Chartered Marketers South Africa (CMSA) is the local face of an international movement which promotes rigorous standards of ethics, competence and professionalism among marketers.
In endorsing the Chartered Marketers’ code, Nina Morris predicted "the clock is ticking for sharp practice".
She added: "Ethics in South Africa are ceasing to be optional. They are becoming obligatory. A public policy revolution is under way. The bottom line is that sharp practice will no longer be winked at."
The agency MD acknowledged that the greed-is-good school of business seemed firmly embedded and listed several disturbing indicators:
1. A managerial obsession with business books that quote win-at-all-cost figures like Machiavelli, Attila the Hun and Karl von Clausewitz and a managerial vocabulary dominated by military analogy and dog-eat-dog Darwinism.
2. High levels of white-collar crime and corruption.
3. Consumer cynicism/apathy.
4. An Income Tax law that puts money ahead of concerns about criminality.
5. Global business practices that enable the wealthy to enrich themselves at the expense of poor countries.
Morris noted, however, that “legislative trends are on the side of the angels”. She emphasized that …
The moral consensus of our Bill of Rights was shaping all SA legislation.
Corporate governance was rapidly appearing in statute law (i.e. the Public Finance Management Act and Promotion of Access to Information Act).
Consumer rights are now recognized internationally and are underpinned locally by our Constitution.
Protection of children (from exploitation and deception by unscrupulous advertisers, among others) was now a priority in the President’s Office.
Even without official initiatives, the business environment rewarded the ethical marketing practitioner. Dishonest advertisers were found out by the public. Repeat business was withheld from marketing “raiders”.
Good brands stayed in the public’s good books by remaining honest, admitting errors and recalling any product that might be defective.
Morris pointed out that underhand dealers don’t make big money because they don’t stay around – “people who stay in business stay ethical, too”. Visionaries unmotivated by greed receive the big rewards.
She added: "People who succeed do what makes their hearts leap … and then they land in the money. But they are not money-motivated at the outset. Would (Richard) Branson make money if he didn’t love what he was doing?
"Business people who know the precedents know that greed for money gets in the way of building the business. Put another way, money-mindedness doesn’t pay."
Techniques like ‘cause marketing’ showed that "profits and ethics are not opposites … they co-exist. One often leads to another".
Though Morris believed marketers "belong on the side of the angels", she admitted noble ideas are "weakened by daily compromises".
She referred to the practice of obtaining low prices from suppliers on the understanding that big orders would be placed later (but were then placed elsewhere). She criticized pervasive "promiscuity", with agencies touting for business from the competitors of existing clients and client companies flirting with ad agencies while their current agency "sweats blood" for them.
She added: "We (in the marketing industry) don’t exactly lie and steal we just use the truth selectively. Truth is precious so we use it sparingly."
But Morris remained hopeful that Moral Marketing would be fostered by the mix of legislative trends, positive reinforcement by instruments like the CMSA code and day-by-day proof that good ethical practice pays.
She observed: "Your reputation wins you business even as it wins you respect … The higher the ethical base, the better the prospect of business success."
