An idea born in a storm of frustration

The idea for More Movement with Marketing was born in a storm of frustration with many fronts.

In marketing:

It was early 2021. I had recently taken full ownership of Meshin, a company I’d started with a purpose and idea for how to create meaningful connection between people and within communities, but for the most part, my work to-date had largely been brand strategy.

At this time, I was also incredibly frustrated with the marketing industry. Lot’s of talk about purpose, but a clear struggle on how to follow through on it in tangible ways, authentically. My frustrations with the industry were an intensified projection of my frustrations with myself. I wanted to be an active ally for social progress and follow through on my social-good intentions with tangible action, but I didn’t know how.

In society:

During this time, I was also doing my work personally. As the adoptive mother of a multi-racial daughter I’m embarrassed to say that it took the #BlackLivesMatter movement for me to really open my eyes and see the White privilege I lived with all my life. I’d spent my daughter’s life celebrating her Black and Puerto Rican heritage. I’d considered the world through her eyes since the day she was born. Tried my hardest to immerse her and our family in cross-cultural experiences and create a social world for her to feel belonging. But it took a long time for me to consider the world through my own eyes. A perspective that visiting my in-laws in Florida made painfully clear to me…

In the challenge of changing human behavior:

I was walking my daughter around the 3 mile loop of my in-laws’ neighborhood in her stroller, passing the cookie cutter homes with their manicured lawns weaving around a country club and golf course in an all-White gated community. I was hyper aware that the only Black and brown people Eva would see were tending the beautiful landscaping or serving the residents in the clubhouse restaurant. I’d noticed this before. And I hated it. But this was the first time it felt painfully wrong that the residents didn’t seem to see what’s wrong with this picture. Joggers, speed walkers, old people with little dogs and little poopie pick up bags blissfully enjoying their walks in the sun. I thought of the resounding noise in the world that the voices of #BlackLivesMatter were trying to create and the effort to open White people’s eyes to the change we need to create together. And I thought of the deafening silence that reverberated within this gated community–the lack of any sign of the struggle that was happening in the outside world. Not a single sign, literally.

‘We need everyone to see how fucked up this is to create the systemic change we need. But these people aren’t aren’t seeing what’s happening in the world and thinking, I should dig into this. They’re not actively challenging their viewpoints and perspectives of the world.’ Fair or not, I made the judgement.

This isn’t a criticism of them as people so much as an observation of human behavior. Challenging our beliefs, changing our perspectives and behaviors is incredibly hard. So hard that even if it’s something we WANT to change, we typically need years in therapy or coaching to help us make change a reality.

Looking at hard stuff is hard. But meanwhile, we’ve got global problems–REAL hard stuff– that need to be addressed, looked at and understood at mass scale. That’s the only way we’ll gain enough of a universal understanding and alignment to help us make meaningful movement towards better, as one society.

I can speak to this difficulty first-hand when it comes to the climate crisis. I held onto my ignorance of the climate crisis as a desperate measure of self-preservation. I was too scared, too overwhelmed, too willing to believe there was nothing I could do as an individual to have meaningful impact. It would just be better for me if i didn’t look at it, Nothing I could do anyway…

What helped me eventually open my eyes and then start to take part in the solution was being a passive bystander who finally had enough exposure to the issue that I couldn’t help but hear it and slowly pull my head up from the willful negligence sandbox I was buried in. From my social and professional circles to the news, podcasts and even marketing–enough exposure to create an impression and help me see climate change was something I needed to look at with intention and understand for myself.

Exposure, awareness, enough impressions… that’s what can chip away at a hard exterior of ignorance and eventually let in new light. And as we all know, that is the power and strength of marketing. A massive amount of power we are currently using to drive mindset and behavior change at scale, but most often, to support consumerism for the benefit of brands.

So as I walked this loop in a Floridian gated community I thought, “Marketing! Marketing could help this willful negligence. What if we turn this massive power and influence into something that can help shed light, give exposure and eventually let new perspectives seep into the consciousness of people and create passive understanding?

This is the heart of the idea around More Movement with Marketing and the question to answer in this discovery process. Can we use the forces of marketing to broaden awareness of the underlying facts of societies social challenges and influence mindsets for the greater good?

For social impact through business to really take hold in marketing, it has to serve existing motivations and goals. Otherwise, we’ll get the half-assed just-enough-to-prove-we-did-it follow through. This idea that I stumbled upon in that perfect storm of frustration can serve brands looking to invest in purpose authentically, help agencies diversify their teams while showing off their creative prowess, give new talent an entry point into the industry and help social impact causes and movements get their message out to the world at scale–all in one integrated idea.

When I first thought of it, I was elated. “I’ve got it! I’ve got a solution for all of you. A win win win!” As I took steps to explore it from there, I’ve learned a lot and first and foremost, an idea like this can’t be built in a vacuum by one woman. So More Movement With Marketing is starting off as a discovery process to see if this idea really has any legs to stand on–and carry our good intentions forward.

Check out the starting strategic idea at MarketingMovement.org and see what you think. Please lend your voice and expertise to the process. Let’s see what we can do together as a marketing industry for the greater good.