Scenario A: Marketing Easy Money

You are the marketing manager for a regional mortgage company. Prior to coming to your cur rent position, you worked at a national lender that went bankrupt during the housing crisis of 2008-2009. Your previous employer aggres sively marketed mortgages to those who couldn't afford them and encouraged borrowers to take out home equity loans to pay for cars, vacations, and other luxuries. When home values crashed, borrowers were unable to repay their loans. The improving housing market has encouraged your competitors to once again ramp up their sales pitches. One local mortgage lender adver tises "zip mortgages," highlighting the speed of its application process. Another promises to help borrowers with credit problems get mort gages. Yet another encourages homeowners to view their houses as "banks," refinancing their

homes to pay off credit card debts, to invest in stocks and bitcoins, and to make purchases. You worry that these messages will once again tempt consumers to live beyond their means, buying homes they cannot afford and putting them at risk should house prices dip. So far your firm has avoided such marketing tactics. However, your CEO is worried that the firm will lose mar ket share to its more aggressive competitors. He has asked you and your department to draw up a new advertising campaign that describes how easy it is to borrow from your company and the firm's willingness to work with those who have credit issues. He also wants the campaign to highlight how borrowers can use the money from refinancing their houses to pay for such non home-related items as vacations, boats, motor cycles, college tuition, medical bills, and credit card debt.Will you create the advertising campaign your CEO wants?

In Chapter 6, Johnson identifies four ethical decision making formats:

• The Four-way Method
• Five Timeless Questions
• The Lonergan/Baird Method
• The Foursquare Protocol

After reading the chapter, consider one of the scenarios listed in Case Study 6.1, Ethical Scenarios for Analysis, and apply, step-by-step, one of the decision-making formats listed above in answering the question at the conclusion of the scenario