Marketing and Advertising

An Invitation To Be An Unethical Lawyer…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Just as I was preparing yesterday for today’s 3-hour legal ethics CLE seminar (which, coincidentally, contained a section about the unsettled status of lawyers using artificial intelligence for legal research, writing and other tasks in the practice of law), I received this unsolicited promotion in my email:

Let’s see: how many ways does this offer a lawyer the opportunity to violate the ethics rules? Unless a lawyer thoroughly understands how such AI creatures work—and a lawyer relying on them must—it is incompetent to “try” them on any actual cases. Without considerable testing and research, no lawyer could possibly know whether this thing is trustworthy. The lawyer needs to get informed consent from any client whose matters are being touched by “CoCounsel,” and no client is equipped to give such consent. If it were used on an actual case, there are questions of whether the lawyer would be aiding the unauthorized practice of law. How would the bot’s work be billed? How would a lawyer know that client confidences wouldn’t be promptly added to CoCounsel’s data base?

Entrusting an artificial intelligence-imbued assistant introduced this way with the matters of actual clients is like handing over case files to someone who just walked off the street claiming, “I’m a legal whiz!” without evidence of a legal education, a degree, or work experience.

On the plus side, the invitation was a great way to introduce my section today about the legal ethics perils of artificial intelligence technology.

Comment Of The Day: “Painkiller”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Most of the comments on EA posts come from a solid base of experience and knowledge, but it is especially welcome when a commenter enlightens us on a subject he or she really knows well. Thus Tom P.’s observations on the pharmaceutical industry in light of the EA post on the Perdue Pharma/Sackler/ OxyContin horror as dramatized in “Painkiller” is a special pleasure. Here it is, a Comment of the Day:

***

I apologize for the length of this post, but the topic is complicated and does not lend itself to sound bites. What follows is my experience and opinions based on working in the pharmaceutical industry and extensive reading on my part.

Full disclosure: I am a retired pharmaceutical company executive. During my career, I worked for various cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies. I held positions in R&D, manufacturing, quality control, and supply chain management. For most of my career, I was responsible for a major Pharma manufacturer’s anticancer and biologics global supply chains. As a point of reference, I have not seen “Dopesick” or “Painkiller”. I am familiar, however, with the travesty the Sacklers perpetrated on the sick and society. The best summary of their unethical and probably criminal behavior I have read is in an LA Times May 5, 2016, article: https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

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KABOOM! How Can A Company—A CANDY Company No Less!—Possibly Think This Packaging Is Responsible?

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Well, there goes my head again, and I really need it this weekend.

Hold on to yours: this really and truly is one of the “Pride” packages for Mars Inc.’s Skittles:

I don’t understand how this could happen in a major corpoation. In a pluralistic society, it is unethical for products and services to deliberately polarize the public, politically, socially, in any way whatsoever. True, the temptation for rainbow-colored Skittles to try to exploit the LGTBQ propaganda for marketing purposes must have been strong for some marketing execs with the cranial depth of a walnut shell, but the fact that sane parents don’t want their kids proselytized by their candy shouldn’t be that hard to grasp.

If the type is too small for you to read, the legends somewhere under the rainbow include “Joy is Resistance” and “Black Trans Lives Matter,” both of which are semi-incoherent, but the intent is clear. (Is the character with the sunglasses supposed to be in drag? What does “skate & live” mean? Is skating on the rainbow a metaphor for embracing an LGBTQ identity?)This is the equivalent of forced political speech, and the force is being applied to children. Holding that package sends an unintended message, weird as it is, and once that political message is associated with the brand, eating Skittles at all becomes a political act.

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Campaign Malpractice

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

<The password is “incompetence.”>

This is just sad. The obvious reason it’s sad is that Mike Pence has as much chance of being nominated for President, never mind elected, as I do. His campaign is delusional: he has neither the ability and character to be President nor the presence and popularity required to make him one.

This campaign video only reinforces these unavoidable realities. It’s incompetent, for the reason cited by the the witter wag, but other reasons as well. I can forgive Pence for not picking up on the fact that his staged actions look fake, but not the director and crew. Not is Pence’s staff blameless. How many people were involved in this production—and yet not one pointed out that before you pump gas, you need to choose which grade?

If Pence can’t assemble a competent campaign staff, a competent Cabinet and group of advisors are probably beyond his skill level as well.

Porsche’s Woke “Mistake”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

How did censorship, airbrushing history and “it isn’t what it is” become hallmarks of progressivism? A discussion for another time…

For the nonce, consider Porsche, which airbrushed away the famous Portuguese statue of Jesus Christ that overlooks the capital of Lisbon in a promotional video celebrating 60 years of its iconic 911 model. For some reason, many people had a problem with that.

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And Still More From The A.I. Ethics Files: “Looker” Again Raises Its Perfect Virtual Head In The Hollywood Actors Strike

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Back in March, Ethics Alarms discussed the ethical issues implicated when marketing departments begin using Artificial Intelligence to “increase the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way,” as one retailer phrased it. The scenario echoed the plot of “Looker,” a 1981 Michael Crichton science fiction thriller in which a high-tech research firm convinces companies that real, live models, even after cosmetic surgery, can’t approach the physical perfection that will optimally influence consumers. In its diabolical scheme, models are offered a contracts to have their faces and figures scanned to create 3D computer-generated avatars, indistinguishable from the live versions, which would be animated by A.I. programs for use in TV commercials. Once their bodies are duplicated digitally, the human beings get lifetime paychecks and can retire, since their more perfect CGI dopplegangers will be doing their work for them. As he did so often during his brilliant, too-sort life, Crichton anticipated a serious ethical crisis arising out of developing technology. “Looker” is almost here.

Last week,the 160,000-member union SAG-AFTRA announced that it would join the the screenwriters union in its industry strike after failing to secure a new contract with movie studios and streaming services.  The Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists President Fran Drescher—yes, “The Nanny” herself—- condemned the AMPTP’s “shameful” and “disgusting” treatment of the union’s members. Among the major points of dispute is how to preserve acting and writing jobs that could soon be imperiled by the rapid development of computer technology and artificial intelligence.

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Hitler Quote Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The June newsletter for the Hamilton County, Indiana, chapter of Moms for Liberty included Adolf Hitler’s famous quote from a Nazi rally in 1935 on the front page: “He alone who owns the youth gains the future.” Since the group is opposing government indoctrination in the public schools, the substance of the quote was not inappropriate, but never mind: the agents and operatives supporting such indoctrination both freaked out and encouraged the public to freak out as well.

After all, the Southern Poverty Law Center, itself an extremist “hate group” by its own standards except that its hate is directed at conservative organizations and therefore is the acceptable variety, had designated the nonprofit Moms for Liberty as a hate organization in its annual Year in Hate & Extremism report for 2022, claiming that it advocates an “anti-student inclusion agenda.”

The Indianapolis Star pointed to the use of a Hitler quote as confirmation of the SPLC’s diagnosis, so the Moms for Liberty tried to explain, adding to its online version of the newsletter, “The quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert. If the government has control over our children today they control our country’s future. We The People must be vigilant and protect children from an overreaching government.” When that didn’t calm the controversy, chapter chair Paige Miller posted an apology to Facebook.“We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history. We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and we express our deepest apology,” she groveled.

The damage, of course, had been done.

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“From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Bud Light’s Bias Makes It Too Stupid To Sell Beer,” Addenda!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

My frustrated high school Latin teacher Miss Rounds, who once told me I was the most infuriating student she ever had, would have been amazed to see me include four Latin words in a headline, but that’s not an explanation for the “addenda.” These are:

1. A bit after I posted the previous commentary, I came across this news from earlier in the week. Even though its marketing wizardry had driven off 26% of its marketing base and cost Bud Light its long-held perch as America’s favorite beer, the brand’s owner, Anheuser-Busch InBev was honored this week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the so-called Oscars of the ad industry, with one of the event’s highest honors: Creative Marketer of the Year for the second anum running. (That’s five, Miss Rounds!) AB InBev’s global chief marketing officer, Marcel Marcondes, was also given Cannes Lions’ main stage to present the event’s opening seminar, described in programming notes as an examination of AB InBev’s “relentless focus on connecting with consumers in meaningful ways.”

You can’t make this stuff up. The awards body, which is owned by London-based Ascential Events, announced AB InBev’s win for brilliant marketing in March, before the Dylan Mulvaney disaster struck. Leila Fataar, founder of cultural and marketing strategy firm Platform13 opined, among others, that “In the spirit of fairness and credibility, I think it would be a big and the right gesture for AB InBev to give the 2023 award back, make the changes necessary and come back even stronger.”

You know, like with the creative wizardry of the newly unveiled “Bud Light drinkers are fat, slovenly, clumsy white yahoos who are simply hilarious!” video.

The WSJ story further explicated the reason for my post, which was not to keep flogging Bud Light for associating its brand with the trans madness. I intended to point out that this was more evidence of how the Woke Virus has crippled the professions, if one considers marketing a profession (marketers clearly do) or, if you don’t, the creative trades as well. All marketers and ad mavens have to do is understand human nature, yet class, ideology, arrogance, insularity, stereotyping and bias have apparently blocked them from what psychologists, experience and common sense had taught the industry for decades.

Even when they have been proven spectacularly, disastrously wrong, today’s marketing “experts'” reaction—Just like the lawyers, doctors, public health officials, educators and journalists—is still ‘we’re the smart and virtuous ones, and those others—the deplorables— are too primitive to understand.’

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Bud Light’s Bias Makes It Too Stupid To Sell Beer

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Desperately trying to turn the metaphorical page after a trans-endorsing fiasco that has dropped the brand in popularity, infuriated share-holders, and made it a foamy joke, Bud Light just issued that video above as “marketing.” Now-exiled marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid, the genius who made male cross-dresser Dylan Mulvaney the symbol of the beer, did an infamous  interview with the podcast “Make Yourself At Home” on March 30 where she discussed her goal in transforming Bud Light’s outdated, unsophisticated, “fratty” image to appeal to a younger market. So now that the “Bud Light drinkers like chicks-with-dicks!” campaign has inexplicable failed, the geniuses running the show decided on a new, sure-to-succeed message: “Bud Light drinkers are fat, slovenly, clumsy yahoos who are simply hilarious!”

Unbelievable.

Playing Bud Light Spin The Bottle

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The facts are pretty straightforward. The parent company of Budweiser hired an ambitious, arrogant, woke woman to take over the marketing of Bud Light, which was the best selling beer in America. Having little understanding of the product’s market, and being so infected with wokism that she couldn’t comprehend the depth of the cultural divide regarding the current pro-transgender fad, she made the bone-headed decision to associate the brand with Dylan Mulvaney, a biological male internet performance artist who poses as female, both satirizing genuine transsexuals and celebrating them. From that moment, Bud Light was in a binary trap of its own making with no way out. The reaction against the botched marketing decision was over-whelming, with calls for a Bud Light boycott and a sudden fall-off ins sales. When the company tried to backtrack, including the sacking of its clueless marketing guru, the LGTBQ market also turned on the brand.

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