How Brands Can Follow Through on the Values They’re Selling

 

Navigating the waters of social advocacy is far more difficult for brands and the price of getting it wrong may be extreme. Evaluate how companies can better position themselves for critical social action.

Why is this important? Today, the consumers especially the Gen Z and Millenials, expect from the company a clear stance on social or political issues. they increasingly use social media to shape corporate behaviour. It is becoming increasingly clear that the consumers buy from a company when they show support for issues they support and more importantly stop purchase from companies that stood for something that did not align with their values.

How can companies achieve this? Companies can make use of the Brand advocacy map to guide themselves through potentially dangerous cultural and social landscape. the framework uses two axes to assess fluency and depth of engagement. Fluency refers to how credibly and authentically the company engages ina topic, varying from ignorant to fluent and engagement refers to how deep the company engages with varying from scratching the surface to making structural changes.

The four quadrants as shown below are

1. living their values - issue fluent and making structural adjustments - generates credibility and builds customer confidence
2. owning their position issue fluent but structural changes missing
3. Brand purgatory willfully ignorant and superficial changes to the structure.
4. Swing and miss willfully ignorant campaign but invested in structural changes.

 Presentation

Living their values

A company must dedicate time and money consistently to making changes both externally and internally in a given issue. The company must first infuse these principles into its internal operations, values and mission before taking a public stand.

The company must invest in the issue in a comprehensive manner, beyond making a donation o running an ad-campaign. The company must also communicate about the issue in a way that demonstrates the company understands the nuances of the issue and deeply cares about the topic. Just by issuing a public statement now and then, will fail the fluency test. Examples,

Owning the position

Though companies in this segment may be making powerful statements in public on social causes, they still have work to do and credibility to establish if they want to move along the credibility map.  Infographics,

Swing and a miss

These are companies that are investing in structural changes and are moving in the right direction. However, their campaigns have always been on the wrong side and been the recipient of customer wrath. These companies have to get their campaigns right and they are moving in the right direction by investing in structural changes.

Brand Purgatory

There are a few companies, which engage once and then walk away or never engage in the first place. Failure to engage or engaging in a manner that is ignorant is surely a rod to disaster. Customers build no affinity to the brand or drop it out of disgust.

Companies must move beyond statements toward actually making change. All brand impact campaigns must include

• Ensure your house is in order before going public. Your internal culture and diversity should match the external posture. 
• If internally is not ready, be humble. Acknowledge there have been missteps and be transparent about your plans for change.
• Successful public statements must admit where you have gone wrong, share your planned actions and implement actions.
• Invest in structural change.
• Donating to those doing the work. 

Companies that are moving up the value chain, are doing so by engaging early and in meaningful ways and they are consistently engaged. on the other side, companies that ignore the clear contradictions, and see no connection between what they see and do expose themselves to even more ridicule from customers who are demanding from brands they support. 

To summarise, consumer behaviour demands that companies engage in social issues couples with the issue and cultural fluency and the ability to execute across marketing and public affairs

How Brands Can Follow Through on the Values They’re Selling

by Latia Curry HBR 2020/08