Can Companies Have "Values"?

Companies Using Social Media

As companies have moved their marketing efforts online to follow people, lines have been blurred between personal communication and advertisements - particularly on Facebook, where a person's feed mixes personal updates from friends and business pages that've been liked. The idea is that a company's page portrays a certain personality, sense of humor, lifestyle that customers vibe with, posts get engagement, content is shared and the business builds connections. They end up with a direct channel to advertise discreetly and cooperatively to customers. Companies aren't just advertising to us, they're socializing with us. But is that honest?

I cringed when I saw business pages posting about 9/11. Later I saw John Oliver's video which exactly pinpointed the source of that discomfort. Companies aren't on social media to socialize, they're there to sell.

Digiorno got in trouble for mindlessly taking advantage of a trending tag (which turned out to be about domestic violence) to get exposure.

Huffington Post

Limits of the Groundswell

The beginning of chapter 11 in Groundswell talks about marketer Rob Master, who "knows how to market when it matters." Then it gets weird. The book uses his proposal to his girlfriend as an example of his marketing skills. (The proposal involved "an elaborate trail of rose petals that lead her across Manhattan to the site of their first date.")

"She always teased me that I wasn't such a romantic guy. But I'm a marketing guy. I recognize the importance of how to position things." 

Doesn't that sound insincere and perhaps manipulative? My point is that in some places, marketing just doesn't seem appropriate or sincere. I don't care if several companies compete to convince they have the best cleaning product. But when it comes to something like a proposal, the thought that marketing can manipulate the perception of the truth by something as superficial as "positioning," as Master puts us, is unsettling. So what happens when companies take on important causes while simultaneously piggybacking their brand for attention? 

Rob Master is also one of the minds behind Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, a marketing campaign with the mission to redefine narrow definitions of female beauty. Apparently Dove saw an opportunity when a survey turned up that only 2% of women found themselves beautiful.

The caption says: "Yeah your things need to be firmed, but only a little!"

Theoretically I support this completely. But it seems like a conflict of interest for Dove to tell women that they're beautiful the way they are and sell them skin care products. Can an internal groundswell at Dove do anything to actually affect the issue.

 The concept of groundswell in many ways seems appealing. Customers define brands. Companies listen and actually evolve (everything from products to company culture) to become what customers want. 

Checkboxes = evaluation. 

But beyond customer support and product development, how much a company really transforms to mirror the customer's concerns is in question. Companies aren't people. The techniques described in Groundswell seem to allow companies to develop marketing strategies to pretend like they care. Hopefully, companies working with customers that choose to support causes will only do so ethically out of truly caring about the issues, but it seems a difficult area to police.

Exploitation, Tourism and Viral Videos

The t-shirt company FCKH8 came out with “F-Bombs for Feminism: Potty-Mouthed Princesses Use Bad Word for Good Cause,” a video of girls age 6 to13 reciting scripts full of gender inequality statistics and swear words... while wearing princess outfits. 

What's wrong with it? The information isn't new. It relies on shock value. It's gimmicky. It uses young children as props, because clearly those children were told what to say. It exploits children for attention and profit.

On the other hand, is the fact that the video is getting a lot of attention a sign that FCKH8 has done something good? It seems doubtful that their superficial and provocative tactics have converted anyone. However, the video ends by saying t-shirt company also funds activist organizations that work for gender equality, so... maybe?

Apparently this isn't the first time the company has flocked to controversy. The company used similar tactics when making a video about the events in Ferguson that (spoiler alert) also promoted a line of shirts. Negative responses on twitter have also pointed out that the company is far from consistent. Hopefully we'll hear more from companies about how they plan to prioritize the ethics of representation and marketing/ attention-getting tactics. For now it seems marketers have a long way to go.