Why the fuck are brands now preaching ‘right-think’ at us ?

[justanotherneighinparadise]

Honestly I don’t understand. Why can’t I open an email or look at an advert on a placard without some moral message being conveyed? What happened? It’s used to be Bernard Matthews trying to convince me to eat machine blasted turkey coated in tasty breadcrumbs. Now it’s George from Asda lecturing me about how to be a good LGBT+ ally!!

I mean honest to god I preferred it when they were just honest with their message. Come and shop here because we’re a bit shit but we’re ruddy cheap.

Be gone with your bullshit woke credentials 🤬

Tf is biphobic??

Well said, OP. It's infuriatimg and tedious. I want to be able to browse and buy products without being beaten about the head with moral messages (even ones with which I might happen to agree)!

I'm so tired of surface morality from companies who do not hit the basics of treating their staff and suppliers fairly.

It's such hypocrisy to preach self righteousness whilst screwing over your direct stakeholders. Talk is cheap - they should put their money where their mouth is.

I assume these are the "schools packs"

www.diversityrolemodels.org/education-services/helping-you-with-home-learning

A bloody supermarket should be supporting women's charities.

Boots managed to set up the special dv support room. Bars have the "ask for annabel" or whatever to escape dodgy blokes.

Most abused women still get to go to the supermarket unsupervised. If supermarkets partnered with Women's Aid or Al-Anon to offer in-store local support my god could you imagine the impact!

That's an excellent point.

Talk is cheap - they should put their money where their mouth is.

This exactly. Don't get me started on the companies saying "Black Lives Matter" while exploiting the mostly black and brown lives in their sweatshops.

@DreadPirateLuna - don't get me started. Every time I see a BLM post from a company who don't give a single fuck about the people paid pennies to grow their produce or sew their cheap clothes I get more enraged.

Why are people so stupid as to not question this? I had a friend try to convince me that Unilever is a great ally of BLM because of something they posted on Twitter. Unilever sells skin bleaching cream in Africa and Asia called Fair and Lovely. Unilever can get to fuck.

It’s a growing part of corporate life (or was until Covid). Our teaching student had an internship at a city company. It was called something odd, can’t remember what.
Ironically, they were all for persuading a newly qualified teacher out of his role at our school (where we’d all invested a lot of time and patience in his professional development) and into their company. One fewer qualified teacher working with ‘vulnerable’ children. Salary, perks all waved under his nose.
But it’s all gone quiet now so he’s staying teaching. 😊

Meanwhile I notice Morrisons are supporting domestic abuse campaigns - they’ve made their pharmacies safe spaces, put info in the customer loos and the number of the national helpline on their receipts. I guess they know that women put 80% of the money in their tills.

I think I know who will get my money going forward.

I think this is a very good place to post this video. It’s worth a view, although it is 6 mins long.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=mKTORFmMycQ

I've just downloaded the primary school pack, here's the link.

Apart from the reading list, I think it looks OK.

https://www.diversityrolemodels.org/media/1451/diversity-role-models-home-learning-pack-primary-school-v1.pdf?cmpid=emc-geor-egeoreorhsafGE00001727727Wk-25&utmsource=email&utmmmedium=email&utmcampaign=GEORGE&utmmcontent=GEORGE&utmterm=GEORGEE&mi=he3is8bjrRjnoFyh2lOF%2BHI1IvWOQMlZ1iC1qKPbLyMMvq2RBAQIKKGsSj6podvvtSOSRu5qWqlQUIWkKvHvdmJFn4VkX6&cwd=geo&cwf=nat&cwc=crm-awa&dclid=CMC88Nm_geoCFYoFBgAdBaIPMg

Yep I got the same email- just unsubscribed. I’m don’t need to read that crap.

I got one this morning too. Immediately unsubscribed. Just fuck off with your nonsense. I suspect my tolerance is a little low today though, it feels like it's been one huge battle all week and I'm knackered.

Shitting hell, it includes “love has no age limit”

All critical thinking seems to go out the window when there’s a rainbow on something.

Ultimately, they're doing it because it works. The larger players will have done detailed analysis on how much extra business they'll gain vs lose and the smaller players will be copying what apparently works. As with the recipes, they're getting time in your brain that would, with conventional advertising, cost a fortune and require a much greater risk (in terms of a campaign that treads the fine line between being attention grabbing and potentially offensive).

Regarding the target audience, it's not necessarily targeted at an overall majority, it's more that they've worked out there's more business to gain by doing it than they'll lose.

I don’t care who is having sex with who, I’m all for it as long as it’s consensual, but you won’t try and sell me poor quality food and clothes by riding your woke wagon through my inbox. Fuck. Off.

Beautifully put

They think it makes them look good. That's it. That's the level of critical thinking.

Any evidence that it works Gronky?

I work in a painfully white, painfully middle class company. They have set up diversity groups, we all got a little pride flag to stick on our desks last year and they wrote a very earnest thing about BLM too.

But we have the worst pay gap in the industry and the new graduate intakes year on year are carbon copies of the previous years.

It's even annoying when you actually agree with whatever it is they're preaching.

At least it it is to me. I prefer to get my political stances by the means of informed reflection and reasoned debate as opposed to in the form of a free gimmick as a reward for purchasing consumer goods, thankyouverymuch.

As for the why, though: simply because most current research into the subject suggests that potential customers care. And quite a lot, too. As do potential employees.

As someone who has given talks at graduate fairs and the like, I've used this extensively. I've luckily never been asked to speak on a subject I have personal issues with - but I still actually find it rather distasteful not just from the side of corporations but also that of the target audience: I mean, if you really, really care that much about making the world a more compassionate and just place, you would probably benefit from the deep insight that this may or may not have implications for your own level of comfort.

It's a cheap, mass produced comfort blanket for the perpetually offended but not quite enough so to inconvenience themselves.

... and I say this as someone who has struggled repeatedly with morally reconciling a corporate career that I bloody love and ideals that I'm committed to. It's not meant to be a comfortable fit. If it is and things haven't fundamentally changed while you weren't looking, you're probably deluding yourself!

I just had the ASDA one as well, with "home learning packs" for primary and secondary.

Clymene, do you mean in terms of profitability or effecting social change? I ask because of your anecdote. I'm afraid in terms of profits made by brand activism, it's hard to provide statistics because those will be closely guarded corporate secrets. On the other hand, the advertising agencies are quite happy to publish their surveys (though, I'm afraid, they seem to shy away from dull but informative raw data) in order to drive their own business in a matryoshka of sorts.

Here's a couple of sickeningly flashy documents on the subject, the first on more general purpose led branding and the second specifically for LGBT brand activism:
www.accenture.com/t20181205T121039Z__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/Thought-Leadership-Assets/PDF/Accenture-CompetitiveAgility-GCPR-POV.pdf

www.communitymarketinginc.com/documents/temp/CMI-13th_LGBTQ_Community_Survey_US_Profile.pdf
warning: if you're strongly GC, you may find the second one something of an uphill marathon to read.

And has there ever been a brand that told everyone how to reduce male violence and help women?

Gillette, and they got fucking roasted for it.

I think some morality marketing has clearly been a big success in the past. I do wonder though if people have become more cynical about a lot of it.

On the other hand there are even more people now who will get their knickers in a twist if you don't do things like visibly support Pride in your marketing.

@MarkRuffaloCrumble

And has there ever been a brand that told everyone how to reduce male violence and help women?

Gillette, and they got fucking roasted for it.

Wasn’t that in essence criticising your customer though? I’m trying to think of a comparison with women. Maybe Tena lady calling us lazy cunts for not doing our kegals post parturm 🤭

Profitability Gronky. You said they do it because 'it works'.

Thank you for the source documents. They make interesting reading but they're not evidence that it works and saying that it's a closely guarded secret is a bit poor! Don't make assertions you can't back up.

Looking at those, I have no idea how it affects the bottom line and I don't think any companies really do - it's a bit of a hopeful throw stuff at things and hope approach.

For B2C businesses, it's got to be about the demographics. shoppervista.igd.com/Portals/2/Downloads/Infographics/Asda%20Infographic%202018.pdf

Most of Asda's shoppers are mid-low income families. That's who they've always targeted their marketing to and that's who shops there. The LGBTQIA stuff is a pointless waste of time and money frankly/