the web is alive for advertisers & BP's unethical advertising

The first week of class in my C315- Advertising and Consumer Culture course at Indiana University, we learned many of the basics of advertising. There was a significant amount of detail in discussing the cycle of advertising, marketing, and research methods. Also, we analyzed two different articles, which had a central idea that “the web is dead.” First, I will contrast what we learned in class (“the web is dead”) from an article I found in today’s Advertising Age website called What Big Brands are Spending on Google. Second, I will describe the contents of the article, and more importantly ask about the ethics involved in one particular company’s advertising.

            I read two specific articles last week which stated the web is dead for advertisers and “apps” are what is becoming the hottest advertising technique today. However, the ad in Advertising Age suggests the opposite. The article, written by Michael Learmonth, said large companies, such as AT&T, Ebay, BP and others are spending millions of dollars in advertising through Google each month. Also, the article said Google is actually becoming even more popular each day for advertising and will only become more popular. The question is who is right here?

            I wanted to also hit on what Learmonth said about BP’s advertising in the month of June. In the month of June alone, BP spent $3.6 million for advertising about the oil spill. Even more astonishing, BP spent over $100 million in total to advertise about the clean-up of the gulf oil spill. Personally, I don’t see how BP was spending millions of dollars to advertise their intentions to save face, rather than spend that money trying to actually fix the oil leak. It is evident BP wanted to evoke a feeling of loyalty for the gulf environment and people towards the public so the public opinion of BP wouldn’t crash. When it comes to ethical business practices, however, I don’t think BP made a ethical decision to spend that amount of money when they could have utilized their resources to fix the problem at hand.