Morality in Advertising

Aristotle: A Philosopher That Has Dabbled Into Morality 

I, a young student not well-versed in morality nor the philosophy of it, stating whether something is morally correct or incorrect is the equivalent of an acting coach telling his LA acting students that what it means to act is to be God.

I cannot honestly say whether advertisers should have a moral code they may follow. Lawfully, there isn't a real problem with using an "overly-generalized belief" to produce and create an ad (at least I don't think there are, so do take this statement with a grain of salt). Morally, however?

The thing with morality is that it is very subjective and you can never truly have one sense of morality between people. That is unless you are in a functioning society that has dictated what is morally wrong and what is morally right. This is often accomplished through the authoritative figures of the community, such as the government and its laws. However, other aspects may not be covered by law and are then dictated through social standards created by the citizens of the society. So when assessing whether advertisers have a moral code that they must follow, it will be from societal rules, rather than from the law. The de facto, if you will.

The problem with the "de facto" of morality is, as mentioned previously, is subjective, so if one says something is wrong, another can disagree, and this creates conflict. However, as said in the previous paragraph, these moral rules are created from societal standards; thus the more followed the moral rule is, the more "objective" it is (in the sense to that society).

Merriam-Webster defines "stereotype" as "something conforming to a fixed or general pattern" and goes into depth by also defining it as "a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment". From this, we know that a stereotype must be an "oversimplified" idea, therefore, it, more often than not, is not true. And that statement is true in most, if not all cases. However, stereotypes are created/generated from truth or then it would not have come into existence. The problem with this is the fact that this "truth" can be a very slim representation of the stereotyped group, so, therefore, some stereotypes are more accurate than others and vice-versa.

Advertisers must make use of stereotypes because it is virtually impossible to represent everyone individually. That's why, as to make their jobs easier; they use stereotypes because by following what is thought, you can make somewhat of an accurate hypothesis of the impact the product would have on both the public and the specific demographic.
Everything seems to be right "on paper", however, one then has to ask themselves whether there is a such as a good stereotype, as most stereotypes have a negative impact on the stereotyped group. And generally, the reason why an advertisement presenting a stereotype is seen as "morally wrong" is that it reinforces a negative and untrue idea of a group/community, which reiterates the fact that most stereotypes, if not all, are bad stereotypes.
But the reason why advertisements can work as successfully as they do when using a stereotype is that when they present this "oversimplified" idea of a community, it acts as a safeguard for the advertisers. Because they can comfortably follow and appeal to "a set list of features" of the said stereotype.

Now, I've presented two different reasons as to why I can either agree or disagree on whether advertisers have a "moral duty" to avoid stereotypes. However, I cannot give a definitive answer. I am not acting here ;) (See what I did there?).