Vendors pander to their audiences differently depending on their target audience and the company ethos. Strategies used to sell products include the creation of desire, the creation of insecurities, and the promise of status. Desire is created when companies advertise luxury products. Keywords like "indulge" or "you deserve it" stimulate the consumer's materialistic goals. Insecurities can be a vendor's best friend. When a commercial advertises acne cream or low-fat foods, the viewer's paranoia about skin and boy fat comes to the fore. The promise of status is embedded in a wide range of advertisements. If you buy Axe body spray, you will be the most irresistible man on the block. If you buy a Lexus, your neighbors will envy you. Commercials are designed to sell products, so their morality is neutral. However, companies who peddle their products using insincere advertisements do cross an ethical boundary.

One of the most devious trends in advertising on television today is energy companies purporting to be "green." Shell is one of the biggest culprits, pretending to care about the environment and progressive energy technology. British Petroleum also has a few commercials that make it seem like an eco-friendly firm, and even boasts a green company logo. Manipulating the public into thinking that when they fuel up at Shell or British Petroleum that they are doing something good for the environment is not an ethical choice, it is a purely capitalist one.

Similarly, food companies like Kellogg's and Kraft have added "healthy" and "organic" foods to their portfolio. In one case, a fat-free product is advertised to be something that is part of a healthy lifestyle. Yet fat-free products are the ones that contain the highest percentage of additives and chemical ingredients. Those foods are less pure than their full-fat alternatives and therefore not as healthy as they are made out to be. Advertising products that can lead to long-term health problems or an unhealthy cycle of weight loss followed by weight gain is also unethical. Similarly, hippies in the woods do not always make "organic" products. Many rely on factory farming and are no different than their non-organic counterparts. Such advertisements do manipulate the public and reveal the immorality of persuasion.

Reference

Pontifical Council for Social Communications (1997). Ethics in advertising. Retrieved Nov 12, 2009 from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_pccs_doc_22021997_ethics-in-ad_en.html