There have been many examples of questionable ethics in the advertising industry, it is common for us to question an agency's reason to advertise certain products and the way they do. An example would be "Got Milk" back in 2011 they set out an ad series that was questioned highly.
"Targeting men who evidently suffer greatly when their female partners have PMS. Change.org created a petition denouncing the pictures that showed cowering men holding cartons of milk, with quotes over their heads like I'm sorry for not reading between the lines. The campaign came complete with a website just for men".I believe that many agencies get highly criticized for certain ads they put out on the market, especially when they promote a certain lifestyle, product or market. In this case they were petitioning for the ads stating that we still live in a world were sexism exists, even when women are accountable for most purchases in their households they try to target the opposite sex referring to women as crazy during their menstrual cycle. "There are serious social impacts from this kind of advertising back on society—unrealistic expectations of women’s bodies and resulting body image problems, sexual and domestic violence, and sexism being reinforced as an acceptable form of behavior . . . we are being subconsciously enticed to buy products by companies who believe that it is okay to use women’s bodies in a sexual way to make their brand cool, hip and sexy". I think that women should be depicted in a different light rather than always as sex symbols. Another example of this would be the ads for domain provider godaddy.com, in which it featured race car driver Danica Patrick and celebrity trainer Jillian Michaels only wearing high heels, big hair and lots of make up with the exception the logos. Not only did this ad get highly popular especially to their target market it went back to the idea that woman are mere sex symbols. The goal of an ad agency is to sell their product make the consumer believe that the only way they will be happy and satisfied in life is when they purchased, experienced or used the product. And we all know that these assumptions are false, they are selling a lifestyle, a dream a false promise especially with their ads. Another example of a ethically questionable ad is Sisley's Fashion Junkie ad which features to models snorting coke, and promotes that drug use is fashionable. Sisley is an Italian clothing retailer from the Benetton Group. Many would praise certain ads that address real life scenarios and situations but these ads have become popular for a reason and brought much attention to the company so if anything they got the world to notice. "Its called shockvertising as the name suggests, these ads are designed to shock you and create controversy in order to get you to remember them, mostly using violence, sex, or taboos. Many went too far over the line in their quest to be edgy and were banned or rejected outright, but ended up out on the web anyway".
http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/07/08/jwt.answer/
http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/speaker_pres/data/3001
http://www.forbes.com/sites/csr/2011/08/04/gender-and-ethics-in-advertising-the-new-csr-frontier/
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