When ‘doing good’ becomes a sales pitch: navigating the ethics of corporate responsibility

The benefits of moving beyond profit to embrace ethical business practices are clear, which is why many businesses are mobilising in this direction.

But as companies scramble to come up with something to say on sustainability, Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives are becoming increasingly commercialised and tokenistic.

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) proof points are finding their way into seemingly unrelated value propositions and sales pitches, and brand purpose is frequently being conflated with the ‘cause du jour’. But purpose doesn’t need to be so contextual or fleeting.

Now that ESG reporting and disclosure are gaining traction and more accountable business practices are becoming a reality, marketers are faced with an important ethical conundrum: ‘What are my company’s responsibilities to society? How can I sell it? And should I?’.

Diagnosing the corporate ick-factor

There is now plenty of awareness around greenwashing and it’s relatively clear how companies can avoid overclaiming and misleading.

Marketers in well-meaning companies, however, still worry about saying the wrong thing – perhaps even avoiding the subject altogether. There’s something deeper going on than a fear of greenwashing alone.

For most people, ‘sustainability’ is associated with a set of values like altruism and generally ‘doing the right thing’, and combining these values with profit-making can sometimes feel a bit…icky. This feeling can be explained by the clash of beliefs caused by, as the social sciences define it, ‘dissonance’.

We all experience this in day-to-day life; it’s that feeling of discomfort when a friend tries to pay you for walking their dog, or when a colleague buys you a coffee to get your ‘two cents’ on something.

The reason we feel this is because we hold conflicting beliefs: altruism is selfless and not done for financial gain, and accepting money for a friendly favour is inappropriate in the context of friendship.

Given how entrenched this belief system seems to be, it’s not a stretch to consider how a company’s altruistic activities could be crowded out by marketing – even if the claims you’re making are accurate and compliant.

This should be a strong consideration for companies looking to create sellable moments from their ESG strategies, as they otherwise risk triggering an audience’s internal conflict detector and giving them ‘the corporate ick’.

Next time you get a brief from HR to create a diversity campaign, and that feeling of unease starts to set in, it isn’t simply the fear of purpose-washing – even if you have all the proof points to show your company is truly committed.

It’s the psychological turmoil of trying to reconcile the conflict between putting money behind this type of message and what this may suggest about the motivations behind such a decision.

Ronan Keating was right all along?

Back in 1999 when Ronan Keating released ‘When you say nothing at all’, he almost certainly wasn’t talking about ethical marketing practices in B2B. But he did raise a very good point in relation to today’s increased pressure on brands to do good: sometimes saying nothing says it best.

I’m certainly not advocating for brands to cease all communications about their sustainability challenges and successes – clear, accurate and transparent communications are vital for customers and civil society alike to know how businesses conduct themselves.

What I am getting at is that if you are really doing great things, then crowbarring this into a marketing message that doesn’t demonstrate how these good things make your offer better than the competition’s makes customers suspicious.

If your business is genuinely striving to do good, then it doesn’t really matter whether this can be turned into an ad campaign or a piece of collateral. It certainly shouldn’t be done to make a profit.

There are far more effective vehicles for demonstrating your ESG credentials than marketing: let the smiles on your employees’ faces be your advert to prospective candidates, the truth and transparency of your voluntary disclosures saying you are genuinely committed to reaching Net Zero, and the touch of your…brand? Just kidding, but you get the idea.

In practice, this means identifying which sustainability scenarios really benefit from a marketing intervention and drawing a line between your business’ responsibilities to society, your purpose, and your value proposition – why customers should buy your products or services.

To approach these scenarios with greater confidence, marketers need absolute assurance on their business’ position when it comes to responsibility to society.

Forum for the Future developed a useful framework that defines four identifiable ‘mindsets’ that help you to categorize your company’s position on corporate ‘responsibility’:

• Risk Mitigation Mindset
  Concerned with doing the minimum that’s required to be compliant
• Zero Harm Mindset
  Concerned with reducing negative impacts
• Do Good Mindset
  Actively seeking to create a positive impact
• Just and Regenerative Mindset
  Views success as being dependent on the health and vitality of the business’ operating context and the broader living systems it’s a part of

Knowing where your business sits across these groups, and ensuring everyone within your organisation knows it too, makes it much more straightforward to market anything relating to sustainability.

It defines the underlying motive behind any ESG-related activity so that you can decide how bold you can be with your claims and mitigate the ‘ick-factor’ of your next campaign or your corporate purpose statement.

Ultimately, if responsible business practice becomes commercialised, it runs the risk of devaluing the importance of such practices altogether and delivering the opposite of what you set out to achieve in the first place.

As brands big and small continue in their pursuit of purpose, the core principles of marketing remain true: customers need to know how your brand delivers value over and above competitors and marketers must discern between genuine ESG commitment and mere storytelling to maintain trust and credibility.