In chapter 3 of Activate Brand Purpose: Leveraging the Power of Movements to Transform Your Company, we discuss how and why movements are important to bring about change not just in society at large, but in the world of businesses and brands. Movements isolate the cultural, racial, environmental, and socio-economic stressors that people are experiencing and speaking up about, which can present both risk and opportunities for a company. But movements also illustrate why and how people are moved to action: More than mere corporate messages, people rally around movements because they stir us emotionally.
Activate Brand Purpose: How to Harness the Power of Movements to Transform Your Company
Scott Goodson & Chip Walker
256 pages, Kogan Page, 2021
In this excerpt, we discuss how movements grew from operating at only a societal level to impacting industry in general, and ultimately to the world of individual companies and brands. We also introduce the concept of Movement Thinking, which is a set of principles the authors have distilled from over 20 years of working with clients. Movement Thinking employs the principles behind successful societal movements to help company leaders drive change and innovate, both inside and outside their companies.—Scott Goodson and Chip Walker
* * *
One problem with protests is that they often fail to transition into a bona fide movement. In Uprising, Scott Goodson’s first book on movements in 2011, Occupy Wall Street was in full swing. But it ultimately fizzled, proving that just having people in the streets does not necessarily equal success for a cause.
‘Occupy was, at its core, a movement constrained by its own contradictions: filled with leaders who declared themselves leaderless, governed by a consensus-based structure that failed to reach consensus, and seeking to transform politics while refusing to become political,’ wrote Michael Levitin (2015) in The Atlantic. Occupy’s undoing was that it was unfocused; people who were in support of the movement didn’t really know what to do to support it. A movement strategy would have kept the Occupy movement focused on driving positive change, and kept it front and centre and helped it grow instead of petering out.
Ironic as it may seem, the impact of the movement that many view as having decayed and disappeared may in fact have become stronger and clearer with time. The world’s 1 percent now possess almost as much combined wealth as the bottom 90 percent. And while no one in Washington may have the full answer about how to fix income inequality, more elected leaders, it seems, are now openly talking about the issue and framing solutions. Occupy got the diagnosis correct but real change doesn’t come in slogans; it comes when the people demand it.
In contrast, Black Lives Matter has managed to have a sustained movement, though we’re sure the organizers would prefer to have police brutality dealt with once and for all, rather than continually having to mobilize people. Speaking with USA Today in the weeks following the protests over Floyd’s death, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said the movement works because the organization is usually spontaneous and decentralized, relying almost solely on local, rather than national, leadership. ‘We don’t get (people) onto the streets, they get themselves onto the street,’ she told the paper (Miller, 2016).
So what can businesses learn from the success of BLM and the failure of Occupy? In reality, Occupy was a sit-in protest in search of a movement strategy. It lacked leadership, it lacked a message other than ‘greed is bad’, and it had no clear practical demands about what it wanted to see change. Conversely, Black Lives Matter was crystal clear about what it wanted to see change regarding racially motivated violence against Black people. And it rallied small groups of like-minded individuals across America around a clear shared purpose.
When Movements Affect the World of Commerce
Thus far we’ve been mainly discussing how movements work in society and culture. But protests have been aimed at companies and brands for decades, often in the form of boycotts. Since the purpose of this book is to articulate how the power of movements can be leveraged by company and brand leaders, it’s useful to spend a moment looking at how activism has shaped the world of commerce.
Whether decrying child labour at Nike factories or lobbying clothing giant Zara to discontinue its use of fur, whether making consumers aware of the devastating effects of palm oil use in KitKat or raising awareness over conflict diamonds, consumer and activist-led pressure has caused corporations to change their practices.
Indeed, Nike vastly improved working conditions at its factories after public outcry in 1998 (Wilsey and Lichtig, 2018). Following pressure from the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, Inditex Group, which owns Zara, withdrew fur from all of its 2,064 stores in 52 countries (Carlile, 2019) in 2004. In 2010, after eight weeks of campaigning by Greenpeace against the use of palm oil, Nestlé promised a zero-deforestation policy in its palm oil supply chain (Carlile, 2019). And in 2018, Cartier pledged to stop buying gems from Myanmar, where the trade of precious stones funds the country’s military, after human rights activists called for jewellers to boycott gemstones from the region (Carlile, 2019).
In recent years, prominent boycotts have been more politically motivated, and surveys show that large swathes of the American public are prepared to steer clear of brands and companies that don’t jibe with their political outlook. In 2017, Ipsos released a report called ‘Brand risk in the new age of populism’ in which it found that one in four Americans had boycotted a product for political reasons (Ipsos, 2017). That same year, leading advertising trade publication Adweek reported that 57 percent of consumers were prepared to boycott a brand that didn’t share their social beliefs (Monllos, 2017).
That willingness to take action is how the Grab Your Wallet Alliance influenced Nordstrom to drop Ivanka Trump’s clothing line (Abrams, 2017). Founded by activist Shannon Coulter following the election of Donald Trump, and named in response to and as a rejection of his infamous ‘grab her by the pussy’ comments uttered before his election, the movement called for economic boycotts against companies with connections to the president.
Movements Take Hold in Marketing
While not always defined in such terms, movements have been a part of marketing for decades, though they have tended to be the exception instead of the rule. When VW launched its ‘Think Small’ campaign in the 1960s, it was aligning with the counterculture of the time. People were drawn to VW because it stood against overconsumption and was all for eco-conscious alternatives. When Apple set out to challenge computing goliath IBM, it aimed to make computers fun. The entire culture at Apple rallied behind the idea of the ‘Crazy Ones’ and it infiltrated everything they did and how they advertised.
These companies tapped into a rising idea and designed their own corporate culture around it first and then launched strategic campaigns that helped give voice to a swelling cultural idea. Apple wanted to be a light-hearted counterpoint to IBM’s stodgy business machines; striking and whimsical ads featuring Einstein sticking his tongue out fuelled the idea.
One of our earliest campaigns at StrawberryFrog was a movement for a car brand. Our first client, which launched StrawberryFrog back in 1999, came back and asked us to fix their brand in the United States 15 years later. This was a time of big cars. Minivans and SUVs were the go-to vehicles for so many Americans, but it was also the early days of conscious consumerism and not everyone was comfortable with the bigger is better mantra.
That presented an opportunity. Rather than just lean into rational and functional arguments like fuel efficiency and affordability and a low carbon footprint, the Smart Car would be an alternative to overconsumption, it would be against big, it would be ‘Against Dumb’, as our brand campaign was called. It would be smart. And people were compelled to act: a community of vocal advocates rallied around the brand and in a short time its audience more than quadrupled and sales grew 172 percent. Nearly 20 years later, in a climate of renewed consumer activism, Smart Car is still seen as a conscious choice that is against dumb.
This was our first foray into Movement Thinking and it showed us that in marketing a movement is a brand’s best friend. It allows you to use creativity for good. And when you do, the results can be extraordinary.
A Framework for Movement Thinking
Whether you’re looking to move to Movement Thinking for organizational change or to achieve an external marketing objective, the principles are the same. It starts with reframing your challenge in movement terms. Here, again, are the five key building blocks of Movement Thinking in more detail.
Building Block 1—The Dissatisfaction
Scholars who’ve studied important social movements like civil rights, gay rights or Occupy Wall Street all point to one key driver that sparks all movements. It’s a grievance, a dissatisfaction, a wrong in the world that needs to be made right. The same is true with movements that are sparked by companies and brands. For Black Lives Matter, the dissatisfaction is police racial profiling and brutality. For REI, the dissatisfaction is around the fact that modern life is getting in the way of people’s love of the outdoors. For Dove, the dissatisfaction is that too few women today feel they are beautiful.
It’s important to keep in mind here that we’re talking about a precise dissatisfaction in the world, in culture, society, or the customer’s life. We’re not talking about the dissatisfaction that your arch competitor is beating you.
Building Block 2—The Change You Want to See in the World
Movements are ultimately about transformation—in people, in communities and in society. Based on your grievance, what specifically do you want to change? How do you want the world to be different? For REI, it’s for people to spend more time outdoors; for Dove it’s a world in which the beauty of real, everyday women is celebrated.
Building Block 3—The Enemy
Once you’ve identified a wrong that your company or brand wants to make right and the resulting change you want to see, it leads you directly to the nemesis your brand will rail against. Having a common, named enemy is the single biggest unifier of your movement’s participants. A shared foe creates a sense of community and tribe. For SunTrust, the enemy is rampant financial stress. For Dove, it’s unrealistic standards of beauty, something that bothers almost every woman. For REI, it’s all the things that get in the way of spending time outdoors (eg rampant consumerism).
One of the great things about identifying your company’s or brand’s dissatisfaction and enemy in the world is that it immediately distinguishes you from your nearest category competitors. It gives your brand a role in society, culture and people’s lives – not just within your industry or category.
Building Block 4—The Stand
Once you know what your brand’s against, the next logical step is to articulate what it is for. This is the higher-order stand you will take in the world, and is usually a direct or indirect translation of your brand’s purpose. SunTrust is against financial stress and for financial confidence. Dove is against unrealistic standards of beauty and for celebrating real beauty. REI is against things getting in the way of love of the outdoors and for awakening a lifelong love of the outdoors.
We’ll go into more detail a little later in this chapter about how to land on your stand and know if it’s right. But a simple standard we go by is this: take the t-shirt test. Your stand should be a sentiment your movement’s passionate followers would proudly wear on a t-shirt for all the world to see.
Building Block 5—The Action
Movements are ultimately about getting people to do something to accomplish change in the world. For a movement to be successful, a company or brand has to take action that gets people to care and participate. And doing so today is easier than ever given the ubiquity of digital and social media.
REI’s ‘#OptOutside’ is the perfect example of this, as it involves both an important action and a call to action. The action was closing on one of the most popular shopping days of the year— Black Friday. The call to action was to invite America to join the company in reconnecting outdoors over the holidays, spread by the #OptOutside hashtag. More than 1.4 million people and 170 organizations chose to ‘#OptOutside’ in its first year.
American Express’s ‘Small Business Saturday’ is another great example of activating a movement via an action. The company identified the dissatisfaction that though all consumers have a heart for small businesses, they tended to mostly shop in big box stores. The stand of shop small was activated by giving consumers a specific time—Small Business Saturday—to be reminded to shop at brick and mortar businesses that are small and local.
These building blocks are important to understand because they illustrate how Movement Thinking goes beyond the traditional ways of thinking about your company or brand.
What makes Movement Thinking so effective is that people are drawn to it more than mere corporate messages; they rally around it and it stirs them emotionally. It’s the difference between Dove, which unites consumers around the notion that beauty is not as narrow as typically cast in media and marketing, and Suave shampoo, which is marketed as being low-price. Dove is against unrealistic standards and for real beauty. Suave is for… value? Or the difference between American Express business cards and Stand for Small, which is for supporting local, small business, versus Capital One business cards, which are for… lower fees?
In each contrasting example, the companies have value propositions that their customers might want. After all, who doesn’t like lower fees and better value? But it hardly stirs the soul. Without an emotional response, a relationship becomes functional, transactional. With an emotional relationship, your consumers become your brand advocates.