This specific advertisement is very applicable to the application of ethics for public relations and advertising we discussed recently. It revolves around a new advertising plan by the Iowa athletic department that was not so entirely ethical.
The University of Iowa debuted a new marketing scheme in 2008 to promote ticket sales for the Iowa men’s basketball team. There were two ads in these specific promotions, one was a “Slam Dunk” ad and the other was a “Steal” ad. As an example from the slam dunk ad, the main text read “I can save $100 bucks on a season of Iowa basketball? That’s a slam dunk!” The problems came into play when the ads described plays that never happened to apply to the slam dunk them.
The main image in the ad shows Jarryd Cole executing a slam dunk. In the left column text, the ad had a definition of slam dunk, and an example of slam dunk. To be frank, the example never occurred, and was a bold faced lie. The example read “Jarryd Cole’s thunderous dunk brought the Buckeyes to their knees and the sellout crowd in Carver Hawkeye Arena to their feet.” Iowa did defeat Ohio State in the game they were referring to, but that exact play never actually occurred, and the Buckeyes were never “brought to their feet.” Professors at Iowa slammed the ads for lying.
Although advertisers have a different set of ethical guidelines to follow compared to journalists, they still abide by ethical rules, of which includes telling the truth and avoiding such deception. That ad not only was lying and deceiving, but it involved mentioning a specific school within the ad when describing a play that never took place to have occurred against Ohio State.
This is a very Machiavellian standpoint from the creators of this ad. It was intended to promote their sole interests with disregard to the interests of others, such as the audience when they told a lie or Ohio State when they used defamation. Applying the TARES test to the ad, it failed in every single criteria to provide an ethically acceptable ad. This is a great example of advertising that did not follow any ethical guidelines.
http://lookinginatiowa.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/see-controversial-full-page-university-of-iowa-basketball-ads-gazette-sports-columnist-jim-ecker-is-writing-about/
I know the example you're talking about and I think I agree with you. Though I do think advertisement is allowed to alter pictures and stage photoshoots, ethically they were wrong to add the captions pertaining to Ohio State and scripting a made up play like that. Shoot the slam dunk picture, make it over the top even, just don't place it in an scene that didn't occur.
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