A local community. All companies, organizations, and people have a responsibility as citizens to act responsibly and ethically towards their neighbors in the community where they live and work. The simple rule is, “Don’t foul your own nest. Don’t cheat your neighbor.” The local media must first serve their communities, for without local support, local media cannot thrive or even exist. Remember that broadcast media are given licenses based on their promise to serve their communities, so their obligation is not only a moral, social one, but also a regulatory one.
5. Responsibility to a company
Media salespeople represent their companies to their customers and because they are selling an intangible product, they become the personification of, the surrogate for, their product. Salespeople are often the only contact a customer will have with anyone from a company. Therefore, they have to face the kill‐the‐messenger attitude many people have about the media. Because of this unique situation, a company’s credibility depends on its salespeople’s credibility, which to a large degree depends on their personal conduct and integrity. Salespeople must be law abiding, respectful of civil liberties and actions or statements that are potentially offensive to others, as well as be moderated in their personal habits. It is the responsibility of salespeople to build and maintain customer relationships based on dependability, reliability, believability, integrity, and ethical behavior.
Salespeople must give their job their full attention, not steal company’s assets, not waste its resources (which includes efficient and reasonable use of entertainment and transportation money), not file false expense reports, and not offer special deals to get business away from others within their own organization.
Salespeople have a responsibility to their company to generate revenue by getting results for clients, to sell special promotions and packages, and to keep customers and get renewals. There are times when the responsibility to a company to generate revenue can come into conflict with a salesperson’s duty to his or her customers, to his or her conscience, and to the various communities. When such conflicts occur, salespeople should remember the hierarchy of responsibilities and that their company is at the bottom of that hierarchy, because it is in the company’s best long‐term interest to be last. Good companies know that what goes around, comes around; that good karma returns home; that ethical behavior is good business; that employees are happier working for ethical companies; and that consumers keep coming back to products and companies they believe are ethical, do the right thing, and are sustainable.
Great media companies understand that, if they take care of their audience that usage, readership, and ratings will go up, which means advertising revenue will go up. Also, if advertisers trust salespeople and their companies, most advertisers will pay higher prices for better service from these trusted partners. If salespeople do the wrong thing, it results in lost customers, expensive employee turnover, high lawyers’ fees, large court costs, and, perhaps, even time in jail.
Unfortunately, many companies set up rewards for salespeople that unwittingly reinforce doing the wrong thing. These include compensation systems that reward getting an order regardless of what’s best for the customer, contests that reward selling special promotions or events regardless of advertisers’ needs, and bonuses for making sales budgets regardless of what is reasonable.15 Beware of chief finance officers (CFOs) and top management that recommend accounting practices that “preserve a company’s assets”; they often have the wrong assets in mind. A company’s and a salesperson’s most precious asset is an excellent reputation, which is preserved by always doing the right thing all of the time.
The Five Cs of ethical responsibility
The Five Cs of ethical responsibility are:
1 Consumers
2 Conscience
3 Customers
4 Community
5 Company
An Ethics Check16
Is it legal?When salespeople conduct an ethics check, the first question to ask is: “Is what I am considering doing legal?” The term “legal” should be interpreted broadly to include any civil or criminal laws, any state or Federal regulations, any industry codes of ethics, or any company policy. If salespeople do not know or have any doubts about the legality of what they are doing, they should ask their boss and the company’s legal department.
Is it fair? Is it rational, as opposed to emotional, and balanced, so that there are no big winners and big losers? Is it fair to all: to both sides, to the consumer, to the salesperson, to the advertiser, to the various communities, and to the company? If the company had an open‐book policy, would all of its customers think everyone got a fair shake? Are all customers getting fair rates, placements, rotations, and makegoods? To test for fairness, ask yourself the question, “Suppose everybody did this?”
What does my conscience say? Salespeople should ask themselves, “How would I feel if what I am doing appeared in the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times? How would it make me feel about myself? According to my personal moral standards, is what I am doing OK?”
A company’s and a salesperson’s most valuable assets are their reputations and their relationships with their customers. Reputations and relationships are built by consistently doing ethics checks on the way you do business, by taking a long‐term view, and by not doing anything that would put you or your company in jeopardy, even a hundred years from today.
Transparency
Transparency is closely related to ethics because both concepts depend on being honest and having integrity. Transparency is being completely open about how you do business, in other words, being openly honest.
The concept of transparency in the media made headlines in the summer of 2016 with the release of the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) Media Transparency Initiative: K2 Report.17
From October 20, 2015, through May 31, 2016, K2 Intelligence, on behalf of the ANA, conducted an independent study of media transparency issues in the U.S. advertising industry. K2 was selected to lead the fact‐finding portion of the study after a request for proposal process initiated by the ANA on June 17, 2015.
Over the course of the study, K2 conducted 143 interviews with 150 individual sources, representing a cross‐section of the U.S. media buying ecosystem. K2 kept the identities of all participating sources – and all the individuals and corporate entities named in their accounts – confidential from the ANA throughout the study.
Results of the study were delivered by K2 in a comprehensive report. Among the key findings:
Numerous non‐transparent business practices, including