Everyone Waiting For Everyone Else

Can we create movement of general population attitudes towards the most pressing social impact issues with marketing?*  I led a panel discussion, in early November, in partnership with Kindred, a member network for socially responsible business leaders, to find out. 

*If you haven’t seen or read any of these posts then the gist of the idea is this:  

Let’s unite the forces of marketing–brands with budgets who want to invest in purpose, agencies with the creative genius to change minds, attitudes and behaviors (and like showing off their work), new and diverse talent looking for an on ramp into the industry, and social impact groups who can inform how we garner support for a social issue at scale–and create a mechanism for them to work together, fulfilling their respective goals while creating awareness and mindset change on the most pressing issues in a big way.

The conversations leading up to the panel have all been helpful in revealing the pros and cons of such an idea and feedback on whether it's feasible or not and why. And the panel discussion was the pinnacle of the discovery journey, revealing one of the biggest and most important roadblocks.  

Everyone is waiting for permission from everyone else to take the risk in tackling big issues. 

“Brands are waiting for consumer permission to be brave,” said Joyce Parente, VP marketing solutions at the Guardian US.

“If that's the case, they'll be waiting a while because other research points to consumers waiting for brands,” I wrote to Joyce in a note following the session. 

“People don’t expect ‘perfection’ from brands: they respect brands that exhibit human traits and thus expect them to be somewhat flawed–provided they’re transparent about their imperfections and working to improve themselves,” says Anne Bahr Thompson in her book, Do Good: Embracing Brand Citizenship to Fuel Both Purpose and Profit, based on years of brand research that informed the Me-to-We Continuum of Brand Citizenship she developed.

So brands are waiting for permission from consumers and hold back on doing good at the level their resources and influence could allow, while people are waiting for brands to take that step so they feel linked to a larger purpose through the brands they support with their business. 

It’s a tough catch-22. And it begs what seems an obvious answer to break ourselves out of the waiting game… Brands need to model vulnerability and willingness to take risks for the greater good, to help their customers then be part of the action.

If people want to live out their values first through the brands’ actions, then brands must be braver in taking the steps to advance awareness for social issues. People will feel connected to such brand action, which then opens up permission for them to adopt those same behaviors, whether via advocacy, conversations on tough topics or anything that might create movement on key social issues, into their own lives and spheres of influence. That is the goal of the More Movement with Marketing effort, after all–for brands to invest in promoting understanding because brands and the marketing platform they fund are a leading source of influence on the behaviors and mindsets of people. 

But before we go too far and say “brands” taking action is the easy answer. One challenge that’s come up a handful of times in response to the idea of everyone activating More Movement with Marketing against a single social issue at the same time is that brands–and the people working at those brands–have their own causes and issues that matter to them. They spend their resources where the hearts and minds of their team are invested. It’s an individualistic mindset for collective good. 

And maybe that is the hidden barrier to the premise of collective action with More Movement for Marketing. Every brand is a result of the actions of individuals, people who are consumers themselves, with their own subjective mindsets, motivators to action, and their own beliefs at the foundation of all they do, or don’t do. 

When it comes to rallying collective action to use the resources of our marketing industry to create a higher level of impact, we have to stop thinking of a brand as a separate entity from the people actually operating the brand and the people who buy from them. It is the belief, intention and action of people that dictates how a brand shows up. 

So people are waiting for the brands we buy from to become our do-gooding flag to fly. But the reality is, people are waiting for people to take those first steps. 

The net net, we all have a responsibility to go out on a limb, stand up for the greater good and go against the grain to do so if necessary in our everyday lives. When we do that in our work, home and social lives, we’ll see “brands” shifting as well, giving permission for everyone else to adopt new behaviors and push for better. 

I received this timely note in my inbox from CEO and Founder of Badassery, Danielle Letayf in January quoting Seth Godin: 

“Everyone else is

Well, not everyone. Just most people.

When you do something that everyone else is doing, you’re likely to get what everyone else is getting.

But in almost every population, ‘everyone’ leaves out the people who go first, who change things, who are weird and who challenge the status quo. That’s an option, even when it doesn’t seem that way.

Mass culture gets us more mass culture. It’s not the only choice.”

I definitely feel weird persisting in talking about the idea for More Movement With Marketing. I’m a person who in the past needed permission to do almost everything, let alone go against the grain and evangelize an idea for an entire industry to grab hold of. But I feel the opportunity in this idea is too great to let go of it just yet. So I’m the weird one challenging the status quo, which, I think is important to note, is not bad. 

There is action at a brand (and therefore individual marketers level) to put resources towards impact for social good. But I see the opportunity as much bigger than where we are today. There is an abundance of brand dollars creating one of the most influential forces in people’s lives. Imagine what’s possible when we pool those resources together to create unified messaging and a cacophony of noise on the most pressing issues. We can do better than “not bad” when united together. 

Going to industry-wide collective action out of the gate might be too ambitious an expectation, but as the Kindred discussion revealed, there are a number of opportunities yet to be explored. Most of them focused on finding the right sub-segments of marketing forces to align with the most like-minded people first. For example, narrowing the focus first to garner B-Corp brand participation, those who’ve made a commitment to such action. And maybe take this down a level from participation at the agency level to individual creators and talent, regardless of their agency affiliation. And create more workable bursts of collaboration as opposed to longer term commitments. Perhaps gathering at award shows, where the mindset of showing off our creative prowess is something we can capitalize on to apply such thinking to social issues. 

The immediate next step for me is to pull all of this great input and feedback gathered throughout this discovery process and start collaborating. I’m looking to connect with the right individuals who are willing to be weirdly optimistic and opportunistic about creating more movement with marketing right alongside me and help shape and test some of these starting opportunities.