Integrity is All You Have

This morning I read It's Thomas Midgeley day, a blog post by Seth Godin that had my head spinning.  He wrote in honor of what would have been Thomas Midgeley's 124th birthday, and what the consequences can be, "when short-term profit-taking meets marketing."  Read Seth's full post here.

Midgeley worked in the gasoline industry and he helped his company delude the public and government into believing that leaded gasoline was not a threat to health and well being despite knowing otherwise.  It is a horrific and inhumane thing to put other people's lives at risk without giving them full disclosure about the possible side effects, consequences, or outcome.  I was appalled.

I have always said that I will not perform a job or participate as a part of an organization that compromises either my personal or professional integrity.  I firmly believe integrity is the only thing that we have that cannot be taken away.  People can't steal your integrity.  You choose to sell it, give it up, compromise it, etc.

That said, it's very interesting that I've chosen to make a career in marketing.  Although I don't enjoy admitting it, marketing doesn't have a great record with integrity.  Here's a quick list of offending industries off the top of my head:

• Cigarette Industry (Joe the Camel; The Marlboro Man)
• Oil Industry
• Fast Food Industry
• Politics 

The wikipedia definition of Marketing Ethics provides compelling reasoning behind the shifty choices made by marketing professionals and their superiors.  Reading it almost seems like the backstory of a TV show or dramatic movie instead of a description of the real world of business marketing.

Still, I hope that the information age makes hiding the unwanted side effects of products or the truth about recipes or the motives behind military strikes will become less and less possible.  Today, we have very little ability to mask information.  We leave a digital trail almost every time we access the internet, travel, make a purchase and so forth.

I hope that my generation of marketing professionals will leave the unethical marketing behind and maintain our integrity.  At the end of our lives, I believe it's the only thing we take with us.