You are an ethical consultant hired by the chief operations officer at Watcher, a premium television network that is available as an added channel on cable and satellite providers or as a streaming video on demand service.
Watcher has an active presence on all major social media platforms and its original programming is consistently covered by entertainment outlets. Trending hashtags can make or break a new series and Watcher has a significant social media staff that monitors, posts, and replies to its own platforms and to tagged mentions. The last time a Watcher original television series had trending negative social media mentions, the network was forced to cancel the series when advertisers disappeared.
To help increase positive social media posts and mentions, the chief marketing officer asked the marketing department to ask friends and family members to not only post scripted communications on social media, but to create additional fake accounts for additional posts. The scripted communications were a variety of pro-Watcher posts, replies to negative posts or articles with rebuttals, and positive comments on entertainment outlets’ social media mentions of Watcher original programming.
The chief marketing officer was pleased with the results but took it a step further and asked members of the entire Watcher staff to have friends and family members do the same and offered $100 gift cards for a certain amount of activity on personal and newly created fake accounts.
The chief operations officer of Watcher is concerned about the chief marketing officer’s actions. The chief operations officer feels that paying for praise is illegitimate and unethical. In response to those accusations, the chief marketing officer explained that the actions are the same as companies that use influencers to promote their brand or companies that pay celebrities to endorse products even if the celebrity is not a true fan of the product.
The chief operations officer hired you to analyze the situation. The COO wants you to determine:
- Are the chief marketing officer’s requests of staff, family and friends ethical?
- Are some requests ethical and some not?
- Is rewarding activity with gift cards ethical?
- Is the chief marketing officer’s position within the company affecting or impacting subordinates participation?
