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The Marketer's Guide to Discussing Tech Ethics
John Himes
July 7, 2023
Should tech companies take an ethical stance in their marketing materials?
Most B2B tech marketers have found themselves in some variation of this situation. You’re writing an article, producing a video, or creating some other form of collateral, and an ethical quandary arises.
How do you know what’s appropriate? You’re wary of alienating your audience, but you also don’t want to appear spineless. Deciding not to ignore the issue altogether, you search for the right words so you don’t come off as preachy or holier-than-thou while also making sure you don’t seem corrupt.
Ultimately, ethical technology marketing should be a reflection of your company’s actual ethics. Your marketing is a reflection of your brand, and, especially for technology firms, ethics is closely intertwined with brand identity.
“Technologies have a clear moral dimension—that is to say, a fundamental aspect that relates to values, ethics and norms,” explains a World Economic Forum white paper. “Technologies reflect the interests, behaviours and desires of their creators, and shape how the people using them can realize their potential, identities, relationships and goals.”
There’s no avoiding ethics in technology. And while this article won’t help you to build and deploy tech in an ethical way, it will help you to communicate your ethics to your audience.
Why it’s important to talk about ethics in tech marketing
The main reason is that it establishes you as a trusted brand. Building trust is crucial for B2B brands; sales cycles are long, picking a solution is a significant investment, and, in many cases, your customer’s customers will be affected by your decisions.
For instance, if a business integrates an artificial intelligence (AI) solution into the backend of their mobile app to power a recommendation engine, the AI provider’s data governance policies will directly affect the app’s users.
Building trust starts with being honest. “We want the unfiltered truth in as raw a manner as possible,” write Stephen Denny and Paul Leinberger in Unfiltered Marketing ([Newburyport: Career Press], 6). They explain that the internet has pushed people toward a preference for raw and unscripted information, making our culture skeptical of finely polished marketing and public relations (PR).
Second, discussing ethics in tech marketing also demonstrates industry leadership. Writers for Deloitte explain: “Leaders who report that their organization is highly concerned with ethics are also far likelier to note that they feel ready to lead their organization through the changes associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with 48 percent noting this compared with 28 percent of those whose organizations are less concerned about ethics.”
Positioning your brand as a leader goes beyond producing innovative products. Decision-makers look to partner with thought leaders because they understand the value of working with a company that stays up-to-date or even ahead of the times.
Looking specifically at technology ethics, business leaders are just as concerned about knowing which way the wind is blowing as they are about working with vendors who are on the same page. Consumers care more about their data privacy than ever, for instance.
We’re seeing this trend not just in technology but also across the board: from ethical food sourcing to preferences for purpose-driven companies, people want to know that they’re directing their spending power in ways that align with their values. This translates to wanting more from technology companies than arcane privacy policies and platitudes about care and respect.
Finally, talking about ethics in technology marketing is important because it’s our responsibility. The industry has a moral obligation to lead the discussion.
We’ve recently seen this dynamic play out, for example, when AI leaders, including those from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and other major companies, signed an open letter warning of the existential threat posed by AI. The executives at OpenAI (creators of ChatGPT and DALL-E) followed up with a blog post on the “governance of superintelligence.”
Another way of saying this: the industry leader publishes content marketing about tech ethics.
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4 tips for covering technology ethics in marketing materials
Now let’s focus on the tools that B2B tech marketers can use to effectively discuss ethics.
1. Avoid euphemism
Don’t massage your wording to obfuscate the truth. If there’s a difference between what you think people want to hear and what’s actually going on, it’s better to be upfront and let the reader—your potential customer—decide where to come down on the issue.
In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power ([New York: Hachette Book Group, 2019], 90), Dr. Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School, provides a compelling example:
Two popular terms—“digital exhaust” and “digital breadcrumbs”—connote worthless waste: leftovers lying around for the taking. Why allow exhaust to drift in the atmosphere when it can be recycled into useful data? Who would think to call such recycling an act of exploitation, expropriation, or plunder? Who would dare to redefine “digital exhaust” as booty or contraband, or imagine that Google has learned how to purposefully construct that so-called “exhaust” with its methods, apparatus, and data structures?
2. Be honest and clear
People shouldn’t have to read between the lines to figure out where you come down on an issue. You may face pressure to gloss over something troubling, to sound more “corporate” or “professional,” or even to remove content that aligns with your organization’s values but does not fit in with your industry at large.
The best thing that you can do, however, is to be honest and clear. Be explicit about what kinds of data you collect and how you use it. Take a stance on pressing issues like algorithmic bias, misinformation, or the environmental impacts of AI and cryptocurrency.
Be real. Face these issues head-on.
3. Don't look for a fight, but don't back away either
Don’t turn every piece of content into a manifesto, but don’t shy away from grappling with these difficult subjects either. There will be times when it is natural and appropriate to discuss ethics, either as a part of a larger discussion or in a dedicated piece.
You’ll know it when you see it.
Certain subjects better lend themselves to ethical discussion than others. Technical overviews or walk-throughs: usually not so much. Thought leadership articles, trend analysis, and similar “high-level” materials are more suitable.
4. Avoid partisanship
In today’s highly polarized political environment, technology marketers need to avoid partisanship at all costs. While there is room for objective coverage of the government, such as in public sector investment or regulatory legislation, we should stay away from pointing fingers, assigning blame, or making ad hominem attacks.
Your audience may skew in one political direction, but that doesn’t mean you want to risk alienating the other side–and risk losing their business.
Maintain a balanced, neutral, and level-headed perspective. Recognize that your implicit bias may slip into your work, and do your best to check yourself. This is a great place to get another set of eyes on the content.
Building an ethical technology brand
In a world where many marketers are afraid of stepping on any toes and refuse to engage in ethics for fear of stoking controversy, others find opportunity.
Openly discussing technology ethics can be a point of differentiation in your content marketing strategy. It’s a chance for you to shape the narrative, to establish trust with your audience, and to demonstrate your ability to lead your industry.
History rewards the bold. In this case, that reward takes the form of an ethical technology brand.
“Leaders and their organizations simply can’t call themselves technologically savvy if they’re not thinking about the ethical implications of how their employees, customers, and others within their ecosystems are using technologies,” conclude the writers at Deloitte.
Whatever you do, don’t trust AI to generate the content for you. This is an opportunity for you or your marketing team to grapple with issues that really matter, to engage with issues that are important to both the industry and society.
More than virtually any other subject in technology, ethics requires a strong human touch, compassion, and the ability to size up the big picture.
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