Let us encourage Brand Activism

How decent, healthy and authentic are our brands? Are we sufficiently activist about those which are dishonest or even harmful? This debate applies, of course, to the quality and integrity of the brand internally as well as externally.


A misalignment between the two is already a target for activism.
 

In this debate we need to see a brand as an open system, the complete supply chain including suppliers, distributors and retailers. This includes all out-sourced services. Ignoring a more holistic brand approach has already landed many brands in a reputation crisis; for example, when some brands claimed separateness from their manufacturers who were using child labour, harmful glues and unacceptable working conditions. Whatever the recent platinum mine strikes were about, they are ultimately a manifestation of brand failings.

Passive consumerism makes us complicit. For example, it is my personal view, that the on-growing growth of cigarette brands is an indictment of weak to non-existent brand activism. You may ask on what criteria we should become activists.

We can consider a continuum, at the one end of which are authentic value adding and sustainable brands and, on the other end, are brands with flawed products and or deceitful marketing and communication campaigns.

On the extreme end of this side of the continuum are terminally sick brands whose plug should be pulled. I would include tobacco brands in this last category and the argument is not about people's right to smoke. Let me briefly also debate the free-market argument. Unfortunately, brands and businesses cannot be left to their own devices and require a regulatory environment. After all, companies are not closed systems. Thank goodness for the public sector - consider imposed age restrictions, health warnings and packaging disclosures. All these are a result of government intervention to better protect consumers.

Brand activism can take many forms. It starts by us asking critical questions of brands such as those posed by brand thinkers like Neumeier and Olins:

Who are you?

What do you do?

Why are you here?

Why do you matter?

Other platforms for activism include demanding a full disclosure of product content, the supply chain and all testing procedures. It includes scientific assessment of side effects (think of some of the damage caused by hair products and skin lighteners) and also evidence to support claims such as free-range chickens and meat; amazingly, there is still no agreed upon standard as to what we mean by this in South Africa.

Brand activism should agitate for the banning of brand products causing irrevocable harm and should demand action to improve those capable of being fixed. We must also challenge communication trickery like Kentucky taking the Fried out of its name but not out of the product. We must also question bizarre associations like alcohol brands with sports events and sports stars.

We have entered what brand guru Wally Olins calls the New Zeitgeist. Think of the old short and long term insurance brands with products that added little or no value whatsoever; brands that over promised and under delivered.

Brands on the wrong side of the continuum are aware that the writing is on the wall and are scrambling to diversify. Tobacco brands are spending fortunes on developing and launching e-cigarettes (electronic cigarettes); fizzy sugar drink brands are buying water, diet and sports drink brands.

However, we are also seeing CSI being used to balance wrongs. This is another debate. While there is at least an implicit link between fizzy drinks and obesity, we are now seeing more proactive brand management. For example, Coke has recently launched a TV advert addressing obesity. Another one of their ads features activities that add up to burning off the "140 happy calories" in a can of coke.

I concur with Olins's hunch that "if the mood of the times is towards authenticity, then Coca-Cola and other brands are going to try and offer it. They well move into it in a big way. But it’s a bit late".

"... a huge group of brands... have lost touch with what’s going on in the world." My point is that activism must remind brand owners of what is really going down.

Complicit in much of the blindsiding by unhealthy brands has been clever communication campaigns and CSI diversions.

I submit that we need far more robust professional codes of practice for communication agencies and CSI practitioners. This is another debate!

Be a brand activist!