#147: Tech brands and the election, COVID’s impact on business purpose, woke-washed marketing, influencer activism, and the trouble with facts
Happy Friday, Happy Halloween!
In edition #147 of The World’s Best Newsletter:
How COVID has changed the purpose of a business
Influencer activists are a strategic asset for brands
Navigating woke-washed marketing (keynote replay + takeaways)
New interview with Jean Kilbourne on “fauxvertising” + democracy
Human irrationality, or why facts don’t change our minds
Expensify’s “Vote Biden” email to customers
Quote of the Week: Not a savior, a mirror.
1 - How COVID has changed the purpose of a businessMerryn Somerset Webb in a Financial Times article today noted the decline of a 50 year reign of Milton Friedman’s POV about shareholder capitalism (where the purpose of a company is to deliver proceeds to the providers of its capital).
COVID has accelerated many things, one of which being the shift from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism, an idea given formality at the 2019 US Business Roundtable and Davos Manifesto 2020, and by Joe Biden in July.
As Webb puts it:
COVID-19 has put ‘stakeholder capitalism’ on steroids
In stakeholder capitalism, the purpose of a corporation is to promote an economy that serves all - customers, employees, suppliers, communities AND shareholders. That means focusing on issues such as climate change, gender issues, social justice, employee wellness.
Workers also have new, high standards for their employers: in a recent survey, over 70 per cent said their CEO should speak out on climate change, diversity and inequality.
For me, this has created the conditions for woke-washed marketing. It also presents all brands with a real opportunity to create meaningful social impact.
2 - Influencer activists are a strategic asset for brandsAligned with this shift comes the rise of influencer activism. From this article in Adweek from Stacy Minero, head of Twitter’s ArtHouse (Outline here if you don’t subscribe)
For years, brands have grappled with how to communicate their purpose and enlisted talent to spread their message. Today, influencers are flipping the model by choosing brands that align with their values.
Gone are the days where influence was only directed at consumers; now influencers are using their voices to push causes to the forefront of conversation, challenge companies to be more accountable and drive meaningful change.
As fans expect influencers to speak out on social issues:
Influencers who take a social stand should be seen as a strategic asset, not a liability.
3 - Navigating woke-washed marketing (keynote replay + takeaways)
Last week I was the closing keynote for Managing Editor Live from the intrepid team at RepCap, a “content marketing agency for curious people” led by the fearless Mary Ellen Slayter.
The talk is “Navigating the Uncharted Waters of Woke-Washed Marketing” and you can catch a full replay here (30 mins), or read the excellent recap from Clare Chiappetta.
Quoting the latter:
I’m a marketer myself, and I realize that my choices as a content marketer have consequences.
When campaigns make claims without follow-through or oversimplify complex systemic issues, they aren’t benign.
Katie calls this woke-washed marketing, and she warns that this undermines both brands and the social movements they purport to support.
I feel like I left Katie’s session with a fresh perspective on the power of the work we do, and how we can use our influence to make a real difference — not a woke-washed one.
:) That is precisely what I hope to do. Learn more about booking me to speak here.
4 - New interview with Jean Kilbourne on “fauxvertising”I recommend this honest, no-holds-barred interview in CounterPunch on branding, political advertising, addiction, and patriarchy with Jean Kilbourne.
An excerpt worth reading related to my work (which Jean inspired):
Advertising only reflect[s] the values that can translate into private profits. This is how advertising trivializes culture and co-opts movements for radical change. Is there a company that hasn’t put Black Lives Matter on its website?
But unless there’s real change in the company, this is just “fauxvertising,” turning social progress into another way to sell products. The movement ends up getting subsumed into the notion that it’s all about the individual consumer expressing support by buying the right merchandise.
And further:
Rampant commercialism undermines our physical and psychological health, our environment, and our civic life and creates a toxic society. Advertising … promotes a dissociative state that exploits trauma and can lead to addiction. To add insult to injury, it then co-opts our own attempts at resistance and rebellion.
Read the full interview with Jean Kilbourne here.
5 - Human irrationality, or why facts don’t change our minds I recommend this New Yorker piece (originally from Feb 2017) about the impact facts really have on the human mind. It explores why “reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational.”
My poor attempt at a summary:
Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to cooperate. Reason developed as a human trait so that we could resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.
Confirmation bias - our tendency to reject information that contradicts our beliefs - is one of the habits of mind that we’ve developed. Is it a “serious design flaw,” or an adaptive function to surviving our hypersocial lives?
[Authors of a new book] prefer the term “myside bias.” Humans, they point out, aren’t randomly credulous. Presented with someone else’s argument, we’re quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we’re blind about are our own.
… people experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong.”
The article goes on to explain that humans are very good at relying on each other’s expertise (the basis of collaboration).
So well do we collaborate, [authors] argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins… When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering.
Where it gets us into trouble is in the political domain. It’s one thing for me to flush a toilet without knowing how it operates, and another for me to favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without knowing what I’m talking about.
I find myself drawn towards any kind of explanation for 2020’s infodemic. There’s a massive rise in conspiratorial group-think (QAnon), an anti-science mindset that threatens progress, and a polarized society where two people are likely to completely disagree over whether owning a handgun is dangerous and vaccines are good for kids.
And I still find myself seeking solutions.
6 - Expensify’s “Vote Biden” email to customersAh, here’s a topic that will elicit polarized opinions. I’d love to know where you sit.
Last week, expense management software company Expensify emailed 10M customers telling them to vote for Joe Biden. Yesterday, Melia Russell delivered an update in Business Insider:
Expensify employees told Business Insider they have been inundated with messages from customers, as well as from people creating accounts and pretending to be angry customers.
The company has lost only a handful of contracts, employees said. But two of Expensify's competitors, Emburse and Fyle, said their sales leads have exploded since the email went out.
Only a small fraction of customers, 0.5%, have written to the company to talk about the email, and far fewer have gone so far as to cancel their accounts, according to a longtime employee who works in customer success. And employees said that many of the comments have been positive.
But the worst of the damage could still be to come as customers look for other vendors.
In the seven days since the email went out, sales leads spiked 200% for an Expensify competitor called Emburse, according to its CEO, Eric Friedrichsen. The main reason Expensify customers said they were switching, he said, was that they were put off by the blatant "invasion of privacy," after Barrett's newsletter went out to not only the company administrators who handle their Expensify accounts but also all of their employees who use Expensify.
This is the crux of the issue for me. I believe brands should take a stand on social issues, make positive change with policies like internal pay equity, and managing who uses their services.
For example, Hotjar kicked the Trump/Pence campaign off its behavioral analytics service because of a clear misalignment in core values:
The campaign and the Republican party today stand behind a candidate who has made statements that promote racism, division, and discrimination. Therefore, we believe that the values displayed by this organization as a customer of Hotjar are clearly not aligned with our values as a company, and in the spirit of living our value of working with respect, we have decided to take action.
However, telling 10M customers who to vote for? That, to me, crosses a line.
It is a purely political move, no matter how they justify it or how much I happen to personally agree with their warnings around voter suppression and who I am voting for as well.
From a communications perspective, this feels like an unnecessary, avoidable PR crisis. There were better ways to utilize this platform for social good.
I do applaud the CEO’s transparency, as he forwarded Russell’s email to his entire staff, giving them the chance to tell the press directly how they felt about the move, and letting them weigh in.
Related: To Do Politics or Not Do Politics? Tech Start-Ups Are Divided
The NYTimes has a great piece about startups wondering how/if to engage in political debates. It reveals Soylent’s co-founder wrote a blog post supporting Kanye West and saying he was “sick of politics” (a ridiculously tone-deaf stance to make public.)
The shift has grown partly out of a realization that no tech platform is completely neutral, said Katie Jacobs Stanton, who invests in start-ups through her venture capital firm, Moxxie Ventures. Founders who build companies with millions of users “really have an obligation to have a point of view and make sure their products are being used for good,” Ms. Stanton said.
“It’s disingenuous and it’s also the luxury of the privileged to say, ‘We don’t have a point of view,’” she added.
Mmhmm.
7 - Quote of the week: I want to be a mirror“I don’t want to be a savior, I want to be a mirror.”
-Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, in a must-read Vanity Fair profile.
Representative Ayanna Pressley (from my home state of MA) is asked in the piece what the popular narratives miss about this boogyman-of-the-right and star-of-the-left.
…she cites humility. “She certainly did not set out to be an icon or even a historymaker. I think it was her destiny, but there is no calculation.”
I was taken aback, not shocked, by the death threats outlined in the article that this 31 year old woman, younger than me, receives on a near-daily basis….
I’m inspired by her courage….
I’m disheartened by the constant framing by Fox News and right-wing media which paints her as both a martyr and an enemy….
Above all I’m encouraged by the impact she is already having:
A new crop of AOCs is popping up across the country—young, progressive, working-class candidates of color who sought seats of power by her example. “I wouldn’t have run for office if it weren’t for AOC and the Squad,” says Jamaal Bowman, a former New York City principal.
Vote.
Have a great weekend,
Katie
Other stuff I’m up to that you should know about:
I have a new series, Experience TV, a live show on social channels about the economic revolution we are living through, the Experience Economy. It’s brought to you in partnership with Oracle CX.
You can watch episode 1 about the CX and CFO gap, and read my recap here.
Watch episode 2 about service experiences featuring Grad Conn CXO of Sprinklr here.
November 10th, catch our next live episode on the role of content in customer experiences, featuring Randy Frisch of Uberflip and author Melanie Deziel. RSVP here.
Tell exceptional truths - what needs to be said in order to make things right. Speak up. Advocate. And if you create friction in that process, keep going - creating discomfort is the first step towards change.
My convo with Derek J. Horn on his new podcast gets into this and more, including:
The importance of creating friction if you want change
Brand allyship in BLM
The power of an abundance mentality and saying no
My grandmother’s deathbed marriage advice
Transcript here, and listen to the full episode here.
