It's time for cross-category activism — An impact-driven conversation
“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for EVIL to triumph.” ― Haile Selassie I
I feel weird saying this. I know Christian Sakar. He is the co-founder of The Wicked 7 project. I remember “watching” the Wicked7 website for a couple of months. Then I finally working up my courage to send Christian a LinkedIn request. The rest as they say really is history.
As you may know, I love impact-driven category design. I also love movement marketing and brand activism. All companies must be engaging in activism. How else are we going to save our home?
At the recent Wicked7 kickoff, Christian and Philip brought up the point of brand activism. And then Christian mentioned that we need to also look at cross-brand activism. Since I view the world mostly through an impact-driven category lens, I thought what about category activism or better yet, cross-category activism?
Over the years brand activism has been known by many names, corporate social responsibility, social responsibility, corporate citizenship, and more. The fundamental ethos remains the same. Organizations need to care about their impact on the people, society, and the planet.
The problem however lies in accountability. Who is holding these organizations accountable? The consumers are. At least they are starting to. And they not doing it alone. They are building social movements.
Here are a couple of examples from the fashion industry ( as detailed by Vogue Business).
- #PullUporShutup was an Instagram movement. They held over 200 companies accountable. Companies like Levi’s, Glossier, Estee Lauder, and more. The movement got these companies to release the number of black employees they have and also to commit to hiring more. They also work with fashion brands to redefine Black. The initiative is called Make it Black.
- Last year (2020) in March Remake launched the #PayUp movement. To get brands to “pay up” unpaid wages of workers. They managed to recoup approximately $7.5 billion. They also have a tracker with 40 brands like H&M, Victoria’s Secret that “tracks” these companies' advancement in worker rights.
These are two examples of individual impact when we the consumer become activists. According to a recent survey done by Gartner, the top three issues that consumers are looking at are:
- The New Normal or life realigned
- Wealth Gap
- Equality - social justice and civic engagement
Take Nike for example. They flipped their Just Do It campaign to For Once, Don’t Do It in the wake of the George Floyd murder last summer. They are well known for their “brand activism.”
But the flip side of that is they paid zero federal income tax last year. They made almost $2.9 billion of U.S. pretax income last year and they enjoyed a rebate of $109 million. There is a massive difference between marketing activism and brand activism.
There is no point in creating social justice videos that address social issues and then fulfill their civic obligations. Taxes are an integral part of the economy. Taxes help with nation-building, welfare, healthcare, education. These are the most pressing issues of any country and economy. Racial injustice stems from inequality and poverty.
Take a look at this ecosystem of wicked problems as detailed by Christian Sakar and Philip Kotler.
Guess what tax avoidance leads to? Rise in Debt. This leads to government spending cuts. This leads to a lack of education and poverty.
It's even worse with category leaders and creators (not all of them). Take Salesforce for example. Marc Benioff speaks about stakeholder capitalism. But they didn’t pay a dollar in federal income tax. They made $2.6 billion in U.S. income. Last time I checked government is part of the stakeholder capitalism eco-system.
Amazon another category leader and creator paid income tax in 2020. This was the first time since 2016. Pre-tax Amazon made $13.9 billion. They paid $162 million. This is just 1.2%.
While billionaires are forming moonshot investment companies and writing books about climate change, they too are not being civic-minded. They pay less tax than the regular folk.
For context, if The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act comes into effect, $3 trillion over 10 years — that's the amount of money that it would raise.
This solves healthcare, education, infrastructure and addresses some of the core issues that need to be addressed if we are going to address climate change. Most billionaires are also category creators and leaders, can you imagine the impact if they joined hands for cross-category activism?
Let’s talk about hate and inequality. The best category that can address this is social media. If category leader Facebook leads an effort to address these issues via their platform imagine the impact? Other social media companies will follow suit.
Now imagine if category creators Google and Facebook were to band together to fight disinformation, hate speech, and fake news? Imagine the planetary level impact that would create? Almost 4 billion people use Google. Facebook has over 2.6 billion active users a month! If these two category leaders join hands to address one problem — disinformation. They will reach a little over half the population of the world!
The irony is these are the guys who are mostly responsible for disinformation and they are also the best suited to help fight it.
Can you imagine the power of the social movement they can build? The impact? That’s cross-category activism. That's activism that can change the face of the planet for the better in a matter of weeks. That’s a lightning strike. One that has a domino effect on other wicked problems.
We don’t need brand activism that just applies lipstick on a pig. Activism has to stem from the category. Whatever category you represent that’s what your activism needs to represent it too. Because this is where you have the most impact.
If category creator Facebook doesn’t fight disinformation and the health of that ecosystem, ultimately it will be brought down by it.
Category creators need to use their voices to amplify the voice of others.
This is our home. Our planet. Isn’t it time we fight for it? Isn’t it time we take action?
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world. — Dolores Huerta (Source — https://bayart.org/dolores-huerta-quotes/)