If you do business long enough, sooner or later you’ll face an ethical issue. I’m not talking about outright lying or theft or fraud. Those are pretty black and white. If you cross those lines (and get caught), you get fired, you lose the account or you go to jail.
No, I’m talking about those blurry lines that aren’t exactly illegal or immoral, and yet they push the boundaries of what is right and fair. These are issues that can be rationalized by telling yourself that nobody is getting hurt or that smart businesspeople sometimes have to play hardball.
Consider the following situations that I’ve confronted and ask yourself if the line has been crossed. Ask yourself what you would do.
Using ideas without paying for them.
Marketers looking to select a new agency will send out an RFP, review the detailed responses, and invite several agencies to make presentations – often including spec creative – in order to make a selection. In the process, many good ideas are put on the table. But after a winner has been chosen, why not implement the good (and free) ideas or designs or strategies presented by the losing agencies?
Going around your agency or consultant.
Agencies come to know many different vendors over the years. Through trial and error, experience and judgment, they learn who’s good and who isn’t. If you work with an agency, you end up working with their vendors – their printers, photographers, researchers, etc. If the agency develops a campaign that works or the consultant does a good job on a project, next time why not go directly to their vendors, saving the money that would have otherwise gone to the agency or consultant who originally brought them in?
Trumping up your capabilities.
Agencies are as willing to tread the line as their clients. One way is to claim capabilities that don’t exist in house. Why not list a freelancer or consultant as an employee – maybe give them a title and a business card – even if they aren’t on the payroll? If they are to be used on the account, why not showcase the work they’ve done for a former agency – implying, if not actually saying, that the work was done under your roof?
In the heat of business and competition, it’s tempting to exaggerate. To cut corners. Rationalize. Lose your way.
But integrity is like virginity – once you lose it, it’s gone forever.
And once your reputation is tarnished, trust will be hard to come by.
Where’s MY line? I am as human as the next guy. But I keep a close eye on the line. If it’s blurry, I’ll err on the side of integrity. And when those with whom I work lose sight of it, I won’t work with them again. It sometimes hurts to say “no”, but it’s easier to sleep at night.
Where’s YOUR line? What issues have you faced? I welcome your stories since they may help me and others to rethink issues that we’d otherwise overlook.
Today’s parting thought:
“There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point, we have to take sides.”
— Robert Brault
