Feature Story
Brand Activism
The Relevance of Brand Activism to CSR in a Caribbean Context
By Monique Mata
In the era of public outcries, protests and petitions, brands have been forced to make some unusual steps towards staying relevant to the ever-changing world of the modern consumer.
Though the practice of Brand Activism and bringing awareness through brands has been a part of the international CSR practice for some time, it has been gaining increasing momentum across island states. It is not uncommon for brands to focus on those aspects of human life or the environment that their brand is most likely to negatively affect, as is the case with many oil companies adopting social projects associated with maritime conservation. It becomes more powerful though, when brands pursue projects that give a voice to a societal issue that is of concern and interest to most citizens. Dissecting how brands go about choosing one cause over another requires a considerable amount of work with large amounts of data, but it is a step in the right direction having brands understand the “me-to-we” continuum and that what affects one of us, affects us all.
Over the past two years, we have seen some brands – with varying degrees of success – engage the nation on a societal issue, to better relate to the communities and groups in which they operate and to demonstrate true corporate citizenship. According to the Meaningful Brands report published by Havas, over 75% of citizens expect that brands
will do more than just make a product or service available or provide good customer service. Consumers want to know that brands care about and are working towards their overall wellbeing and that they add something of value to society. Earlier this year, a well known supermarket chain began campaigning to reduce the impact of plastic bags on the environment by reducing consumption and mandating reusable bags at its stores. The chain received mixed reviews from the public, but in just three short months its consumers adopted the changes and the use of plastic bags has been almost completely wiped out at eighteen stores nationwide.
It is becoming ever more vital that brands are encouraged to put people at the centre of their strategy instead of placing a heavy focus on isolated messages or tactical actions. The ground has shifted to a demand for brands to consider the wider relationship they have with their consumers and by extension, with society. Brands with activist stance have outperformed their competition by a staggering 206% over a ten year period from 2006 to 2016 (Havas 2018). Not only is there growth for profit margins, but there is a 71% correlation between content effectiveness and the impact a brand has on social wellbeing. To put it simply, content moves consumers who are inspired by the work that a brand is doing outside of selling.
Daily we are overloaded with copious amounts of media and a staggering amount of content which means that the message of most brands either gets lost or quickly fade from memory. A brand message that has no impact, has no value to the consumer or to the organisation. 84% of people expect brands to provide content that tells a good story, provides solutions and creates experiences and events. So how exactly do brands go about adopting a nation-wide cause in this age of computational propaganda and fake agendas? Make no mistake, it takes a great deal of work to define the values of an organisation and to start introducing them into the business model, but the core objective is to integrate societal factors where they intersect with corporate mission to equal shared value.
Some useful tools that can help kickstart the process include Social Tracking which requires taking a deep-dive analysis into the community in which a company has developed or is currently headquartered, with common agreement on what needs to change, what policy goals they share and how brands can create shared economic, social and environmental value.
Open innovation or co-created change can also help establish commonality across different brand audiences by defining the intrinsic values brands share with consumers and build out the brand’s activity around these values with people at the centre. The final tool is ground-up business models centred on the people (including employees) which generate disruptive strategies that respond to the demands of modern society, creating value and transparency. For example, a company’s product might be bath and body, but its cause can easily be a fight against domestic violence and a drive to reduce the number of women-related deaths as a result of domestic violence, through education and awareness. This should also be supported and demonstrated by leadership, who can offer perspectives and statements in various public forums to reinforce those values across a wider constituency.
Companies that have championed a myriad of causes have found that taking a stand for something meaningful to society, genuinely improves the bottom line. Corporate responsibility is in a rising tide of new trends and progressivism in societal truths. Activism tells a good brand story and it makes a brand feel more relatable, because there is little more authentic than the expression of human to human empathy.
