Abstract
Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands.
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Notes
The definition of advertising agencies can be limited strictly to firms that develop traditional advertising, but can also be expanded to include digital marketing agencies, public relations firms, design studios, and research firms—in short, any organization that contributes to the collective activity of producing what audiences recognize as advertising (Becker 2008).
As Hitlin and Vaisey (2013) claim, one branch in the sociology of morality evaluates individual behaviors and attitudes against universal ethical standards (e.g., fairness), whereas the other branch studies the forms of moral beliefs (i.e., their origins, dynamics, and consequences). This article falls squarely within the purview of the latter studies. In this, we follow Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) understanding of morality, which denotes aligning one’s conduct or reasoning with one of the socially acceptable ways of defining the social good. We do not use the term moral in this article in reference to Aristotelian virtue ethics or to Kantian categorical imperatives.
In contradistinction to Bourdieusian analysis, which sees moral positions as predictable based on individuals’ socio-economic position, Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) put aside pre-existing knowledge about the actors and focus on the justifications they offer.
The CSR studies that take employees into account usually look at the effect of CSR adoption on employee attitudes and behavior, but do not take an interest in their moral self-perception (e.g., Rupp et al. 2006).
All agency names, as employee names and brand names, are pseudonyms. Some product categories have been changed and some job titles have been generalized also to protect participant confidentiality. As per the institutional review board protocol, the first author’s role as a researcher was disclosed to all three agencies and was common knowledge among his coworkers. Before observing and participating at any of the agencies, he signed an agency agreement for nondisclosure regarding the work. His role as a researcher did not interfere with his participation in the daily routines of the agency.
The interviewer did not inquire directly about demographic information, but these data emerged throughout the fieldwork process. However, the interviewer did ask about educational background and training.
Aside from the three narratives we present here, which were the most salient in our data, additional, less common narratives also circulated in advertising agencies in this study. One additional justifying narrative focused on how the work employees perform demonstrates loyalty to their agency and their colleagues, while another focused on how advertising work supports the economy and improves the standard of living. (The latter narrative bears similar logics to the one both Ewen (2001) and Navon (2017) identify in business and marketing journals from the early twentieth century.)
While a majority of the interns at these agencies were college students with stated intentions to pursue careers in advertising, many of the full-time practitioners described having come to work in advertising by chance or by accident. For example, during an internal presentation at CultureShock, the head of account services said, “Nobody wakes up and says, ‘I want to be in advertising’—except Mars fucking Alcantera [the head of account planning].” In response to this remark, the audience of agency employees laughed.
We have decided not to identify the agency for this client, and we have limited as much information as possible to protect the identities of our informants.
For quotes regarding the tobacco client, we have removed specific titles and instead use only their department within the agency.
Spitting on a table is a reference to the 1947 film The Hucksters, in which a client spits on a table to make a point about how his disgusting act, like annoying and repetitive advertising, is nonetheless memorable and therefore effective. Fox (1997, pp. 201–202) suggests the book on which this film is based significantly influenced public perception of the advertising industry.
8.5″ × 11″ is the American standard size of a piece of paper.
Some advertising practitioners, especially in the creative department, also linked producing good work to the fulfilment of their personal passions irrespective of broader imagined audiences. However, this article does not seek to map every single narrative offered, but rather to demonstrate that narratives about contributing to the common good (such as through art) are salient within the advertising industry.
The counter-example to this case was a pharmaceutical client at the same agency, which the creatives would sometimes complain about: while the client was viewed as providing a helpful product, rather than a harmful one, the creative team often griped about not having as much leeway to produce ‘creative’ work because of a more difficult, restrictive client.
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Acknowledgments
Both authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically. We thank the many employees of the three agencies in this study, who generously donated their time and thoughts. We would also like to thank Jeffrey Alexander, Matt Andersson, Sorcha Brophy, Gary Allen Fine, Thomas Lyttleton, Candas Pinar, Samuel Stabler, and Frederick Wherry, all of whom provided insightful suggestions and feedback that improved this article. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and one of the senior editors at Theory and Society, whose reviews also strengthened this article.
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Cohen, A.C., Dromi, S.M. Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession. Theor Soc 47, 175–206 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-018-9309-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-018-9309-7