an assignment

B asked to read my assignment, so here it is:



To discuss a campaign in which you felt an ethical theory has been violated.

Marketing Campaign Ethics – Calvin Klein

Introduction

Calvin Klein (CK) is a fashion brand synonymous with the culture of rebellion and sex. Search for Calvin Klein ads on the Internet and you will know what I mean. From the very beginning, its founder, Calvin Klein, has always believed in the power of shock advertising. Shock advertising is advertising that attracts attention by being startling or offending in some manner. This is achieved through the use of explicit, violent or highly graphic images, or suggestive television advertisements.

Shock advertising works on the social norm of the consumer it targets. It goes against their values, beliefs and morals, getting them to think, talk and act on that advertisement. Shock advertising can be very effective for a company, or horrendously damaging.


The Advertisement

The focus of my assignment is the Calvin Klein Jeanswear (CK Jeans) advertising campaign, launched in the year 1995 via television, print and billboard medium. The print advertisement features a topless male model and a female model with exposed underwear from her low cut jeans in a dingy setting. The shock factor was how nubile and young they both looked – he looked like a prepubescent teen, and she seemed not a day older than 14! The ad campaign was inspired by Italian pornography of the 1960s, says Klein in an interview.

If the print advertisement roused the viewer's suspicion that CK was propagating inappropriate sexual innuendo, the advertisements on television confirms that suspicion. In it, a man (presumably a director) films a few young auditionees with a handheld camera. Most of these auditionees were in their early teens. The camera pans to their fresh faces, parts of their bodies, and captures an atmosphere of uneasiness.

The man behind the camera asks them suggestive questions, talks about the clothes they are wearing, and in one scene, encouraged a boy to rip his shirt off. Even a bystander would notice that something was something wrong and disturbing with the scene! Why is that elderly film director hitting on the young boy? Should he not be in school? And what sort of an audition was this?


The Ethical Theory

The ethical theory that has been violated in this situation is the duty-based theory. To judge whether an action is ethical or not by the duty based theory, each action must be judged independently. This means not taking into account the results that may occur from that action or its possible consequences. The motivation of an act is what makes it ethical or unethical.

So, the question that must be asked is: what is the motivation (or the main intention) for CK’s ad campaign? The obvious answer would be, to gain market share of jeans in the fashion industry. That sounds like a fair and reasonable business-minded motivation. But what was their drive, or what spurred them to go ahead with such a suggestive and almost risqué ad campaign? The answer: to create shock; to connote jeans with sex; to get people to talk about it. It certainly is not unethical, but it is an unclassy way to market their denim. However, to answer the question accurately, we must mention the execution of the shock advertisement: using models who look barely of age, accompanied by the voiceover of an elderly male laced with sexual innuendo.

Kantian categorical imperatives that should have been followed include universality, i.e. acting on principles that are universal. CK did not follow universal principles of protecting minors and their rights. It blatantly exploited the image of pre-teens by using nubile-looking models and subjecting them to intense and inappropriate scrutiny. Duty based theory also says to never treat people as a means to an end. This means to treat each person with respect in regards to their humanity. The manner in which the models were treated in the advertisement was condescending, exploitative and offensive to most people.


Impact and Rectification

CK’s ad campaign did not go down well with the general public. Although it was the 90s, when low cut jeans and bare midriffs started cropping up to suggest a more open and “fun” lifestyle, the public had zero tolerance for the preying upon of young teens and children.

The advertisement, both television and print, was found to be exploitative and disturbing by various parties. The American Family Association began campaigning via letters to retailers to boycott CK apparel. Among the biggest retailers who supported the boycott was Dayton Hudson Corporation (now known as Target). Besides that, CK was facing difficulties in getting print adverts out, as magazines like Seventeen refused to run that advertisement. The biggest reaction was probably the probe into CK by the Justice Department of the United States to find out whether any child pornography law was broken. (It was dropped, as all of the models were adults)

What CK can do to rectify this situation was to pull the ad campaign from the market, which they did due to public pressure, almost four months after its launch. To put this into the context of the duty based theory, CK should take more responsibility in playing its role as a member of a moral community, where people are treated as an end, and not just the means to an end. This means, to stop using and exploiting young models for the sake of market share.


No Repeat

Ethical marketing says that this is a marketing strategy that should not be repeated by CK in the future – but that is not going to stop them from doing it. As I mentioned earlier, shock advertising can work both ways. It can be very effective (as in the case of using graphic images of mouth cancer and the likes to discourage smoking) or horrendously damaging (intense public backlash). The CK ad campaign discussed in this assignment hauled in $462 million in apparel sales and another $200 million in unfulfilled orders in 1995 alone. Though heavily criticized and short-lived, the ad campaign for CK Jeans accomplished all and more of what it was supposed to do. It created much revenue for the company and ingrained into the minds of consumers that “jeans are all about sex,”

The $200 million in unfulfilled orders is probably the catalyst for another short-lived campaign in 1999, in which CK promoted its children’s underwear line with high definition, black and white images of children jumping on a couch clad only in their underwear. The billboard was up for only one day and the public’s furor over it was worse than previously, because CK had used children in this advertisement.

CK has not done anything to ensure that this does not occur again. In fact, in recent years as well, its advertisements have come into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.


Conclusion

Sex sells – we all know that. Controversy sells, too. For CK to change its style of doing business is like asking a tiger to change its stripes. Sex, nudity, shock and rebellion are ingrained in the CK culture. To change their ethics or the way they view ethics is to move away from its foundation and change its entire identity.

The problem with this company’s view of things is that they do not put ethics first. Neither do they think about moral consequences or the impact their shocking advertisements have on the society at large. Not only do they not base their decisions on duty based theories (or other ethical theories for that matter), but they also lack a respectable image of virtue. Some may argue that their rebellion and sex-oriented image is what differentiates them from other apparel companies, but to what extent are they doing it, and at whose cost?