Becoming a “FORCE for good”tm is now as important to business as making a profit
It seems like advertisements these days are as much about supporting causes as they are about selling products. Whether it’s Nike talking about protecting the planet and people or Ben and Jerry’s pushing criminal justice reform, all major brands have their own cause de celebre, usually climate change or some brand of social justice. Those causes put a lot of money in their pockets.
Edelman, “a global communications firm that partners with businesses and organizations to evolve, promote and protect their brands and reputations” advises its clients, which include many major brands, that customers want to buy from companies that support causes they care about. Hence, for example, instead of selling people on how good their ice cream is, Ben and Jerry’s hires a Head of Activisim to get involved in causes that it thinks its customers care deeply about.
That seems innocent enough, but on deeper reflection this dependency on causes to sell products creates enormous pressure on our media to fill the airwaves and social media post-waves with news related to those causes: even when that news is not all that urgent and not all that, well, news.
Here’s how it works, based on the graphic above from the Edleman website.
Brands want to sell products, so they find a cause they think their customers care about.
Brands pay money to media companies and “influencers” that own our major news outlets and our social media platforms. (Currently, all our major news is owned by just six companies.)
The media and influencers push stories that give the appearance that the causes these brands support are more serious than they really are. They shadow-ban, deplatform, or deprecate sources that contradict the stories that the brands are pushing.
As a result of increased media attention, more people become aware of the pet causes of our brands (most notably, “social justice” and “climate change”).
People look for ways to support those causes, and the brands are there waiting with open arms to sell them their products, promising to donate some of the sales to that dear cause that attracted those nice people to their products.
If the cause resonates well and sells a lot of product, the brands increase their spending on it and the hub bub grows.
This practice is nothing new. I’m old enough to remember the famous Coke commercial, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” from the early 1970s that sold the idea of unity in diversity. But nowadays, the wide-scale practice is quite dangerous. It has actually led us to a scary place: businesses are now, according to Edleman, the most trusted institutions in America.
It’s unfortunate that we put so much trust in businesses; it looks like they don’t care as much about those causes as they claim. In 2019, giving by individuals totaled an estimated $309.66 billion. Giving by corporations was $21.09 billion.1
Corporations now create as much demand for their causes as they do for their products. And when there is lots of money at stake, objectivity goes out the window. There is no incentive for journalists to double-check their sources or get their facts straight. Instead, the incentive is to spin the stories in favor of their supporters’ narratives. Nowadays, getting a story right means that the story won’t cause a rift with some major brand’s head of activism.
This problem runs deeper than just consulting and marketing companies like Edelman. There is actually a new push for globalist corporations to join the B Companies movement. Briefly, “Certified B Corporations are a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. This is a community of leaders, driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good.”
Currently 3,979 corporations are members of the B Corporation initiative. They are duty-bound to focus on Social and Climate Justice in their business endeavors in order to get B-corp certification.
Increasingly, corporations are donning the persona of a responsible citizen, while continuously performing practices to maximize profit. These contradictory tendencies motivate traditionally “green” and ethical businesses to unite and stake a claim to their authentic difference, fueling the growth of B corporations and other new types of organizations.
https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-companies-are-becoming-b-corporations
While it is laudable for companies to want to be help society and to be a “Force for good” (that phrase is now a registered trademark of B Corp), the question is: Who defines “good?”
The B Corporation organization starts with the basic assumption that so-called Social and Climate Justice issues are the greatest issues that need to be addressed, rather than say, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, etc. Ultimate “good” is now Social and Climate justice, and anyone who disagrees with that and tries to fight back using their God-given rights to free speech, is demonized.
I’m not sure what can be done about this vicious cycle which is most certainly leading us to a totalitarian world in the near future. I guess we can at least let brands know that the single most important cause we care about is truth. Because if we have the truth, then we can know for sure which cause is worth supporting and which one is fluff designed to line the pockets of the corporate elite. 1
These people do research on “the blur between marketing, communication, fundraising and journalism.” http://csic.georgetown.edu/research/ Shouldn’t journalism be, well, journalism?
Klaus Schwab and his great fascist reset explains a lot about who is behind this change in businesses.
The solution economy https://bcorporation.net/
RL Martin 