

Ethics is a philosophy of morality. Morality is a code of conduct – a guide to what is right and wrong, good and bad. Ethics is basically a perpetual dialogue about morality (or rather moralitieS). Different times, different settings, different people: different guidelines (that’s morality). And yet, we tend to bring them together and come up with some universal truth(s) about how the world should be. Or better yet, we keep arguing if this is possible at all (that’s philosophy).

This is where things get tough. Right and wrong, good and bad. What a crappy definition. That’s everything! Yes and no. Yes, it’ very basic and broad. No, it’s fairly limited to the things that matter most. And that’s basically the relationships we have with others. Morality and ethics are foremost about how we treat each other. Now, this “other” sometimes get’s extended and includes not just other people, but other living beings (think animals rights) or event inanimate objects (think “green”).

That enough for starters. Stay tunned for ideas on how this applies to marketing and the trends we recently see in consumer society.