ALR733 Advertising Theory and Practice P a g e 1 | 2 Assignment 1 Due Date: Sunday April 15, XXXXXXXXXX:59pm) Word Count: 2,500 Weight: 50% Essay question: Why is moral myopia and advertising strategy...

Why is moral myopia and advertising strategy a potentially harmful combination?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION    2
MAIN BODY    2
Concept of Moral Myopia    2
Combination moral myopia and advertising strategy    3
The case study of H.J. Heinz Company Australia Ltd (Heinz) product: Little Kids Shredz range    4
The negative impact of moral myopia and advertising strategy    4
Ways through which ethical advertisement can be achieved    6
CONCLUSION    7
REFERENCES    9
INTRODUCTION
In the contemporary scenario ethics in marketing and advertisement plays the significant role. As considering ethics in the marketing function supports the companies through which they generate customer interest in products/services. It also supports the company in building strong customer interest/relationships and creates value for all stakeholders through incorporating social and environmental considerations in products and promotions.
The present essay focuses on understanding the concept of moral myopia in the marketing function and assessing that how the combination of moral myopia and advertising strategy is negative for the performance of the organisation. For the essay case of H. J. Heinz Company Australia is been taken into the consideration as the company focuses on eliminating ethical issues while formulating advertisement strategy.
MAIN BODY
Concept of Moral Myopia
Moral Myopia is the behavioural ethics bias that negatively impacts the business activities of the business. It is also regarded as a distortion of moral vision that keeps ethical issues from coming clearly into focus. However, it results in delivering wrong or unethical practices in the market that result in breaking the law. In the present scenario, ethical issues in advertising and marketing are constantly increasing as it results in highlighting the image of products in the mind of their customers. The concept of moral myopia arises from potentially offensive ads to misleading messages and outright fraud that are of concern to many of the executives in the marketing field (Shabbir et al. 2018).
However, advertiser or marketing personnel fail to review the moral aspect of problems at all while; others have the unclear moral vision that outcome largely from rationalisation and unwillingness to focus on the problem within in advertising. In addition to this, moral myopia concept is increasing in the industry as its support in providing proper attention to the customers towards their products through marking unethical and wrong claims. Thus it occurs whenever advertiser or marketers fail to communicate or exchange the moral concerns that they indisputably feel and despite of this it results to the failure. However, the concept of moral myopia also results in failure to consider the moral and ethical aspect while marketing their products and services within the market.
However, it has been assessed that moral myopia often occurs due to rationalisation and advertiser dismissing potential ethical concerns while drafting or creating the advertisement strategy. The advertiser oversees the ethical responsibilities and concerns such as present consumers are smart (Scarpaci, Sovacool and Ballantyne, 2016). Hence, they would not be fooled by the deceptive or delivering unethical or impractical message to them. While, advertiser also dismiss their responsibilities towards the society, families as well as law.
Combination moral myopia and advertising strategy
Moral ethics in the advertisement strategy plays the significant role as it assists in generating the positive image of business in the mind of their customers. On the other hand, advertising includes all the tactics and services that support the company presenting and promoting their products to an audience so that they may engage in purchasing the products of the organisation. However, the combination of moral and ethics in the advertising is increasing at the faster pace as it clearly rules out the ways and activities through which communication take place among the buyers and sellers.
In the present scenario, if an advertiser makes the advertisement on the belief that customers will understand the concept behind the advertisement and it assists the customers in purchasing their products as it showcases the ethical activities in which the company engages their activities (La Ferle, 2015). In that situation it would lead to attain positive results and advertisement strategy would be called ethical. On the other hand, if an advertiser thinks that through promoting impossible things and making wrong claims would assist in marketing their products. In this situation, it may not going to work for the company as the advertisement strategy would be called as unethical in nature that leads to arising the concept of Moral Myopia.
There are various forms of advertising strategies such as marketing through newspaper and magazines, social media strategies as well as advertising through television etc. While engaging in all the advertising strategy it is essential for the advertiser to focus on providing ethical and moral information so that it may contribute towards attaining the market efficiency as well as assist the individual and customers to make informed choices (Schauster, 2015). There are key ethical issues and problems within the marketing mix elements that are overseen by the advertiser while serving the customers and audiences. Some of the common ethical problems are as follows-
· Product safety
· Misleading claims
· Excessive pricing or Deceptive pricing of the products
The case study of H.J. Heinz Company Australia Ltd (Heinz) product: Little Kids Shredz...