Brand Virtue-Signaling: Activism or Opportunism?
A version of this post was included in my super-fun weekly email for marketers with tips, tricks and stories. Click here to sign up and never miss out on the fun!
Did this happen to you… About three months ago, every brand you had ever heard of (and those you hadn’t) started emailing you in the wake of COVID. At first, it was a wave of reassurance and solidarity (I personally loved Dove’s ad, created by Ogilvy). But it kept going. For weeks. It started to get annoying, infuriating even, and brands finally got the idea that they needed to knock it off.
And then… it started all over again.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests against racist police culture, brands seemed to reflexively snap to attention to peddle “corporate social responsibility.” The Atlantic calls it a “template that brands use to respond to a national crisis.”
Did we not learn our lesson from Kendell Jenner solving racism with a can of Pepsi?
Nike kicked it off with the somber piano music and tagline, “For Once, Don’t Do It” and it snowballed from there. Even NextDoor—a cesspool of gentrified neighborhood gossips spreading news of petty crime in their community—tweeted, “Everyone should feel safe in their neighborhood.”
The kicker came when children’s cartoon Paw Patrol had to show its support:
Recognizing how these messages blur together, Google upped the ante by pledging $10,000… and then Facebook and Apple each beat them by a set of 000’s by pledging $10M.
This Vulture article explains brand virtue-signaling: “Fueled by an eat-the-rich spirit, social media has become the clearinghouse for an ad hoc socialism. Where the government fails, the internet becomes the public square where citizens can adjudicate, shame, and cheerlead people into a piecemeal form of economic redistribution.”
Considering the swiftness with which brands shifted from commercials of coming together to vows of social justice, you have to wonder: What’s really the motivation here?
Racial equality is long-overdue, there is no question about that. That said, are brands doing this because it’s genuinely the right thing to do, or is it a social marketing tactic? Is this activism? Or simply opportunism?
Or—worse yet—are they acting out of fear? Today, it seems that any brand that fails to release a statement is inviting controversy. It's possible that many brands jumping on the crisis response bandwagon are simply trying to avoid being ostracized if they don’t.
Perhaps these messages say more about the repugnant shortcomings of corporate social responsibility than they do about anything else.
-------
If you enjoyed this article, grab your free chapter of Sarah’s book InstaBrain.
Sarah Weise is the CEO of award-winning marketing research agency Bixa and the bestselling author of InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Gen Z. For 15 years, Sarah has been a guide to hundreds of leading brands including Google, IBM, Capital One, Mikimoto, PBS, and Veterans Affairs, to name a few. Sarah helps brands achieve a laser-focus on their customers and build experiences that are downright addictive. She lectures at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide.