Session 9: Ethics and Marketing

How compliant is your company with the Advertising Code of Ethics of the Philippines?

Observation and Experience

Technology has played a very important role on marketing and advertising environment. Before, you can only see product advertisements on televisions, billboards, and print ads but now it is present everywhere. Social media has made it easy and accessible to market and advertise different goods and services. Marketers and small business owners are now utilizing Facebook and Instagram in order to sell their products. Once you open your social media, you will be bombarded with different advertisement about beauty products, restaurants, hotels, clothes, etc.

Our company saw consumers react to advertisements on social media and used this platform to easily reach our target market. Currently, airlines are operating in a very competitive market and we must exert extra effort in order to market our company. Aside from our website, we also have social media accounts that informs the people about our new routes, promos, and campaigns. One of the most popular and biggest promo that we have is the “Red Hot Sale”. All of our customers are waiting for this campaign that’s why we are exerting extra effort to market it. We start with the teaser two days before the sale then followed by the reveal then other materials to sustain the campaign.

Analysis and Reflection

The reach of this “Red Hot Sale” advertisement is very wide and it’s our responsibility to ensure that the information on all the materials are correct. According to the Advertising Code of Ethics of the Philippines, “Claims of product and service properties or characteristics should be clearly presented and should not, in the guise of creativity, be confusingly or misleadingly distorted or exaggerated in the light of the product’s or service’s market.” With this, we must ensure that the fare prices are really correct and passengers could really book flights with the amount presented. On our previous seat sale campaigns and materials, we only say “Piso fare” however a lot of passengers were confused by this because they end up paying more than one peso. The reason behind this is that there are additional taxes that passengers should pay and this add up to this piso fare. As a response, we changed this to PHP 16 ALL IN FARE which now includes the additional fees that passengers must pay when booking their flights. This is also in accordance with the provisions of the Philippines advertising code of ethics which states that “Price and purchase terms, when used, should be clear and complete. When parts or accessories that the consumer might reasonably supposed to be part of the original sale are available only at an extra cost or for further consideration, such should be clearly indicated”. The sample advertisement also shows what is the booking date, the travel period, and the destinations in order to properly inform the customers when are these fares available. Aside from that, the material also says “All in fare FROM PHP 16” which means that the range of fare prices starts from PHP 16. All our advertising materials including traditional advertisements such as billboards, print ads, and radio ads, are in compliant with the rules of Ad Standard Council of the Philippines (ASC).

Commitment and Action

Despite of this effort to include all the necessary information for the “Red Hot Sale”, a lot of customers are still complaining that they cannot book the promo fares. The group has been answering their questions through the Facebook comment box, private messages, and emails but it is still not enough. In the next “Red Hot Sale” campaigns, what I suggest is to inform the passengers on how the “Piso” fare works. We can use a video that will educate the customers how we do the fare pricing so that they would understand that during “Red Hot Sale” not all fares on the said travel dates are “Piso” fare. We can also put materials that updates the customers if all the “Piso” fares were already booked. With this, the expectations of the customers will be managed and hopefully we could build good customer relationship and brand loyalty.