Mindful Voice Episode 01 – Ethical Advertising in the Digital Age

Emily Wang, 30, October, 2023

Podcast: Ethical Marketing in the Digital Age with Isabella Fredheim
Interview guest Isabella Fredheim – recorded with permission. Interview by Emily.
Intro/outro music by Emily. Created with Garage band.
Youtube thumbnail by Emily. Draw by Emily and edited with Canva Free.

Welcome to this episode of Mindful Voice podcast, where we explore the intersection of mindfulness, digital marketing, and ethical practices. Today, we have a special guest, Isabella Fredheim, the Digital Marketing and Content Manager at Engineers Without Borders Australia, joining us to share her insights on ethical marketing in the digital age.

Isabella’s extensive experience in the non-profit sector and her dedication to ethical marketing make her the perfect voice to guide us through the important considerations organizations must take when creating digital content. Stay tuned to discover how ethical marketing can empower communities, build trust with donors, and lead to meaningful impact.

[TRANSCRIPT]

Emily: Welcome to mindful voice~ Hi, this is Emily, here we discuss mindful marketing instructions to navigate the digital landscape. Today we have Isabella to share her voice about ethical marketing in the digital age.

Isabella: Hi, Emily. So, my name’s Isabella, and I’m the digital marketing and content manager at Engineers Without Borders Australia. I’ve been working in the non-for-profit sector for the past five years in marketing. And before that I started a Bachelor of Arts in Communications. I think I have the best job at EWB because I get to write about our impact and how I guess trying to raise awareness of our work. So we can increase donations, which then feeds into programmatic work.

Emily: Nice to hear that. And how did EWB use these digital marketing content, like to appeal fundraising and donations?

Isabella: In terms of how EWB applies ethical marketing in our fundraising appeals. we’re guided by our communication’s policy and our photo footage and storage policy. So in terms of how we use ethical marketing, it’s really important for us to ensure that we gain informed consent from beneficiaries. Obviously, in fundraising, the best way to elicit emotion from your audience and to convert people into donors is to make them feel something and make them feel emotion. When they see your fundraising appeals, for me it’s so important for beneficiaries to feel that their voices are heard and they’re represented in a good way that I always try to think about How would I like to be presented? Would I be happy with my photo used in that way, or would I like my quote used in that way? It can be pretty easy to take a quote out of context and change its meaning. So it’s always really important to go back and look at the source material that the teams have collected to make sure they’re using quotes accurately and photos in the right in the right way.

Emily: That’s interesting. Have you been provided any instruction in EWB?

Isabella: We have a communications tool kit which is for EWB staff and volunteers and it’s essentially like a Bible for anything comms or marketing related. And when I started at EWB, I found it really useful to read. There was a section in our tool kit about strengths, strengths based language. And so this refers to how we represent the communities we work with. So we don’t use words like poor or needy or third world. We want it to be really that’s like deficit based language. We want it to be strengths based. So we talk about, you know, empowering communities and we work alongside or with communities, not for them.

Emily: It’s so nice to hear that we have such protective policies and instructions. But there are some companies in the market that use persuasive techniques to manipulate their customers. What are the key ethical considerations for non-profits company when creating digital marketing content to avoid such kind of manipulation?

Isabella: Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. I think in the not for profit sector, we’ve seen a shift away from imagery that is clearly trying to manipulate people into making a donation. In the past, a lot of international development imagery would be, you know, of kids in Africa who are starving. It’s like, you know, very dark imagery, very kind of sad, whereas recently has been a shift, I think, in the sector to images that show communities as empowered and, we’ve seen since the shift to more positive, empowering imagery, it works. People are more likely to donate to an organization that shows that shows beneficiaries who are empowered and, you know, positive opportunities that come out of it, come out of the work that the organization does as opposed to showing them as needy or poor. I think that transparency and honesty lead to consumer trust at EWB. It’s really important for us to be transparent about how we use donations, where your donation like, what the impact your donations will have. And we do this through regular communications back with our donors about how the donations are used. We also report on our work and our annual report. So I think transparency and honesty super important to gain consumer trust. That’s what leads to regular donors.

Emily: That was Isabella Fredheim on ethical digital marketing. Thanks for listening. See you next time.