The Marketing Ethics Quiz

How's Your Marketing Conscience?

It's time for a business ethics brush-up. Time to do a little soul-searching and kneeling at the business confessional. As always we're not concerned with the easy business choices e.g., envy, greed, sloth, coveting thy neighbors… The emphasis here is on the more subtle offenses that tend not to get much attention in either the Sunday pulpit or the pages of Forbes Magazine.

The Top 10 Test of Right or Wrong

The examples run from the trivial to the extreme but they all make a point. And, you've probably encountered one or more if you practice in the hard-bitten world of marketing.

1. Share the Glory: You're writing the monthly status report to the Board detailing the performance of your division. The talk in the corridor is about the incredible success resulting from an innovative strategic suggestion championed by a competitor in your division. Trouble is, you really dislike the guy. It's a personal thing. You deliberately fail to acknowledge his contribution and take all the glory yourself. Right or wrong?

2. The Silent Kick-back: You're a consultant. A client, who trusts you implicitly, asks you to recommend a third party vendor for a planned capital purchase. You provide a vendor recommendation but fail to mention that the vendor is going to commission you on the lead...the classic 10% off the top routine. Incidentally, the vendor in question does good work and there's no fiddling with the pricing structure because of your referral fee. You choose not to say anything to your client about the arrangement. Right or wrong?

3. He's Not In Right Now: You don't use voice mail and your assistant who screens your call advises that Mr. Unhappy who has been trying to track you down for the past week is on the line. You have time to take the call. Courtesy alone dictates that you take it, but you choose to blow it off with any one of the common excuses i.e., he's in a meeting, he's on the phone talking to London. Right or wrong?

4. Promises Not Kept: You run a research firm and recently sold a proposed industry study to a group of clients based on the guarantee that you'll be conducting interviews with 100 industry influentials. Because of timing and logistical difficulties you only complete 75 of the interviews. But you're still going to lose a ton of money on the deal.