Brandwashing or naivety? Marketing, IWD and brand purpose
The only surprise about the pay gap app bot was that somebody hadn't thought of the idea sooner.
A strange kind of week. Four editions in and a second reminder to stop doomscrolling. But sometimes it’s hard not to get a little bit wound by some glib images that have had less thought than this intro.
Onwards.
Actions speak louder than social media posts when it comes to social causes
Every IWD, Pride, Black History Month, World Earth Day, or similar, brands are quick to brandish their credentials as allies or activists. You can even support Ukraine at “no extra cost” by slapping a yellow and blue flag on your brand’s comms.
Just as the obligatory social media post has become a cliché, so people have become more adroit at seeing through the low level washing.
Perhaps the only surprising element of the Gender Pay Gap bot - that highlighted the median pay gap between men and women on UK companies Tweeting about International Women’s Day - was how long it took for the idea to be put into practice (a year, according to the creators’ interview with Vice).
So Brand X may have put out a social media post every IWD for the past decade but it means nothing if their gender pay gap is the same or worse. Signalling support for Black Lives Matter while having a senior leadership team of middle age white makes any comms cynical at best. Greenwashing while failing to tackle polluting behaviour from your business isn’t just disingenuous, it threatens the future of the planet.
Not every piece is as cynical as, say, this effort from Shell. Often the intention from those who propose or create the posts is well meaning, even if there’s a grim irony that these employees are among those likely to be those most affected by the gender pay gap. They’re also the least likely to be able to affect change at any meaningful level, and are left to deal with the inevitable abuse and backlash the follows.
Won’t somebody think of the children?
It would be easy to point to the plethora of research that is pumped out on a regular basis urging brands to commit to more purpose based marketing, because Gen Z want brands that align with their worldview. AdAge even published a piece last year on why Generation Alpha - a large number of whom aren’t yet born - will want even more meaningful interactions with brands.
Much of these reports are so broad and vague as to be meaningless. It should be relatively self-evident that the worldview and purchasing intent of a 25-year-old is very different than that of an 11-year-old.
Data analysis doesn’t show better performance for brands who base their marketing around brand purpose either. Effectiveness expert Peter Field’s presentation to the IPA last year showed that brand purpose campaigns were less effective than campaigns that didn’t base themselves around brand purpose.
But - and there is a big but here - this isn’t just an issue around selling or effectiveness (although plenty of money is spent on marketing initiatives that do neither). It’s part of a wider push for societal change. That’s not the most natural place to try and insert a brand into the conversation.
Does brand purpose have a purpose?
Does this mean Terry Smith, the stockbroker who criticised Unilever for an over reliance on brand purpose is right?
The short answer is possibly in some cases (brand purpose for mayonnaise is a stretch) but also probably not. Some elements are just rational solutions to business problems. For example, if the number of vegans is predicted to substantially rise over the coming years then strategically it makes sense to create a vegan mayonnaise and then market it to a wider audience.
Similarly, introducing more sustainability into the packaging supply chain could be said to take a long term view (nobody will buy mayonnaise if human consumption makes conditions inhospitable on earth) but also aligns with a growing cross-generational segment that expects business to do this as par for the course.
My personal theory - and with no data to support this, just a lot of time spent with PR crises and social media complaints over the years - is that people in general are less inclined to put up with inauthentic bullshit.
That is to say that if a brand tries to align itself with a cause, either through a well-intention social post or a fully integrated campaign and there’s precious little evidence to show they’re backing up words with actions then they should expect to get called out on it.
And that’s hard for many companies and marketing teams, as those who truly have some kind of purpose baked into their DNA, such as Patagonia, The Body Shop, or Dove, are few and far between, which is why they command so much attention.
They are outliers, just as Apple is an outlier in brand loyalty. Samsung’s phone handsets may attract less fanatical customers but they still sell more units than the iPhone, albeit at a less profitable margin.
So, in the brand purpose space, Toms shoes may live and breathe their mission, and mark clear position against multinational corporations like Nike, but mass mid-market brands like Clarks would have to work harder and for longer to convince consumers a commitment to the developing world was anything more than a marketing stunt.
Change is possible
Positive change can and does come, but can be slow. One company I worked with took nearly half a year to get recycling bins in their offices due to the conditions of their lease. Narrowing or eliminating the gender pay gap in a company will take more than a year even if the entire board makes it a priority. Often the change is externally forced on companies, such as electric vehicle production.
If this sounds complicated and hard, it is. This is change at an organisational level and few organisations are that nimble.
But if it sounds defeatist, it isn’t. Marketing is, in theory, the department closest to the consumer. Good marketers will know what their market demands of their brand. Marketing and PR are often the catalysts for change across the business as they’ve realised the implications for the business go beyond just sales.
There is an opportunity for marketers to make a genuine difference, if they’re honest with themselves about what consumers expect of them and honest with themselves about what can realistically be changed.
And that honesty extends to the customer. How refreshing would it be next International Women’s Day to see business after business line up to say something like: “This year our gender pay gap is 10%. That’s lower than last year when it was 15% but it’s still too high. We’ve made these changes with the aim of getting the pay gap below 5% next year and to zero in the next three years.”
That’s a lot harder than a social media post full of platitudes but at least it doesn’t intentionally or unintentionally try to present the business as something it’s not.
Recommended newsletters
Quite a few links this week come from James Whatley’s 5 Things on a Friday newsletter and Christina McDermott’s Social Lives. Both are worth subscribing to. LINK: 5 Things. LINK: Social Lives.
Things Fell Apart
I try not to delve too far into culture wars. Writer and journalist Jon Ronson, on the other hand, specialises in this. His 2001 book Them: Adventures With Extremists could have been written any time in the past three years. His podcast Things Fell Apart delves into the history and origins of many of today’s culture wars. LINK.
Periodic table of Community Strategy
Community Management is often conflated with social media management. They’re not quite the same and building communities around a brand is hard. Michelle Goodall, who has been working in this space for longer than me, has put together a periodic table of community. Lots of practical advice. LINK.
Machine learning still has some way to go
Smarter technology is still dependent on the people who program it. This can lead to some obvious but unfortunate errors. This is the online equivalent of an unexpected item in the bagging area. LINK.
TikTok navigates international conflict
Facebook was never built with the expectation that disinformation on the platform could destabilise elections and TikTok was never built as a war reporting tool. Social media is now having to make up the rules as it goes along (some may argue nothing changes here). LINK. Meanwhile the US government is holding briefings with TikTok creators. Not a sentence that would have made any sense a few years ago. LINK.
Thanks for reading this far. Hopefully you’ve found it mildly diverting. Like what you’ve read? Forward it onto somebody and ask them to subscribe.
Playing us out this week: Little Simz - Introvert. A standout track on one of 2021’s albums of the year and a quite incredible video.