EMPOWER issue 10 'people and culture' Jan-Feb 2021
Activist mindsets, brand philanthropy and kindness, gender perceptions, purpose and decision-making, subscriptions, empathy and karma, and business ethics.
Issue 10 — people and culture
Thankfully, 2020 is behind us. As we move forward I've found myself thinking about what got us through, and keep coming back to people. Each time a brand got involved in something good people were at its heart. So, looking ahead, this issue our writers explore activist mindsets, brand philanthropy and kindness, gender perceptions, purpose and decision-making, subscriptions, empathy and karma. Enjoy the issue.
Michael Piggott, Editor
ACTIVISM
Cultural strategist at On The One, Elles Pinfold, on why approaching 2021 with an 'activist mindset' could mean survival for brands in culture
(3 MINS)
SUBSCRIPTIONS
With examples from Barclaycard, Pret and Disney author Toby Beresford looks at how subscriptions build deeper relationships between brands and consumers
(3 MINS)
KINDNESS
Founder of The Liberty Guild, Jon Williams, says the machinery of capitalism is being oiled by the blood of the workers, but thinks brand philanthropy may be back
(4 MINS)
GENDER
From Star Trek to Girls. Girls. Girls. magazine, CEO of Neuro-Insight UK, Shazia Ginai, examines how gender perception is changing and what the role is for brands
(2 MINS)
PURPOSE
Siegel+Gale's Exec. Director EMEA, James Withey, says, with Covid-19, purpose has even more resonance and relevance, and brands need to shape all their decision-making through its lens
(4 MINS)
LEADERSHIP
Award-winning author, Minter Dial, says marketers need to be courageous with their decision-making this year, and offers five traits which could help
(3 MINS)
SELF-IMAGE
'Our industry already comes with a host of insecurities, so why are we apologising for people seeing our real lives on zoom?', asks Senior Strategist at MullenLowe London, Fran Griffin
(2 MINS)
ETHICS
TBWA\RAAD's Chief Innovation Officer, Jennifer Fischer, says if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that leaders cannot keep ignoring the role ethics plays in decision making
(4 MINS)
Why approaching 2021 with an ‘Activist Mindset’ could mean survival for brands in culture
Cultural strategist On the One's Elles Pinfold gives us 6 reasons why embracing an activist mindset could be the best survival tactic your brand can make
WHY APPROACHING 2021 WITH AN 'ACTIVIST MINDSET' COULD MEAN SURVIVAL FOR BRANDS IN CULTURE
Ok so firstly, you’re probably wondering what we mean by an ‘Activist Mindset’?
Well, put simply it’s about embracing the core values that feed activism: a desire to make changes that push for a better world and taking action to do so. And after a year where inequalities have been laid bare across all parts of society, it’s never been more necessary or needed. These inequalities have been felt deeply across cultural communities. With so many parts of culture starting 2021 on its knees and government grants only going so far to support recovery, it’s high time for brands to step up and step in to help.
As we head into a new year with a fresh page ahead, it’s time for a fresh mindset too. Not only could it ensure the survival of the cultural heartlands brands have always been so keen to tap into, but the survival of the brands themselves as consumers embrace a revised way of thinking and spending with humanity at its heart.
Here’s six reasons why embracing an Activist Mindset could be the best survival tactic your brand ever makes.
1) Brands that do, matter
Who were the real ‘winners’ of 2020? Well, arguably some of them were the brands that used their platform & power to bring some light to a year that for many was one of the darkest in memory. Like Guinness who created a St. Patrick’s Day fund to support bartenders affected by the pandemic and then followed up in the summer with further long-term investment to help pubs and venues re-open safely.
A St. Patrick’s Day message from Guinness
Or Burberry who have dug deep over the past year – donating to vaccine research, switching trench coat production to gowns for medics and care works, and most recently partnered with the incomparable Marcus Rashford to support his work with food poverty charity FareShare and provided grants to UK youth centres providing safe and inspiring spaces that encourage creativity.
2) If you want to be relevant in culture you need to support its survival
Nothing looks more irrelevant than not caring and true allies are consistent. If you expect to be able to borrow from culture in high times, makes sense to support in low times too, right? And put simply, if you don’t, there may be nothing left. Supporting grassroots and emerging talent is an excellent way to ensure the survival of cultural communities: they are the beating heart of culture, after all. Like Fred Perry x Nicholas Daley (right) whose music grant initiative extends a lifeline of financial support to emerging artists in a time when many parts of the music industry are struggling bigtime.
3) Actions speak louder
Posting black squares or rainbow flags is one thing, are they being backed up with action? If you are truly invested in change, do something to make it real. One good example of a desire to go beyond rainbow-washing at least is Manchester United’s recent long-term partnership with Stonewall, a positive move from one of the biggest clubs in the world looking to shift the needle in LGBTQ+ acceptance and visibility in the game. By adding in a layer of action behind the scenes they indicate a strong step in the right direction in proving there was more to Rainbow Laces than just some much-needed visibility on the pitch.
4) Giving back is the new normal
Not to get too 2020 cliché on you but if we’re talking ‘new normal’ then this is one is huge. An enormous 74% of Gen Z donated to charities during the pandemic, mirroring a growing trend towards more thoughtful spending habits – with consumers favouring brands that operate ethically and sustainably. It’s worth bearing in mind, Gen Y also share these traits and the two combined are now the largest consumer group with some enormous spending power. And they are increasingly holding brands to account for their behaviours too. The sharp end of cancel culture is not something any brand should be aspiring to. It’s time to make your actions reflect that and start thinking about your business the way your consumers think about buying from you.
What are your values? How can you make them real through every part of the business? Getting this nailed will not only ensure consistency in output but build trust with consumers long term. Patagonia’s core values include ‘using business to protect nature’ and they are actively expressed in every facet of their output- from a self-imposed 1% Earth tax to their team of Global Sports Activist ambassadors.
Honestly. Do we want a planet for our children? Do we want the arts to survive? Do we want to see inequality erased? Absolutely. It’s on all of us to roll up our sleeves on this and leave egos at the door in the process. In addition to the many scientific reasons for doing so, if this year has taught us anything it’s that kindness goes a long way. We might all be ‘weathering the same storm' but some are in very different boats. So, for brands it’s time to get out that life-ring and make sure they are as useful as they are powerful.
Want to know more ways brands can tap into cultural territories and make 2021 really count by show meaningful support when so many are tapping out? Or how you how applying these principles could transform your next campaign? Read our report Active Listening: Culture’s New Rules for exclusive insight and interviews from some of music, sport and LGBTQ+ communities most urgent voices, or drop us a line hello@ontheone.io for a chat.
Beyond transactions
With examples from Barclaycard, Pret, Disney and others, author Toby Beresford looks at how subscriptions can build deeper relationships between brands and consumers
BEYOND TRANSACTIONS
With examples from Barclaycard, Pret, Disney and others, author Toby Beresford looks at how subscriptions can build deeper relationships between brands and consumers
We now expect our brands to be more than the end product or services.
We care about the means by which they get to us - so brands now need to embed better “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) standards. But how do brands fund these, often more expensive, requirements, particularly in an online world where purchasing so often starts with a price comparison? Digging in the data we can see the green shoots of a business model that uses the online medium more effectively than even Amazon: subscriptions, reinvented for the age of data.
Subscriptions provide for a longer term, more trusted, more secure relationship. Typically they involve a continuous exchange of rich customer data in return for a hyper personalised product. It’s a bit like the apocryphal shopkeepers of old who knew what their regular customers liked and curated inventory accordingly. Subscription businesses bypass both online and offline retail to create a better direct relationship between brand and consumer. In this model the high friction of continual financial transactions disappears; payment friction is limited only to an initial sign up and an email notification each month. With transacting now taken care of, and, coupled with cost effective doorstep or digital delivery, brand focus can return to product relevance, customer delight and, yes, ESG: in 2021 subscriptions feel like a business model whose time has come.
There are signs in the data, that the market agrees.
In a survey last year, Barclaycard found a Britain in love with subscriptions, each of us now spending on average £46 a month on subscriptions aside from financial services and utilities. And that spend that is going up, by nearly 40% year on year. (Generation Subscription: The UK is now a nation of ‘super subscribers’). A taste for subscriptions is skewed towards a younger demographic too: a recent GLOW report found that 30% of under 35s said they signed up to a new food or drink subscription delivery service during the first lockdown last year.
E-commerce expert, Alex Murray of Thistle Digital, explains this particular trend: “Food and drink subscription services spiked sharply during lockdown for two main reasons” he says, “firstly, the poor availability of grocery delivery slots and second, a surplus of food and drink in the wholesale and hospitality industries. Many businesses have had to pivot to a D2C (Direct to Consumer) model in order to survive, but in doing so they have discovered a hungry market and a new ready stream of income.”
His views are echoed by those online businesses already focused on serving the subscription economy. Michaël Maarek CEO of AllSubscriptionBoxes.co.uk saw traffic to his site more than double in November 2020 compared to the previous year. He notes that while beauty boxes are his most popular category, during lockdown he saw interest surge in food boxes that provide the ingredients and the recipes to cook at home. Tom Bryant, CEO of Veneficus, a subscription-focused media network, notes “there has been a real boom for new subscription offerings from brands - Disney, Pret and Gilette have all launched services in the past year.”
Pret's new coffee subscription
For businesses running on a subscription model already this is no surprise. Gosia Kalicka started beans&sparks personalised children's books with
a subscription model from the beginning, she explains why: “a subscription model allowed us to create an irresistible offer for parents of a personalised book for their child for just £1.99 P&P for the first month. For us, the media spend is instead 'handed over' to customers who can experience their first book free and then decide if to continue.”
For brands running subscriptions there’s an opportunity to gain a much deeper understanding of their customers, Kalicka notes “parents who regularly buy personalised books for their children prefer that the avatar stays the same each month” - an insight that has allowed beans&sparks subscription model to thrive.
Murray agrees “the benefit for brands is data, especially customer behaviour and customer feedback. The brand is one step closer to the customers that actually use their product or service. Even with the best intentions, when a retailer is the intermediary between a brand and a consumer, some data is inevitably 'lost in translation'.”
For customers the benefits of subscriptions range from the ability to get exclusive products, sheer convenience, avoiding having to go shopping and personalisation. Each product though will tap into different needs and find its own audience. Murray notes for example that wine subscriptions typically “over index with men over 55.” Plus ça change!
Over and above traditional transactions, subscriptions promise a ‘joint venture’ between brand and consumer. The brand gets the security of loyal customers with a lifetime value which allows them to plan accordingly. Customers get a personalised, reliable service that optimises to meet their needs more precisely over time.
This joint venture, just like any deeper relationship, includes the need to cover more bases, especially ESG. For instance, Riverford organic sign up consumers to a weekly subscription to deliver organic and seasonal vegetables to their door. Riverford’s ESG mission is embedded in the product and its marketing, a repeat subscription is the price consumers must pay to join in this mission. In a similar way, podcast ‘Old Fox Young Fox’ is funding its mission for independent journalism by evolving a Patreon-based subscription model for listeners. Here the basic podcast is provided free to everyone while subscriber donations allow the show to monetise without compromising editorial balance. Subscribers show their support and for those that want it there is deeper engagement such as interacting with the hosts in the forum - “the foxes den”. It seems that consumers expect more from those brands they repeat purchase from - in exchange for their loyalty they expect higher standards in return. For brands that use subscriptions to embed social good and sustainability into their product provenance, this can be the cement for a customer relationship that lasts. With the rise in subscriptions there has been a rise in companies offering support for subscription models. While payment providers like PayPal and Stripe have long offered recurring payments, online shop fronts now do too: Shopify for example, provides a subscription option for customers. In advertising this is true too, Veneficus offer a performance-only model where subscription businesses, instead of paying for display advertising, pay only for the new triallers they get to their service. So with all this subscription activity - what’s stopping brands investing in their own subscription proposition? Murray urges caution “Consider whether your product or service actually suits a subscription model.” he says, “then ask how willing are you to invest in being a direct seller? You are in essence becoming your own retailer.”
So, what are the key takeaways for CMOs?
Subscriptions are a growing part of the online economy.
Subscriptions offer a way to fund environmental and social governance changes as business models can be based on lifetime value instead of one off transactions.
Subscriptions extend online shopping beyond a basic catalogue by using ongoing data collection to personalise the buyer experience.
The blood of the workers
Founder of The Liberty Guild, Jon Williams, says that the machinery of capitalism is being oiled by the blood of the workers, and for a long time we forgot our sense of civic responsibility. But, he argues, brand philanthropy may be back.
THE BLOOD OF THE WORKERS
Founder of The Liberty Guild, Jon Williams, says the machinery of capitalism is being oiled by the blood of the workers, but thinks brand philanthropy may be back
That thing about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers.
Yeah that one. The one that was so flippantly referenced by Homer Simpson, is perhaps maybe a tad melodramatic. But it’s origins in the communist manifesto, created by Marx and Engels 150 years earlier in Chetham’s Library in Manchester are embedded in gritty reality. Deeply moved by the injustice of the grinding poverty in the northern slums, the absence of governmental help and the vast chasm that existed between rich and poor, their pen lit a fire that spread around the world.
That chasm was one that others felt compelled to bridge as well. Benevolent Victorian merchants with a strong sense of civic responsibility started to give back. Fuelled by the incredible wealth that the Industrial Revolution brought to some, way back in the 1880s, these brands knew they had to step up and step in to level the playing field a bit.
The name Rowntree we associate with KitKat and Fruit Pastilles, but it should also lead you to a radical stand taken against the appalling conditions in Victorian factories. Joseph Rowntree was driven by a desire to make society a better place. Once called “one of Britain's greatest and most interesting philanthropists”, he designed the factory, the heart of his power and wealth, on the proposition that employees ‘should never merely be regarded as cogs in an industrial machine, but rather as fellow workers in a great industry’. From a proper pension, to a works council, to a profit-sharing scheme, to a massive housing project to lift them out of slum conditions, they got to so many things long before anyone else. And as a legacy the foundation that bears his name today, is still working to solve UK poverty. That’s making a proper difference.
A little further down the confectionary aisle, and a little further south and you reach the Cadbury brothers. There we have George postulating ‘No man ought to be condemned to live in a place where a rose cannot grow’ as they built a huge new factory and a massive housing estate for the workforce outside of Birmingham. They called it Bournville (it’s still there today). They had facilities that were unheard of, it must have seemed like a dream. Factory gardens, swimming pools, football, hockey and cricket pitches, a school, morning prayer, the whole nine yards. You had people who were living in houses without inside toilets one day, waking up to fruit trees in the garden the next. CSR on steroids. You could call it kindness. You could call it philanthropy. But you could also call it good business.
And we sit and talk about creating brands that ‘people actually want to exist’. We really are paddling in the shallow end, aren’t we? These guys knew how to ‘build a community’.
I think for a long time we all forgot our sense of civic responsibility.
There’s been an unpleasant flurry of self-interest that has been around for decades. Oddly Covid has uncovered both the problem and the solution. Undoubtedly it has put massive pressure on household income, tipped many into poverty, and the heightened anxiety of that sword of Damocles has led to a deterioration in many people’s mental health. The furlough scheme is getting shut down and will cast even more of us adrift into the wilderness that the poor bloody freelancers have never left. Add to that the pressure of living on top of each other every day, day after day, the sad rise in domestic violence and the massive spike in the consumption of alcohol and the comparisons with Victorian squalor aren’t too far-fetched. But there is hope. As well as sourdough, yoga and organic vegetables, I think we have all grown to appreciate other humans more over the last nine months. We can see the kindness. The gentleness. We are more forgiving. More ready to help. Whether it’s showing you care by clapping out of the window, shopping for your elderly neighbour (I actually met my neighbours) or opening hotels for the homeless. Manufacturing sanitizer or ventilators mattered. All of that is remembered. But looking forward I think you can see a new Brand Philanthropy starting to emerge as a theme.
LA's empty hotels are housing thousands of homeless. But for how long?
Like Cadbury or Rowntree, you need to take a stand. You need to make a difference. And for principles to mean anything they have to cost you something. Look at Tesco returning £584 million in Business Rates relief. That’s not just a gesture. “We are conscious of our responsibility to society’ said John Allen. Ethics are coming back into the boardroom. Morrison’s fell in line and committed to repay £274 million soon after. And suddenly you can hope for the domino effect. Every little helps right.
But it’s morality as much as money
The supermarkets seem to be emerging as the moral compass of Britain’s business community. We all saw Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Iceland, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose run primetime ads to stand together in the face of the frankly repugnant reaction from a minority over Sainsbury’s ‘the gravy song’. Retail is a bear pit. And for this to happen in the run-up to Christmas, the most competitive time in a fiercely competitive business is unprecedented.
Like opposing soldiers playing football between the trenches on Christmas day, for these behemoths to put down their weapons and come together as a single voice of solidarity perhaps gives us hope that the kindness, the deep appreciation of our fellow humans that has resurged during lockdown, might be here to stay.
Let’s hope that Brand Philanthropy is back.
Patagonia literally wear their heart on their sleeve, by proclaiming ‘vote the assholes out’ on their labels. Ben & Jerry’s honour the activism of ‘taking a knee’ with their new vegan ‘Change the Whirled’ flavour by Colin Kaepernick and give a scoop of the proceeds to his charity Know Your Rights Camp. And just look at the Black Friday Backlash that’s rejecting hyper-consumerism with brands like Allbirds, GiffGaff and again Patagonia asking consumers not to spend money that they can’t afford... there’s a proper responsible Victorian brand value that Rowntree would recognise.
We need to hold on tight to this kindness.
This civic responsibility. I know there was Brand Philanthropy before Covid, but the pandemic has accelerated many things. And brands have got used to ‘doing good’ during lockdown. It’s become something that consumers expect now as well. Let’s hope this Covid kickstart propels us back to Victorian values. To a world where we look after those people who are incredibly precious to our businesses. And where kindness, far from being gentle, is actually seen as good business.
The Liberty Guild believes that all of us who own a business, brand or agency have to stand up for our principles. And that those principles inevitably will cost you something. We are just a scrappy scale up, but we are on the road to being certified as a B-Corp. Because ethics matter. We offered free psychiatric therapy to all our 300 members in the middle of lockdown. Because mental wellness matters. And throughout the lockdown we carried on paying contractors early and didn’t furlough anyone or let anyone go. Because people matter. Follow The Liberty Guild on LinkedIn
Beyond binary
From Star Trek to Girls. Girls. Girls. magazine, CEO of Neuro-Insight UK, Shazia Ginai, examines how gender perception is changing and what the role is for brands
BEYOND BINARY: HOW GENDER PERCEPTION IS CHANGING AND WHAT THE ROLE IS FOR BRANDS
By Shazia Ginai, CEO of Neuro-Insight UK
Men are from Mars; women are from Venus.
The masculine ideal is big and strong; feminine values are maternal, soft. The idea that men and women are different has been used throughout history to develop stories and provide persuasive imagery. It’s this continued gender stereotyping across mediums that has cemented gender differences and dynamics into our brains. In an effort to better understand the gender agenda, Neuro-Insight along with the7stars and Sign Salad produced a whitepaper, Beyond Binary, that explores how gender perceptions are changing. Understanding how brands should lean in to this shift starts with the brain.
Naturally, our brains are pre-disposed to respond to stories – it’s how humans make sense of the world around them. The brain looks for narratives to string together and these narratives encourage our brain to encode information into our long-term memory. Ads that resonate with our context and lived experiences have the most memorability, this is because personal relevance is a driver of memory. So, gender stereotypes for example – which align with pre-existing stories in our brains – can be easily reinforced over time.
Take Aptamil for example. In 2017 the brand drew criticism for showcasing a baby girl growing up to be a ballerina while boys were succeeding in careers such as academia and rock climbing.
Despite the ad reinforcing longstanding gender roles and stereotypes, Neuro-Insight’s research found that the subconscious did not perceive this narrative as offensive, because it fits with decades of normalised ideas of gendered aspirations.
Three years on, and things are shifting. 2020 has seen the introduction of Star Trek’s first gender-fluid character, while J.K. Rowling has been caught in a media storm following controversial comments on transgender people. In itself, this displays how far we have come in our cultural conceptions, but also how far we still have to go to fully cement how social trends are shifting perceptions of gender ‘norms’.
For the new generation, redefining gender identity is more important than ever. ‘Beyond Binary’ showed that Gen-Z are far less reliant on gendered signifiers than their predecessors – only 16% agree that their gender is a big part of their identity.
And in fact, a three-quarters majority agree that they are more likely to view gender as a fluid spectrum than previous generations. For brands, it’s crucial that they become ‘woke’ to the stereotypes and unconscious biases portrayed in their communications. Not only do they perpetuate outdated gender archetyping, but they no longer authentically reflect reality – and that will have an impact on connection.
Work must be done to unpick subconscious perceptions if we are to effectively represent both consumers’ and culture’s view of gender.
Shifts in brand representation
More recently, brands have been through a period of transition, as they adapt to a more inclusive era. And in fact, brands stand to gain a lot as they update their approaches. Confronting gendered narratives and breaking conventions can fuel deeper engagement and build new associations and new contexts in consumer brains.
The campaign (2020) for Girls, Girls, Girls magazine confronted and highlighted truths around how females are societally instructed to behave, look and feel. Repeating vocal instructions such as “Lift your face. Cover your scars. Bleach this, bleach that” meant that women’s subconscious responses to this video were more engaged. Levels of personal relevance increased, as did the strength in emotional response – showing its importance to their life context and deeming it meaningful enough to encode and store in long-term memory. This is an example of existing stereotypes were called out as being damaging – an example of how to disrupt existing narratives and create new contexts. Representing gender doesn’t have to mean conforming to people’s pre-conditioned narratives. If the content is relevant to the audience’s everyday lives, it will achieve more subconscious engagement and memorability making it impactful enough to drive consumer action.
By addressing the changing gender discourse, brands can elicit deep-rooted, meaningful emotions, while showing people that they understand their personal experiences. This will allow a shift from demographic targeting, which is clearly limiting and restricts brands to binary terms that are decreasing in value for them. Using that insight to create and shape new subconscious narratives – rather than reinforcing outdated gender stereotypes – will put brave brands at the forefront of evolving societal understandings of identity.
Reactive to proactive: driving decision-making with purpose
Siegel+Gale's Executive Director EMEA, James Withey, argues that, with Covid-19, purpose has even more resonance and relevance than before, and brands need to shape everything they do through its lens
REACTIVE TO PROACTIVE: DECISION-MAKING WITH PURPOSE
Siegel+Gale's Executive Director EMEA, James Withey, argues that, with Covid-19, purpose has even more resonance and relevance than before, and brands need to shape everything they do through its lens
2020 was necessarily reactive – how to make 2021 proactive
As 2021 appears on the horizon, we look forward to hopefully regaining a sense of control at some point. Both brands and customers alike have been in reactive mode, changing business strategies and life plans as lockdown levels fluctuated. As 2020 went on, people turned to businesses to help them get the things they previously took for granted done. As demand for services such as food delivery increased, brands faced sustained pressure to move with agility and help people at the most basic level. But in truth, this is what brands do. At a basic level, they help people. They solve a specific problem facing their customer. This year, doing so has often been more than enough, but one day soon, we’ll reach the point once again at which this is necessary, yet insufficient.
Over the last 20 years, we have become increasingly aware that brands need to exist for reasons beyond meeting a need. Customer expectations have evolved and continue to do so. Brands are now expected to take a stand, choose a side, and be vocal about who they are, what they support, and most importantly, why. 2020 has highlighted the importance of being guided by purpose. When the need to move quickly became apparent, some brands found themselves drifting with the prevailing winds rather than steering their own course. Whereas, those brands with a clear sense of why they exist were able to formulate an authentic response and even to get ahead of events at times. Their purpose helped them to be proactive.
Understanding our why allows us to quickly figure out our how. It’s a roadmap that guides decision-making at all levels of an organisation, allowing you to react at speed. We call it purpose. Purpose is your north star. It guides decision making from the leadership level, right down to individual micro decisions made by every stakeholder. It is a differentiator and plays a major role in employee acquisition. But most importantly, at least for this conversation, it sets out the parameters within which it’s wise to play. We’ve seen many brands attempt to force their way into conversations such as Black Lives Matter, the climate crisis and Covid-19. Some have done it successfully when what they had to say and what they did felt authentic and natural. Others, however, wandered into an arena where they appeared out of place, irrelevant, or inauthentic. Just because a conversation is popular, doesn’t mean a brand belongs in it. Purpose is not new. In fact, we have even experienced purpose-fatigue in recent years as brands in some cases were perceived as jumping on the bandwagon.
However, the response to Covid-19 has imbued purpose with greater resonance and relevance than ever before. The marketing and brand leaders with whom we at Siegel+Gale have spoken this year have talked powerfully about the ways in which purpose has helped them. Whether it be validating intuition, making a decision when no precedent exists, or having to choose between two outcomes - neither of which were in the business plan - purpose has functioned as a key decision-making tool.
Using it in this way has helped many brands to activate their purpose, bringing it off the paper and into everyday decision-making. When we help brands to activate their purpose, we focus on three key areas. First we ask them to consider how to integrate it into everything the organisation does. Second, we encourage them to cultivate it through repetition. And third, we steer them to demonstrate it with action. But what does that actually look like?
Patagonia recrafted - clothes made from other clothes
Know your customer, yes. But also, know yourself.
I imagine many eyes will roll the minute they see Patagonia being used as a case study. But there's good reason why it's referenced so often. Patagonia is part of a very exclusive set of brands that really do seem to consider every decision through the lens of purpose. When we look at their statement of intent, “build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis”, we see how it's orientated towards integration into every decision the business makes.
A quick look at their social channels and website supports that. But it’s when we view things like their returns policy that we really see the depth to which their purpose reaches.
Patagonia accepts 100% returns of used equipment for recycling, then stockpiles un-recyclable materials until a better solution to landfills or incinerators exist. This type of mindset is cultivated through repetition throughout the brand... from CEO, Yvon Chouinard’s book Let My People Go Surfing, written for Patagonia employees, to the blog on the website, everything the brand says and does ties back to purpose.
Finally, we see demonstration through action. Something which is increasingly resonating with customers. When Patagonia discovered that modern slavery was present in their supply chain, not only did they put a stop to it, they ensured people who paid above the legal limit to a broker to find the job were reimbursed the difference - and they eventually rolled out a Supplier Workplace Code of Conduct to “promote and sustain fair labour practices”.
Now that we've entered 2021 it’s time to re-evaluate how purpose can help businesses beyond guiding reactive decisions - and to recognise its usefulness to brands in enabling them to proactively set out a roadmap for how they can help people, beyond meeting their needs in the future.
Using purpose to help develop a long-term strategy ensures proactive moves fall within the parameters that form a brand’s license to operate.
Make your next move away from using purpose primarily as a lens to shape reactive decisions, to one where you proactively anticipate needs, get ahead of the agenda, and actively work towards the end state you wish to create.
Why courageous marketers need to check in
Author, Minter Dial, says marketers need to be courageous with their decision-making this year, and offers five traits from his new book You Lead - such as empathy and karmic energy - which could help
WHY COURAGEOUS MARKETERS NEED TO CHECK IN
Award-winning author, Minter Dial, says marketers need to be courageous with their decision-making this year, and offers five traits from his new book You Lead - such as empathy and karma - which could help
Is your brand qualified to pass the Brand Tattoo Test?
Independent of whether or not you actually like tattoos, the Brand Tattoo Test examines your employees’ desire to permanently etch a representation of your brand on their body, regardless of whether they plan to stay forever (which of course they can’t anyway). It’s a courageous question that I suggest serious marketers need to ask.
This pandemic has been a tale of two sides.
On a temporal basis, there were the two halves of 2020; and we have seen dramatically different experiences around the world. It’s also been obvious that some companies have rocketed during the pandemic while others have plummeted. The rich are seemingly getting richer [see the Guardian article, Billionaires’ wealth rises], while at the same time we are seeing dramatic forecasts for increased poverty and starvation as a direct result of reduced economic activity worldwide. With consumers and businesses suffering hardships – that include illness, mental health and financial woes – it will be evermore important for marketers to be courageous in their decision-making going forward. For one, messaging will need to be adjusted to be contextually relevant while trying to pierce through the noise, when many brands are having to work with reduced resources.
Secondly, marketers will want to lean in on their brand’s purpose, creating more meaningful campaigns and bringing to the fore positive actions (not just words) that bring to life the brand’s values. Lastly, marketers will need to learn to bring vulnerability and humility to their game. As Brené Brown has brilliantly championed, being vulnerable takes courage and is a sign of strength.
I believe leadership – and marketers in particular – will benefit by developing and accentuating five traits which I capture in the CHECK* acronym that’s a central tenet of my new book, You Lead. I’d like to focus on two of these traits here.
First, marketers need to flex their empathic muscle.
Not only is empathy a necessary skill in designing a product or user experience, it’s invaluable for understanding your consumers. Empathy is a truly useful skill for thinking through slogans, product claims, blog post headlines and email titles. But most emphatically, to the extent that marketing relies on so many different moving pieces of the company in interacting with the customer (e.g. social media, customer service, sales, influencers, store personnel, ecommerce …), empathy is vital for building fully functioning interdepartmental teams. I exhort leaders to treat their employees as they would have their employees treat the customer. This alignment is crucial for the long-term health of your sales and marketing efforts because it will help to render your messaging and customer relationship more consistent and congruent.
The second trait is to up your karmic energy,
which can bring a marked difference to your brand efforts. Karma is often misunderstood as being something akin to fate or can be mixed up with the aphorism: life’s a bitch. In fact, karma is about intention and action. In the way you and your team are behaving, you are shaping yourself. By acting with good intentions, you are creating an extra energy, one that gravitates within and without you. We’ve long talked about the power of word of mouth. In the context of inbound marketing, we also know how useful great content is. Give out superlative content – that doesn’t smack of self-promotion and salesy or, worse, spammy titles – and customers will absorb, share and return. By using empathy to create the useful, engaging and shareable content, the message will provide and encourage word of mouth.
At its heart, I talk about karma because it’s about thinking through your intentions and making sure these are genuinely shared and believed in the inner circle of the company. Your karmic actions are putting into motion your purpose, the unique reason your company exists. I use the term of the inside-out model where the brand’s absolute number one fans are its employees. When the karma is good and the purpose is a de facto reality, you’ll find your brand will drive word of mouth and pass the Brand Tattoo Test.
You can read about Minter’s CHECK framework and more in his new book, You Lead, How Being Yourself Makes You A Better Leader (Kogan Page), which is available now.
About Minter Dial
Minter is an international professional speaker and a multiple award-winning author, specialised in leadership, branding and transformation. An agent of change, he's a three-time entrepreneur who has exercised twelve different métiers and changed country fifteen times. Minter's core career stint of 16 years was spent as a top executive at L’Oréal, where he was a member of the worldwide Executive Committee for the Professional Products Division. He's penned two prize-winning business books, Futureproof (2017) and Heartificial Empathy (2019) and his next book on leadership, You Lead, How being yourself makes you a better leader (Kogan Page) is out now.
Previously, he wrote the award-winning WWII story, The Last Ring Home (a documentary film and biographical book). He’s an NED at SBT-Human(s) Matter and on the advisory board at ECV Digital. He’s been host of the Minter Dialogue weekly podcast since 2010. He is passionate about the Grateful Dead, padel tennis, languages and generating meaningful conversations.
Find him @mdial or on his blog minterdial.com
Sorry for the noise
'Our industry already comes with a host of insecurities, so why are we apologising so much for people seeing our real lives on zoom?', asks Senior Strategist at MullenLowe London, Fran Griffin
SORRY FOR THE NOISE
'Our industry already comes with a host of insecurities, so why are we apologising so much for people seeing our real lives on zoom?', asks Senior Strategist at MullenLowe London, Fran Griffin
Last week I apologised for living on a busy road.
It was during an important presentation to a sizeable combination of senior clients and fellow agency folk. As I unmuted myself to speak, I was interrupted by a cacophony of sirens. Oh, the joy of working from home when home is a main road in North West London. I quickly acknowledged the disruption and awkwardly re-muted until the sirens had passed. Maybe the disruption introduced a bit of humanity to the ‘room’.
In hindsight, I wonder if anyone even noticed. But apologising? I’m not sure why I did that. And of course, as we only ever focus on the small negative parts of wholly positive experiences, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I started paying attention to other apologies sparked by this weird video-fuelled reality of ours. Within a day I had added several more to the list. A slow laptop. A clothes horse.
A couple of years ago I watched a TED talk from sociologist Maja Jovanovic about how saying ‘sorry’ can work against us and be detrimental to confidence, for young women in particular, which resonated a lot both for myself and peers. So, I’ll be honest in saying that at this point I started to question my integrity. But to my surprise, reassurance and somewhat dismay, others - women, men, junior, senior - turned out to be equally contrite.
How apologies kill our confidence | Maja Jovanovic
A toddler walking into a room.
Taking a second to re-open a deck.
A cat being a cat.
We’ve been playing Zoom-bingo for a year now. Perhaps this is simply the latest addition to the game; ‘can you see my screen’, ‘you’re on mute’, ‘I’ll give it a few minutes for everyone to dial in’, and now, inevitably, ‘sorry’.
I have no intention of shutting down every apology with ‘you don’t need to apologise for that’, or worse, ‘why are you sorry?!?’. I’ve been on the receiving end and to be honest, it just makes everyone a bit uncomfortable. But maybe there’s something in understanding why we’re apologising so much. Why we’re a bit embarrassed about the realities of our lives. Why we feel the need to apologise for doing the best we can. And then maybe turning that understanding into an active effort to enable a less-apologetic, more confident culture?
Our industry already comes with a host of insecurities.
We talk a lot about the importance of ‘bringing your whole self to work’. I hope that we can find it in ourselves to expand the definition of ‘whole self’ to include the odd clothes horse. After all, if you’re spending 99% of your time in the same room (as so many of us are), and that room is a shared space, you’re doing really fucking well to be staying sane let alone to be cracking on with an already stressful job. So next time you go to apologise for, let’s be honest, life - take a second. And just know that if your pet or kid or fire alarm make an unexpected appearance in your next Zoom call, it will probably be the highlight of the meeting for someone else. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when my cat exposes herself to my unfortunate teammates.
Good or evil?
Talking business ethics in a practical way. 'We need to step away from absolutist notions of doing good vs making money' argues Jennifer Fischer, TBWA\RAAD's Chief Innovation Officer
GOOD OR EVIL?
Talking business ethics in a practical way. 'We need to step away from absolutist notions of doing good vs making money' argues Jennifer Fischer, TBWA\RAAD's Chief Innovation Officer
Ethics is more often discussed in classrooms and by philosophers (and in recent years by programmers in the fields of tech and AI) than in everyday life and daily business situations.
But now more than ever, after a year full of ethical dilemmas and tough decisions, we need to make ethics something we are all ready and willing to address in the workplace. However, many challenges arise in the realm of business ethics.
The biggest challenge is that too often morality comes with an all or nothing label in the business world. There’s a high ground uniquely reserved for those in social enterprises and non-profits and on the flip side, there’s a socially acceptable, free-for-all race to profit for all other companies where all that matters is maximising profit at the cost of everything else.
The second challenge is that being ethical is not easy. If you’ve been watching “The Good Place”, a comedy show about the afterlife [spoiler ahead - if you haven’t watched the series, go to Netflix right now and watch the 4 seasons before finishing this article], then you remember the big revelation that nobody has gotten into The Good Place (the show’s version of Heaven) in over 500 years and the reason is that the world has gotten so complicated that being actually good was impossible because of the chain of effect of any action or purchase.
So yes, being ethical is hard, and seemingly harder every year. But if we want to have an impact on managerial and business practice on a large scale, then we need to step away from absolutist notions defining a black and white world of “doing good” VS “making money” and become more practical.
But being good - or at least being “better”, has positive business impact at many levels.
An important one is how it impacts talent - from employee engagement, to productivity all the way to attracting and retaining top talent - because yes, while most people do like to make money, they also aspire to having a positive impact in their work environment as well as in their local communities.
Being more ethical also future proofs the company against PR crisis, or even changes in laws and regulations, allowing it to be better equipped in responding to unforeseen reputational challenges. And in an age when young generations are more aware than ever about how their own choices may impact the world around them, being ethical is even becoming a cultural trend that will have a positive impact on your brand.
So how do we make ethics more practical and applicable to any company, not just social enterprises?
Companies become ethical or unethical one person at a time, one decision at a time but the tone should be set from the top. The worst behaviour is to let ad hoc decisions define the ethics of your business and your brand. A first step to take charge is to define as set of values.
These should not be just a list of pretty words that goes on a poster in the HR’s office wall but principles that will get applied everyday around your organisation.
2\ Be consistent, make everyone accountable
Once you’ve finalised a list of values that mirrors your beliefs, they need to be consistently communicated and applied at every level of the organisation, from the moment an employee is recruited, to the daily catch ups.
At a brand level, this can be facilitated by drafting a set of brand behaviours and dos and don’ts. By consistently communicating, people in your organisation will feel comfortable in knowing where the lines are and will be able to make decisions that fit your corporate values.
3\ Be willing to pay the cost
This list of values must be put to the test in real life, in real situations, like when planning what type of people to recruit, promote, retain or when identifying your next product. Values, when properly practiced, inflict pain. This is normal because their role is to limit freedom and constrain behaviours based on specific ethical principles. Every value has a cost. Even a seemingly painless value like collaboration implies that you shouldn’t hire or retain star talent that are rude and don’t play well with others.
4\ Be ruthless about the no-nos
The most important thing that your people should know is what they should NEVER do. In every company, there are some choices that will be debatable but there are also those that are absolute no-nos. Things your business believes are truly wrong and it should never do in its race for more profit.
Things your brand should never endorse and your marketing should never plan: Maybe you will not advertise to children or partner with certain types of media. Maybe you’ll never promote a type of behaviour or associate with a specific political agenda.
This is an area where you have to be crystal clear and leave no space for doubt.
In a for-profit organisation, ethics is a journey. So consider - how can you keep raising the bar? What new value can you introduce? How much further can you push a principle in order to have a more positive impact on the world? By having on-going discussions with your teams, you can keep transforming your business towards a more ethical version of itself.
In today’s society, businesses and brands have a disproportionate impact on the world. From the advertising messages to which media outlet we support with our advertising dollars, from the manufacturing, to the ingredients, from how we treat employees to how we treat customers and suppliers - the complexity is immense. Sometimes - often even - ethical decisions conflict with what is needed in order for a business to thrive or simply to survive in the global economy we live in. But in 2021, as the world hopefully heads towards the end of a global pandemic with colossal human costs, as we struggle to activate an economic recovery, as we fight for a sustainable future for our planet, as we try to make sense of how technology should impact our societies and as we hope for communities that are more accepting of diversity, businesses can no longer just wander in an ethical void or wait for governments to regulate and impose better behaviours. Each and every individual is now more than ever accountable to society at large and should play an active role in making better decisions, more ethical ones. Even if these are not perfect. Even if we can’t tackle everything right now. Even if we make mistakes. The least we can do is try.
