Social Media Marketing & Marketing Communications and Ethics

• Social Media Marketing

1. In recent years, social media has been a rapidly growing marketing communications vehicle. In your view, how well has social media performed in helping companies achieve their marketing communications objectives? Provide an example of a company/brand that uses the medium effectively and an example of one whose social media initiatives need improvement. What separates the peak performing brands from the “also-rans” in this medium?

• Marketing Communications and Ethics

2. What criteria will you use to distinguish ethical advertising from unethical advertising?

3. Many large firms are investing in Behavioral Targeting i.e., tracking online activities of the target customer (the pages or sites users visit, the content they view, the search queries they enter, the ads they click on, the information they share on social internet sites) and combining it with the time, length, and frequency of visits. Do you think Behavioral Targeting (BT) is ethical and conforms to market research standards? How can companies gather customer data without infringing individual rights to privacy?