摘要：“When we consider corporate morality we must conclude that no price is too high, for in the long run we have no alternative to ethical business behaviour” Fred. T. Aller. “If I were to name the deadliest subversive force within capitalism, the single greatest source of its waning morality …. I would without hesitation name “Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)”. How else should one identify a force that debases language, drains thought and undoes dignity. (Heilbroner .R. (1981). are prone to scrutiny by those who are concerned about the methods marketers use to sell their products and services. Proponents of advertising and IMC states that it is the life blood of business. That it provides consumers with information about products and services and encourages them to improve their standard of living. Advertising produces jobs and helps new companies enter the market place. Companies employ people who make the products and provide the services that advertising sells. Free market economic systems are based on competition which revolves around information, and nothing delivers information better and at less cost than advertising and integrated marketing communication (IMC) (Becch .E., Belch M.A. 1998). Not everyone is sold on the value of advertising. Critics argued that most advertising and IMC is more than information. It creates needs, faults consumers and mesmerizes them. It makes consumers to buy that they originally do not want or wish to buy. Adverts suggest that our bodies should be leaner, our faces younger and our utensils cleaner. They point to the sultry, scantily and muscular clad bodies used in it to sell everything from perfume to beer, and argue that advertising promotes materialism, instant gratification, insecurity and greed. “Ethics also consists of certain rules and standards of conduct recognized as binding in a professional body or an Association”. This paper will define the concepts of law, ethics and morality, it will critically examine ethical issues in Advertising, public relations, targeting of integrated marketing communications efforts, public relations, sales promotions, personal selling, packaging and Telemarketing. It will also discuss the external constraints that influence the choice of product adverts and promotions and will provide practical examples and solutions and how to improve ethical conducts in Nigerian integrated marketing communications.
