Excerpt from an article in AMA’s JoPP&M
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing corporations to promote candidates close to an election, raises marketing questions relevant to America’s election process.
Summary
“The trade-offs described [in this brief article] are instructive to those considering public policy actions to guide or constrain corporate decisions in the realm of advertising. Most obvious is the issue of transparency: For decades, advertising has been defined as paid, sponsor-identified mass communication. If a single corporation is identified as the sponsor of a pro- or anticandidate commercial, it seems that they may risk a boycott, but for policy makers, it seems difficult to justify legislation to kep them from taking that risk.
In contrast, if the “advertiser” is a consortium, particularly one identified with no specific industry, marketplace punishment becomes difficult or impossible. In that case, legislation to preclude secrecy becomes legislation to let the marketplace work in backing or punishing corporate advocates. Supporters of leaving choices to the marketplace might reasonably support such legislation, simply requiring corporations to make the trade-offs described here in public.
Will those corporations, then, be less likely to join consortia and more likely to advertise using their own name? That seems to be a reasonable expectation regardless of the named sponsoring organization. Furthermore, will pro- or anti-candidate advertising be more extreme, absent the mitigating influences of advertising partners that fear market place retaliation? Quite possibly. Will it be less negative? Also quite possibly. Will advertising give way to candidate-related events? That outcome seems more likely given a requirement of transparency than would be the case otherwise. The point is simply that greater understanding of the decisions involved from the corporate point of view should assist public policy makers in their attempts to influence those decisions. May the best legislation win.”
