About Us

Ethical Marketing News was formed in February 2017 by Stuart Mitchell.

Stuart is a marketing professional with many years experience. He currently runs and owns SM Marketing in Aberdeen, Scotland. When setting up SM Marketing as an ethical marketing company he noticed there weren’t any real ethical marketing resources and so he created Ethical Marketing News. The news on this site is all put together by Stuart working with marketing companies and advertising agencies to showcase the best of their ethical marketing. The articles on this site are written by a number of people, their details are on their individual posts.

At Ethical Marketing News we aim to be the number 1 resource for ethical marketers to see what other people are up to, to get ideas and to promote your own ethical marketing campaigns, to do this we need the help of you to give us the information. If you have a press release you would like us to feature then please contact us at: submissions@ethicalmarketingnews.com

Guest Posts

We are not looking for unsolicited Guest Posts, thank you for your interest but we do not wish any at this time.

Links

We only ever put links in the articles if they are directly referenced. We will not add in extra links because “readers” think they are useful or better than the ones we have. We work in marketing we do know that the people who contact us asking us to add in links are getting paid to do, so these emails will not be replied to.

What is Ethical Marketing?

According to wikipedia ethical marketing is:

Ethical marketing refers to the application of marketing ethics into the marketing process. Briefly, marketing ethics refers to the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular marketing issues that are matters of moral judgment. Ethical marketing generally results in a more socially responsible and culturally sensitive business community. The establishment of marketing ethics has the potential to benefit society as a whole, both in the short- and long-term. Ethical marketing should be part of business ethics in the sense that marketing forms a significant part of any business model. Study of Ethical marketing should be included in applied ethics and involves examination of whether or not an honest and factual representation of a product or service has been delivered in a framework of cultural and social values.

It promotes qualitative benefits to its customers, which other similar companies, products or services fail to recognise. The concern with ethical issues, such as child labor, working conditions, relationships with third world countries and environmental problems, has changed the attitude of the Western World towards a more socially responsible way of thinking. This has influenced companies and their response is to market their products in a more socially responsible way.

The increasing trend of fair trade is an example of the impact of ethical marketing. In the ‘Ethical Shoppers Price Index Survey’ (2009), fair trade was the most popular ethical badge products could have. It also revealed that many consumers distrusted green claims. (The idea of fair trade is that consumers pay a guaranteed commodity price to a small group of producers, the producers agree to pay fair labor prices and conserve the environment – a fair deal for everyone.)

The philosophy of marketing is not lost with this newfound ethical slant, but rather hopes to win customer loyalty by reinforcing the positive values of the brand, creating a strong citizen brand. However, this new way of thinking does create new challenges for the marketer of the 21st century, in terms of invention and development of products to add long-term benefits without reducing the product’s desirable qualities.

Many brands have tried to use ethics to make themselves look responsible, often spinning environmental claims which has led to the term greenwash (see greenwashing) In research consumers have shown to have even less trust of ethical claims in ads than ordinary ads. media attention on ethics has resulted in many top brands suffering consumer boycotts. Although many brands have tried to use green issues, it has been noted that in research 2/3 of consumers responded more to ethical claims that relate to people rather than to than environment. Ethical Marketing can sometimes be called Cause Marketing.

Our Viewpoint

At Ethical Marketing News we will try to bring you a mix of articles and stories from ethical sources, as well as many articles and news stories about the technical side of ethically marketing which we will also try to cover as often as possible. We want to be the number 1 ethical marketing resource where you can see what others are doing, and who knows maybe even get some ideas.

Sometime we will put forward stories by companies who have, in the past had dubious ethics, we do this because by highlighting what they do right we hope they will take notice and see the value to them as a business.