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Stereotypes: Do Advertisers have a moral duty to avoid stereotyping people?

In my opinion, the answer to this question is quite complicated. In short, I believe advertisements should be held by a higher moral standard, and we should be more wary of them in general. But advertisers aren't people. They are companies, with numerous people in them, with the companies goal being to generate as much profit as they can. Can we honestly fault advertising companies for making decisions (legal ones that is) that give them the most profit? If we want advertisers to be held to a higher standard, I think that we have to develop higher standards first. When companies perpetrate stereotypes, people should take a stand, via actions such as boycotts, if it is that important to them. Consumers as a group can hold impressive amounts of power over companies (assuming they are not monopolies), if they work together, as at the end of the day, companies want to make profit, and consumers purchasing their product is how they do it. There's a phrase I've heard before called 'vote with your wallet', which I think is very applicable to this situation. Economics is one of the most powerful aspects of society, and changes in the economic situation can cause great amounts of change to happen, from governmental change, to changes in corporate policy. In the end, advertising is only holding up a mirror to our own thoughts and beliefs (and therefore magnifying them as a side effect), and has definitely changed over the years, just as society has changed. If we as a society, as a whole, decide to make less stereotypes, and less unjust judgments/actions, I think that this change would be reflected into the advertising industry, because advertising is designed to cater to us, and as such, it would almost certainly follow the direction society is flowing to, rather than going against the current. The power to change and influence advertising and society lies within our hands; we shouldn't wait for someone else to do what is right, we should do the morally right thing ourselves, and try to get others to follow us, rather than expect an entity designed to make as large of a profit as possible (advertising companies, or almost all other types of companies), to make our own moral choices for us.

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