Brand Activism Isn’t a Campaign. It’s a Company Decision (Podcast with Philip Kotler)

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I interviewed Dr. Philip Kotler — often called the father of modern marketing — about what brand activism actually means, why most companies get it wrong, and what it means for B2B.

Kotler co-authored Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action with Christian Sarkar. The conversation covered how branding evolved from product labels to value commitments, why B2B is not exempt, and why activism that starts in the marketing department almost always fails.

What follows is the full conversation, edited for clarity and readability.

What is brand activism?

Brian: I’m excited to have you on the show today to talk about brand activism. So, what is brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: Brand activism, Brian, is a movement toward making a brand do more than just tout the virtues of a product or a service, its usual function, and to go and even identify some value or values that the company has and cares about. For example, I would say a company that is active with this brand would be, probably, The Body Shop, especially when it started out under Anita Roddick. Because she made it her point that she’s not only selling skincare products as a retailer, but she really was also fighting for animal rights, civil rights, fair trade, environmental protection. So her brand was active. I don’t mean that all other brands are passive, because they do a lot of work, but the implication is that companies carry reputations, and they want to have a good reputation.

More and more consumers would like to know, about a company they deal with on either a frequent basis or on a fundamental single-use basis, they would like to know what kind of company is this, what does it care about. Because our society is saddled with a lot of problems, and does the company care about any of these problems, or does it just think it’s supposed to make money? Well an increasing number of companies would like an identity that goes beyond just making the product or service. And that is what we are calling brand activism, the brand that actually connects with some cause, or maybe several reasons.

Why Kotler wrote the book — and why now

Brian: You recently wrote a book on this topic. I’d love to know the story behind why you wrote the book Brand Activism, and why now?

Dr. Kotler: I think that, if you look at some barometers, like the Edelman Trust Barometer, about the level of trust in society today, it’s undoubtedly been falling.

Brian: Yes.

Dr. Kotler: And as a result, many companies are not going to be trusted either, as part of maybe government not being believed, and other institutions. And companies ought to be the first to fight against bad companies, rather than stand near them or be part of bad companies. So the idea is that, at this time, companies want to be profiled in a certain way. In other words, the reputation a company has could be just whatever happens in its course of behavior. Or it could also be something that only could be designed better. Consciously better.

The evolution of branding: from products to values

Dr. Kotler: And you see, the whole idea of a brand itself has gone through several stages, and that’s very important. I think brand activism is probably the highest stage, but let me tell you what the steps are in my mind.

Brian: That would be great.

Dr. Kotler: Yes. The first stage is when the company simply does its best to feature the right side of its product and services. Now that’s normal. That was an identifier. Then brands moved into trying to define the company’s positioning, but not social positioning. Just their positioning like, Walmart is lowest price, and Disney is family entertainment, DuPont is highest quality, and Toyota, long-lasting reliable performance. So in that second stage the brand became, not just one mentioning a product, but it was positioning the product.

Then the brand moved further, to define perhaps a set of qualities about the company. Let me take, as an example, John Deere, which makes all kinds of equipment for farmers and for forestry workers and for construction workers. You would say that at this stage, John Deere would describe itself for its quality, its integrity, and its innovation. It’s really positioning, but it’s multi-positioning. Namely saying that it stands high on many traits that are valued by most people.

But this could move into a fourth stage where the brand actually adopts a particular cause. You know about corporate social responsibility, and a lot of companies are into that. So, a company may say that it really cares about the climate problem and wants to help move solutions toward keeping a safe climate in the world. Or it could be some other cause. Then brand activism is alive with that development of going from corporate social responsibility to the company actually saying, here’s one of the things we’re going to move forward on, to the extent that we can afford to do it. We want to make more useful products, make money doing that, but we also want to push forth some cause that would help.

So that’s the evolution of branding, and brand activism is at one of its latest stages.

How customer expectations changed

Brian: It’s interesting, as I’m listening to you, as you talked about just the drivers that have been … Some of them have been consumer expectations, and the trust that we have towards institutions has fallen, but what has really been driving brand activism, and how have you seen, or from what your research has shown, have customers changed their expectations?

Dr. Kotler: I think customers were asked how they feel about the economy and society, we would hear them talk about concerns and fears related to migration, connected to a decline in ethics, problem of gun control, very high federal budget, very high debt, and education failing. Some many people, either they never got a good education in a country that should be rich enough to give an excellent knowledge to everyone, or the college education, whatever it was worth, it saddled them with a lot of debt. So there are all these social issues, and they become the ground out of which brand activism becomes essential.

We would say that companies do not have the right to be silent about these issues. In fact, there is an increasing number of people who would argue that companies owe it to their consumers to show that they care for more than just their product and making money. And that’s the groundwork that inspired brand activism.

Is brand activism different in B2B?

Brian: As I listen to you, it sounds like all these things that externally happened in the world around us, which affects our daily life, is influencing brands to pick up some of the slack in terms of being able to connect with customers. Do you see a difference between B2B companies and B2C companies with brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: No, I don’t see a difference. I think both types of companies will want their reputation to go beyond just making their product as well as possible. That if you take equipment companies like John Deere if you take consumer companies like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, any one of them … In fact I’d say that if you start doing a count of the companies that have made their brand more active in that sense, that there’d be a lot of B2B and a lot of B2C companies in that list of brand active companies.

Brian: I was just trying to think, some of the brands that come to mind for me would be like Nike, or Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, Starbucks, are pretty acknowledged, and I know that you’ve highlighted them in terms of consumer brands. Do you have any names of like B2B examples that people could look to? And it could just be for me, I was thinking perhaps Salesforce.com or Apple. Anyone else?

Dr. Kotler: Yeah. By the way, I’m glad you did mention Salesforce.com because its leader is one of the pioneers in this area, it’s Marc Benioff. And as CEO he says that he wishes he and other companies were … Not companies, but personally, that wealthy people would accept to pay a higher tax, because that’s the only way in which we can address some of these growing problems. So he is distraught with homelessness in San Francisco, which is increasing.

Brian: Yes.

Dr. Kotler: And also, the affordable housing, which is missing. So he personally told other considerable companies in San Francisco to pool their money in a fund that could be used to double the budget for the people fighting homelessness in San Francisco. So that kind of thing comes from a company which is a B2B company.

I would think that B2B companies have been generally slower as marketers to begin with, because most of what we know about modern marketing, as opposed to just sales training and thinking, came from the consumer side. It was P&G and Unilever, and companies like that that created a difference between the concept of sales and the concept of marketing. In the sense that a company might say, “I do marketing because I have a salesforce and I advertise.” That’s not marketing. That’s just having two resources that could be used within the framework of marketing, but it is not going to be equivalent to creating a sound and effective total strategy that will keep a firm alive and well for years and years to come. So marketing is more than just sales. Now that concept of marketing came to the B2B world later than it came to the B2C world.

But then B2B discovered marketing and doing more with it now, and I think they will do more with brand activism. Remember, B2B companies are very close to their customers. Consumer companies don’t even know that much about individual customers. They can learn a lot now, more and more than ever, but B2B companies know through the salesforce every buyer, and what he or she is like. And maybe they don’t think their values have to be done through brand activism. Pretty much, any business buying from another business knows a lot about the values of the seller. That’s why they’re buying from that seller.

Brian: Right.

Dr. Kotler: There’s less need for the B2B companies to get into brand activism because it’s happening anyway.

My observation: Kotler’s point — that B2B companies may not need brand activism because values already show up in relationships — made sense in his era of long-cycle, relationship-heavy B2B. Since this conversation, the environment shifted. Many companies pulled back from public positions on social issues, and “brand activism” became politically charged. But the underlying question Kotler raises hasn’t gone away: buyers still evaluate who they’re doing business with. They still notice what you protect and what you tolerate. Whether or not you call it activism, silence is still a signal.

Brand activism is a company decision, not a marketing project

Brian: Brand activism, though, it’s not a marketing thing, right. In terms of, it goes deeper into the business strategy and purpose. Do I understand that?

Dr. Kotler: Oh, absolutely. No marketing CMO, chief marketing officer, is going to take the brand that he is responsible for protecting and enhancing, and suddenly move into brand activism on his own, or her own. That is a decision that is corporate level. No one plays around with choosing an issue like gun control or the environment or our overcrowded prisons, or anything like that, and just does it through the marketing department.

So absolutely, this is part of the designing and protecting of the firm’s reputation and meaning. It’s a good question, we often see the word “purpose” coming up now in the literature. What is your purpose as a company? “Well I make cars.” That’s fine, but fundamentally, what you contributing? How are you justifying your company in terms of making life better in society? So to that extent, this is a corporate … Brand activism has to come down from the top. And we participated in discussion at several levels of the company.

By the way, one of the benefits of being brand active is that your employees may be turned on more to the company and its contributions. They tend to be very proud of their company because it cares about more than just making widgets. So that’s probably a motivation for the CEO and the executive suite people to say, maybe we really want to get into choosing our values carefully, and putting them into our brand framework, because it will help not only those customers we now have, but to attract more customers, and also to excite our own employees about our purpose.

What marketers can do to support brand activism

Brian: As I’m listening, I get that marketers can’t do this on their own, it really needs to be a top-down from the CEO, the board, looking at the whole executive team, so what can marketers do? Are there things they can do to support brand activism? I know you put together a framework, I don’t know if this would be an excellent time to talk about that?

Dr. Kotler: Well if the impulse is going to come from the CMO, chief marketing officer, here’s what can be done. Let’s say you’re in a company that is not doing brand activism, there’s no display of their values or the issues they care about. Okay. The CMO probably is, if he gets interested at all, it’s because he, or she, or their department, is talking about, wouldn’t it help if we start worrying about the future of water and whether there’ll be enough to make our Coca-Cola? The water problem will be a massive issue in the future. And yeah, there’s agreement with the marketing group that maybe they should bring that to the executive suite. It’s a possibility of putting into their brand work some mention of the intense interest, and doing what can be done to conserve water, and protect good water, and so on and so forth.

So it is stimulated initially by someone in group in marketing that sees that it would be an excellent move to refresh the brand. Every brand gets tired over time. One of the critical requirements of the CMO is to be able to, from time to time, kick that old view of the brand and put in some fresh insight and meaning. And one could come through brand activism, it could come in different forms too without brand activism. So the brand manager who begins to care a lot doesn’t have to be quiet about it and maybe successful in getting the company at the top level to endorse this thing.

As long as the CMO can research any issues that might arise or embarrass the company is taking that cause, and that means if there’s any level of real risk, probably brand activism won’t be adopted. But this comes up with or without brand activism, it would come up with just, there’s a lot of loose talk by executives about some issue, company would be concerned to make sure that the company is or is not taking a position on something. So I really believe that it’s brand activism is something to be brought to the attention of the senior management of the company by the CMO, or whatever way it happens, to consider taking some action on that.

Kotler’s brand activism framework

Brian: As I’m listening to you I hear the idea that marketers really need to start with a plan, and as I understand, you put together a framework so that people can put brand activism into their organization. If this is something that they want to do, there’s a framework that you developed. Can you just describe the framework you put together for brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: The first need was to describe the different types of brand activism that may be chosen by a company. The models that we distinguish are, first, it could be social activism. That would mean taking a stand on gender, or LGBT, or on race problems, or aging problems. Education or healthcare. That would be to identify your company as being concerned about the social side and social issues.

The second would be workplace activism. Instead, the company might want to address issues of corporate organization, CEO pay, worker compensation, or labor and union relations, and things like that. So the brand may really be addressing workplace issues.

The third possibility is, the brand addresses political issues, so we call that political activism. Sort of complaining about lobbying, or voter rights, or gerrymandering. Problems of actually voting. That may be the form that a company adopts.

Or the fourth form might be environmental activism, where there’s concern about air and water pollution, and emissions, and conservation.

The fifth would be economic activism, where the company takes a stand on wage and tax policies that impact on income inequality, and even on the redistribution of wealth or something like that.

Finally, in the framework we say, or you may go toward legal activism, and talk about policies that impact corporations, such as tax policies, or citizenship policies, or employment laws.

So that’s the framework, and we provide a system of maps and canvases and scoring systems that could help a company that gets serious about adopting brand activism. By a scoring system, it would be a system to see how the company is viewed before it went into brand activism, what is it expected to accomplish in the minds of its customers and the public about being active in that set of issues, and what is their score. How impactful has been their adoption of that issue. And on what, on sales growth, on profit levels, market share, and so on and so forth. So we do need some scoring system to know if we should increase our brand activism on that issue, or just stay where we are, or actually if it’s not working for us at all.

Brand activism scorecard from Kotler and Sarkar’s framework Authenticity: where brand activism breaks

Brian: The thing that I’m hearing is that we need to decide what our purpose is, or what’s our reason for being beyond money. That’s part of the purpose, the overarching goal, and from there, then the framework helps me show where I am at today, and how I can improve. How do you see empathy fitting into this for the customer? From a customer standpoint, this can feel like companies are … I’ve heard some critique for women’s issues, companies pink it up. Meaning they put pink on things for women’s issues, but it’s really not authentic, and we’ve seen some other brands do that. Do you have some thoughts on this?

Dr. Kotler: Yeah, we’re concerned about authenticity, and that adopting an interest in promoting an issue, that’s a real issue, can get lost in what we might call very superficial talk by the company on occasion, about mentioning the problem and so on. That there’s no real commitment. It’s like we would say to the company, you’re active about being against pollution; what have you done with that position? If the only thing you’ve done is talk against pollution, but no action, then we’re not as impressed with that.

There’s a term you may remember, green-grassing or something, it’s about appearing to be a green company, but just through talk, and not doing much about it. But I believe that in the end, there would be researching customers, and you hope to find that a lot of customers, when they’re asked about this company, don’t just mention its products, but as a matter of fact the question would be, do you know whether company X cares about some social issue. And if after you as a company did a lot of brand activism, you find out that hardly any customer of yours noticed that you took a stand on that issue, then it’s not working. Probably because you’re just talking it up and not committing. So we need a scoring kind of thing. But when it works well, we believe it enhances the value of the firm in the minds of, not only existing customers and the employees but potential customers. It may even be an entry point, that discussing pollution opens your company to a lot of people who don’t know much about your company, but they know a lot about pollution, and they’re happy to see another ally in the fight against pollution.

The word empathy is suggesting that will customers really be empathetic with the company, feeling that the company is sincere and caring genuinely about that issue, or will they not believe that it’s authentic?

Where to learn more

Brian: I really appreciate you taking time out of your day just to share with us about the notion of brand activism, how it’s impacting, how we can employ it, why it matters. What’s the best way for readers and listeners to find out more about your book, and brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: Our book is listed on the Amazon Books list and against either my colleague’s name, which is Christian Sarkar, or again, my name, Philip Kotler. It’s open to anyone to look up, and there’s no cost to going to the Marketing Journal. It’s MarketingJournal.org. And brand activism has some articles in the Marketing Journal. And basically, there would be more to read about brand activism that way. All you have to do is get on and type the word MarketingJournal.org, and follow up more on brand activism.

Resources

• The Case for Brand Activism — Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar
• Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action (book)
• Purpose matters to marketing
• Why empathy-based marketing works