The FIRST rule of ...Advertising?

First: Do no harm.

Sure, it sounds an awful lot like the words attributed to a Doctor's Hippocratic Oath.  This "oath" is widely believed to include the words written above.  But alas, it does not.

A better place for these words it would seem, is with those who accept our advertising dollars.  As paid allies in our daily struggle to improve our top-line sales, attract clients and to thoughtfully display our wares in a manner appealing to prospective customers, their responsibility is to help us NOT hurt us.  

Business people spend their workday trying desperately to drive dollars from the top-line (sales) to the bottom line (profit).  We pinch our pennies, we squeeze our resources like lemons and we drive our employees to take on and do more in a days work, all to increase that bottom line.

To assist us in these efforts we employ various advertising entities.  An expectation is placed upon them that they will do what they are paid to do...promote our business.  It seems some have lost their focus in doing that. With the addition of Social Media to our everyday lives, Facebook, Twitter and countless other such vehicles allow us to widen our sphere of influence and if not educate, then certainly to entertain others with our dazzling insights and vast professional knowledge.  

I, for one, believe that when a paid advertising entity chooses to participate via these various forms of social media, their responsibility does not lessen, it increases.  They, after all, have been paid (sometimes handsomely) to promote and increase our business.  If they insist upon providing improper or misleading information, or false information that paints our business in an unflattering light, are they not in breach? Certainly, they are working against us or as another generation might have put it: "biting the hand that feeds them"

I'm hoping for lots of feedback on this post.  I have been struggling with the choice to renew or "not" renew an advertising agreement with an entity for which I have been an advocate.  The advertising I have paid for has been professional and my results have been mostly positive in my relationship with them.  Still, when I see them regularly providing misinformation about my profession while continuing to accept my hard earned advertising dollars, I am angered.  I simply wish that they would....

First, DO NO HARM!