What will you do with the power you have?
“Marketers don’t understand the level of impact they have on our culture and the ideas and concepts that pervade our culture. Individuals don’t recognize they have that power… Things as small as memes you circulate matter. They have a place in the general memory and ethos of our society. This is a thing that annoys me and I don’t know what to do about it. Other than being aware of my own practice and trying to influence what’s around me.” Thamarrah Jones.
Thamarrah is a marketing and communications strategist at Threespot–an agency dedicated to making a difference by working with forward thinking and values-aligned organizations. Her words here capture exactly the sentiment that fueled the idea for More Movement with Marketing. And they’re very much in line with a piece I wrote in January 2021 leading up to the idea titled The Power & Responsibility of Our Industry.
The wisdom in Thamarrah’s words is that as individuals, we don’t recognize we have that power–and so it’s easy not to accept responsibility for it. How can we be responsible with the influence we have on shaping culture if we don’t realize or believe the marketing concepts and ads we’re making really add to the general ethos and memory of society?
If this is a deeply rooted belief in the minds of marketing and advertising practitioners, then my hope to rally support for more movement with marketing won’t get too far until those deeply rooted beliefs are changed. After all, our beliefs shape our identity, our identity shapes our thoughts, and our thoughts shape our actions (I’ll forever thank Purpose & Performance Group for this critical understanding). We need to change our beliefs to change our actions. If we want to see a new level of action as an industry to create more movement in the world, we need marketing and advertising professionals to change the beliefs they have about what they’re capable of.
While our discussion about power and responsibility to impart change and influence the world in a meaningful way was specific to advertising professionals, the ultimate goal of this initiative is to then lead the general population to realize that every individual has the power to change the world in the same vein. It starts with believing they actually have that power as an individual and changing their belief to help them see a particular issue like the climate crisis, for instance, is worth their individual attention and action.
So whether you are a marketing professional or someone just going about their day and work, I hope you remember every action you take has rippling effects–sometimes so small you might not be aware of them–that cascade out into the general ethos of society. It’s easy to feel like a powerless drop in the ocean, especially in today’s cultural climate, but the ocean is nothing without drops of water.
Taking it a step further on why uniting our forces to create more movement with marketing matters…We can let our disparate well-intentioned “drop of water” efforts create small ripples and currents, or we can create the force of an ocean.
You are powerful. What are you going to do about it?
