Brands X social issues
Covid-19. Systemic racism. Next up: Pride fests. There goes the marketing calendar.
Many companies are in a tailspin about what to say. And all most of them really wanna do is sell some mattresses or cell phones.
And when you do try, you might get praise but you’ll also invariably get backlash. See the response to RCA’s social justice announcement:
There are three issues, as I see it.
One is that brands want to be relevant. That means, at minimum, not being tone deaf. And at most, being fully part of the conversation. That’s tough when your products aren’t relevant. Or you’ve never chimed in before. Or things pile up like they just did this week. Your pre-scheduled Father’s Day post suddenly looks pretty sketchy given the current climate.
The second is that brands are more transparent — and not necessarily by their own choosing. The skin between a company’s public image and the rest of its guts is getting way thinner. You can say on Twitter that you “stand with protestors.” But today, people will check to see if you use sweatshop labor, or have anyone of color in the C-suite. Do you walk the walk or just tweet the tweet?
The third is that every company is ultimately complicit in some way: hiring, labor relations, sourcing, waste, partners. Pull on any thread and it leads to a moral quandary, a questionable business practice. So if you say you support Black Lives Matter, or Pride, how far do you go? How much is enough?
So what’s a brand to do?
There’s no easy answer. But there are three good principles:
1. Just do something. Anything. Take action first.
2. Be in it for the long haul. There’s no end to these issues and these challenges. So build it into your company.
3. If you’re gonna signal that you’re doing something, it has to be a mega gesture. A costly signal (as they say in evolutionary biology). $1MM from Facebook isn’t even pocket change, it’s coins lost in the couch.
Finally, expect criticism. Partly because there’s no perfect answer, and there’s always something else to work on. But partly because people are in many different places along their journey. Some will applaud the smallest gesture. But others who are far ahead will attack you for being slow and clumsy. So expect it, embrace it, and when it’s appropriate, agree with the criticism.