What’s the primary purpose of marketing? Profit.

But with great marketing and great profit comes great responsibility!

As marketeers, advertisers, brand gurus, we’re all here to sell products, but we have a responsibility to consumers to give them honest facts and authentic messaging. We can’t hide issues or plaster over cracks, these need to be resolved by other areas of the business before reaching us, or to not exist at all.

We need to go beyond ‘sustainable marketing’.

For example, one theme of sustainable marketing is to promote your social mission and I 100% agree BUT it needs to be a mission or purpose which is embedded in the core of your business. It can’t be adopted to suit a trend or topical month.

During June we have seen many brands use rainbow colours or update social media avatars to rainbow versions. But how many of these are real and how many are guilty of ‘rainbow washing’ (when a business publicly shows support for the LGBTQ+ community but privately engages in practices that are detrimental to those who identify as LGBTQ+).

How many of these rainbow wearing brands can say that they:

Have policies in place that create an inclusive and safe working environment?
Actively support LGBTQ+ charities/groups/movements all year round?
Are vocal in all territories, even where they discriminate against LGBTQ+ people?

Marketeers need to become ‘sustainability wardens’ to stop businesses casually adopting messages which are unsubstantiated. Basic core business sustainability knowledge would allow for empowerment and push back.

If you’d like to set up a session with your marketing team or fancy a 1-1 to learn more and empower your people, please do contact me.