When work gave me an ethical dilemma
I wanted to do a lot of things, but couldn’t
Disclaimer alert! Although this is a true story, the information used here is altered due to reasons you will discover throughout the article.
Before I get on to my main story, here’s bit of a backstory about myself. One of my side hustles include working in the advertising industry. My typical responsibilities would include coordinating between the client and my advertising team to ensure that the commercials we create satisfy the client requirements.
On a typical Tuesday I got a new project to manage. Before getting into a meeting with the client, I did some research on the brand but couldn’t find much to work with, other than it’s a “skincare brand”.
At our first client meeting, a lady (let’s name her Sally) representing the client mentioned that the brand is “focused on bringing back the youthful glow” in women who are in the midst of the aging process. She went on to say that the commercial needs to have testimonies of authentic ladies of different age groups and that we need to “get them to subtly mention the change in their appearance over the years and how they need to take special care of their aging skin”.
Was I concerned? A little!
Why you ask?
First of all, why all women? Does only women age? And second of all, in this day and age, one single statement could cancel even a million dollar brand and my gut feeling told me that this brand might just be on the brink of experiencing a huge backlash.
However, then came the day of the commercial shoot.
I had already created a rapport with the selected ladies by then so prepping them for the shoot was easy as pie. And while the camera was rolling, a representative from the brand started asking them questions prompting them to talk about their past, what they loved doing back then, and how the perception of their appearance has changed over the years. Some of these conversations went beyond the scope of the project as well, but the team was grateful for the insightful and inspiring messages that came out of them.
But little did we know, how unprofessional and awkward things would eventually get.
Sally started interfering the moderator and asking her own questions. It went a bit like this.
Sally on camera : How has your appearance changed over the years and how do you feel about it ?
Participant : Something I learnt over the years is how to take care of myself, giving myself time to unwind after a long day and taking care of my skin the right way. So I have started allocating time for my daily skincare routine, something that I have not done years back.
Sally off camera : Can you talk about how your skin naturally rejuvenates when you’re young and as you get older how you need to take an effort to “keep your youthful look constant” and “battle with the aging process”?
Participant : I don’t think I would be comfortable saying something like that…
I can very much assure you that this really happened. I wanted to scream “you don’t need to keep your youthful look constant, it is going to change and what you need to learn is how to accept that change!”
I wanted to point out everything that is wrong with the brand’s message. I wanted to apologize the participants for this unpleasant line of questioning even though they were hand-picked by the skincare brand for this particular commercial.
Instead, I took a deep breath and told Sally that we need to preserve authenticity within the testimonies hence we should not doctor the participant’s responses. But inside, I was beating myself up for saying yes to this project in the first place.
From that point onward, I was counting days till the project was done. I went above and beyond to make sure that the final commercial did not contain anything offensive or demotivating. And after the project was done, I chose not to work with Sally or her brand ever again. It felt like we were supporting them to inflict insecurities on women and promote unrealistic standards. Social media has done that enough already, we do not need that any more.
In hindsight, I still cannot figure out if and what I should have done differently, given it was a corporate undertaking and I had to maintain my professionalism at all times.
Have you ever been in a position like this, where you had to deal with unprofessional and offensive ordeals just because you said yes to a project?
How did you deal with them?
Let me know in the comments if you have gone through similar experiences! And I’m always open to constructive criticism and feedback! Thank you for reading my article :)
