Authenticity & Corporate Social Activism
We believe corporate social activism can be a positive force in our world—so much so that we made it our primary focus as a creative agency. Given that corporations have an outsized influence on our culture and have the resources and platform that marginalized people don’t, they have an opportunity to use their position to accelerate social change.
However, many corporations are beginning to exploit social justice movements as a means to boost their bottom line. This is when brand activism becomes more of a content strategy than a commitment. Not only does it have a high potential for backfiring (see Pepsi + Kendall Jenner) but it can actually cause genuine harm, feeding more cynicism and ultimately disengagement from the people we are supposed to be inspiring.
Assuming you have good intentions, it’s important you pursue brand activism from an authentic position. That means:
We will continue to see more and more corporations exploiting activism as lifestyle marketing instead of genuine changemaking (and continue to face blowback). We just hope that doesn’t detract from the opportunity we see to recalibrate our economic system to be less focused on profit-at-all-costs and more on making people’s lives better. Because in our current unsustainable version of capitalism, it seems the most activist stance a brand can take is to put people first.