Marketing has always been the sum of all the efforts and actions a company can make to boost buying, advertising, or selling a product. However, while traditional marketing has always been constrained by several rules and regulations, digital marketing has opened new doors to new opportunities. With many new technologies and platforms still lacking regulatory frameworks and enforceable laws, marketers are free to build advertisements that boost engagement, sales, and profits. However, the same ads are known to impact people on an emotional level, altering their emotional responses in order to change the level of involvement with a product or service.
Experts in the US and abroad are warning that marketers are becoming more effective at triggering positive and negative emotional responses from their target audiences. Furthermore, the increasing use of social media platforms is fueling the trend toward generating more melancholic and negative emotions among customers. While regulatory frameworks may be effective in addressing these and other problems, marketers should probably consider these new ethical issues in digital marketing, and develop their own solutions. After all, protecting the digital ecosystem is the best way to ensure their digital businesses will continue to grow and evolve in the future.
Encouraging Poor Eating Habits
Negative emotions rarely impact mental health alone. According to a recent study, digital marketing strategies that play on the customers’ emotions are now widely used to promote junk and fast food products with excessive amounts of energy, fat, sugar, and salt to young people. These products have the potential to disrupt their diets and their health. Furthermore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has also recently published a paper outlining how digital marketing strategies can impact the use of tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy food. According to the WHO, “the digital ecosystem for tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food marketing is complex and changing quickly.”
When it comes to advising policymakers on how to create regulatory frameworks that can protect children and teens from unhealthy food, evaluating the consequences of existing digital marketing strategies is crucial. Moreover, given that recent evidence suggests that ads and other digital marketing strategies may have a direct impact on children’s eating behaviors, marketers should aim to develop their own ethical standards in addition to respecting the current rules.
Spreading Misinformation
The number of people becoming victims of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news is increasing on a global scale. Marketers are not immune to this issue, as they are also frequently disseminating news on the social media accounts of their brands, products, or services. However, unlike traditional media, social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter can easily become the best medium for spreading false information. According to a recent study, while new research has analyzed the consequences of producing and spreading false information in the political arena, there is currently little knowledge about the effects of social media disinformation on marketing and consumers.
Marketers should put equal emphasis on protecting their brands, products, and services from becoming the subject of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news as they do on providing their customers with relevant and accurate information. Rival brands can efficiently orchestrate smear campaigns on social media, attacking the influencers and celebrities associated with a brand or product, or even the brand itself.
The Mental Health Impact
There’s no question that digital marketing strategies, emerging technologies, and social media platforms can and do impact the mental well-being of the consumers exposed to them. In fact, digital marketing strategies rely on triggering emotional responses that may boost sales, while social media platforms use those responses to boost engagement. However, studies show that using social media can have a negative impact on children and teenagers, diverting their attention from healthier habits, disrupting their sleep patterns, and exposing them to unrealistic views of other people’s lives—particularly the lives of influencers and celebrities.
Marketers are already aware that new data points to a correlation between high levels of social media use and increased depression and anxiety levels among children and teens. While certain social media platforms are now struggling to limit exposure to unrealistic content, marketers should strive to develop new digital marketing strategies and ads that focus on authenticity and realistic images and texts.
