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

About this episode

Customers care more than ever about the values of the companies they buy from.

It is more than purpose. It is more than what you sell.

They want to know what kind of company you are, what you care about, and whether your company exists to do more than drive profits.

That is why I interviewed Dr. Philip Kotler, known as the father of modern marketing. Dr. Kotler is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and co-author of Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action.

In this conversation, Dr. Kotler explains what brand activism is, why trust in institutions has fallen, how customer expectations have changed, and why companies need to think carefully about purpose, reputation, and action.

We also talk about what brand activism means for B2B companies, why it cannot be treated as a marketing campaign, and how leaders can use frameworks, scorecards, and customer research to make sure their actions are authentic rather than superficial.

About Dr. Philip Kotler

Dr. Philip Kotler is widely known as the father of modern marketing. He is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

He is the author and co-author of many influential marketing books, including Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action.

Chapters

00:00 What is brand activism?
02:21 Why brand activism matters now
04:05 The evolution of branding
06:53 How customer expectations changed
09:01 Brand activism in B2B
14:24 Why this is not just marketing
16:59 What marketers can do
20:47 A framework for brand activism
24:49 Authenticity, empathy, and action
28:41 Where to learn more

What is brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: Brand activism 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 identify some value or values that the company has and cares about.

For example, The Body Shop, when it started under Anita Roddick, was not only selling skincare products. The company was also fighting for animal rights, civil rights, fair trade, and environmental protection.

So, her brand was active. I do not 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 carry a good reputation.

More and more consumers would like to know what kind of company this is and what it cares about.

Our society is saddled with many problems. Does the company care about any of these problems, or does it just think it is supposed to make money?

An increasing number of companies would like an identity that goes beyond just making the product or service. That is what we are calling brand activism: the brand that connects with some cause or causes.

A lack of trust in society

Brian: That is a helpful distinction. You recently wrote a book on this topic. I would love to know the story behind why you wrote Brand Activism and why now.

Dr. Kotler: If you look at barometers, like the Edelman Trust Barometer, the level of trust in society today has certainly been falling.

As a result, many companies are not going to be trusted either, as part of government not being trusted and other institutions not being trusted.

Companies ought to be the first to fight against bad companies, rather than stand near them or be part of them.

At this time, companies want to be profiled in a certain way. The reputation a company has could be whatever happens in its course of behavior. Or it could be something designed better.

Consciously better.

What are the stages of branding?

Dr. Kotler: The whole idea of a brand has gone through several stages. I think brand activism is probably the highest stage.

Brian: That would be great.

Evolution of brands from marketing-driven to values-driven

Dr. Kotler: The first stage is when the company simply does its best to feature the good side of its product and services. The brand name was an identifier.

Then brands moved into trying to define the company’s positioning, but not social positioning. Just their positioning: Walmart is lowest price, Disney is family entertainment, DuPont is highest quality, and Toyota is long-lasting, reliable performance.

In that second stage, the brand became not just one mentioning a product, but positioning the product.

Then the brand moved further to define a set of qualities about the company. For example, John Deere might describe itself by its quality, integrity, and innovation.

This is really positioning, but it is multi-positioning. It says the company stands high on a number of traits that most people value.

But this could move into a fourth stage where the brand adopts a very specific cause. A company may say it 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: going from corporate social responsibility to the company saying, “Here is one of the things we are 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 forward some cause that would help all of us.”

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

How have customer expectations changed?

Brian: What has really been driving brand activism, and how have customers changed their expectations?

Dr. Kotler: Customers were asked how they feel about the economy and society. We would hear them talk about concerns and fears related to immigration, a decline in ethics, gun control, high federal budgets, high debt, and education failure.

There are all these social issues, and they become the ground out of which brand activism becomes important.

We would say that companies do not have the right to be silent about these issues.

An increasing number of people would argue that companies owe it to their consumers to show that they care for more than just their product and making money.

That is the groundwork that inspired brand activism.

What about B2B companies?

Brian: Do you see a difference between B2B companies and B2C companies with brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: No, I do not see a difference. I think both types of companies will want their reputation to go beyond just making their product as well as possible.

If you take equipment companies like John Deere or consumer companies like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, many B2B and B2C companies have made their brands more active.

Brian: Some of the brands that come to mind are Nike, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and Starbucks. Do you have B2B examples people could look to? I was thinking perhaps Salesforce.com or Apple.

Dr. Kotler: I am glad you mentioned Salesforce.com because Marc Benioff is one of the pioneers in this area.

He has been distraught about homelessness and affordable housing in San Francisco. He personally encouraged other companies in San Francisco to pool their money in a fund that could be used to double the budget for fighting homelessness in San Francisco. That kind of thing comes from a B2B company.

I would think that B2B companies have generally been slower as marketers. Most of what we know about modern marketing, aside from sales training and thinking, came from the consumer side.

It is not just a sales thing

Dr. Kotler: It was P&G and Unilever that created a difference between the concept of sales and the concept of marketing.

A company might say, “I do marketing because I have a salesforce and I advertise.”

That is not marketing.

That is just having two resources that could be used within the marketing framework. It is not equivalent to creating a sound and effective total strategy that will keep a firm alive and well for years to come.

Marketing is more than just sales.

That concept of marketing came to the B2B world later than it came to the B2C world. But then B2B discovered marketing and is doing more with it now. I think they will do more with brand activism.

Remember, B2B companies are very close to their customers. Consumer companies do not know as much about individual customers. B2B companies know through the salesforce every buyer and what they are like.

Pretty much any business buying from another business knows a lot about the values of the seller. That is why they are buying from that seller.

There is less need for B2B companies to get into brand activism because it is happening anyway.

Brand activism is not just marketing

Brian: Brand activism is not a marketing thing, right? It goes deeper into business strategy and purpose. Do I understand that?

Dr. Kotler: Absolutely. No CMO will take the brand that he or she is responsible for protecting and enhancing and suddenly move into brand activism alone.

That is a corporate-level decision. No one plays around with choosing an issue like gun control, the environment, or overcrowded prisons and just does it through the marketing department.

This is part of designing and protecting the firm’s reputation and meaning.

We often see the word “purpose” coming up now in the literature.

What is your purpose as a company?

“Well, I make cars.”

That is fine. But fundamentally, what are you contributing? How are you justifying your company in terms of making life better in society?

Brand activism works best when inspired by leaders

Dr. Kotler: Brand activism must come down from the top. It should be discussed at several levels of the company.

One benefit of being brand active is that your employees may be more turned on to the company and its contributions.

They tend to be proud of their company because it cares about more than just making widgets.

That is probably a motivation for the CEO and the executive suite to choose values carefully and put them into the brand framework.

It can help not only current customers, but also attract more customers and excite employees about the company’s purpose.

What can marketers do?

Brian: I get that marketers cannot do this on their own. It needs to come from the CEO, the board, and the executive team. So what can marketers do to support brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: If the impulse is going to come from the CMO, here is what can be done.

Let us say you are in a company that is not doing brand activism. There is no display of its values or the issues it cares about.

One could ask, “Wouldn’t it help if we start worrying about the future of water and whether there will be enough to make our Coca-Cola?”

The water problem will be a very big issue in the future. Maybe the marketing group should bring that to the executive suite and put into the brand work some mention of conserving and protecting good water.

So it is possible that senior management is stimulated initially by someone in marketing who sees that it would be a good move to refresh the brand.

The CMO’s role in the process

Dr. Kotler: Every brand gets tired over time.

One of the key requirements of the CMO is to be able to kick that old view of the brand and put in some fresh insight and meaning.

The brand manager who begins to care a lot does not have to be quiet about it and may successfully get the company at the top level to endorse the issue.

The CMO can research any issues that might arise or embarrass the company by taking that cause.

If there is any level of real risk, brand activism probably will not be adopted.

I believe brand activism is something to be brought to the attention of senior management by the CMO, or in another way, to consider taking action.

A framework for brand activism

Brian: As I understand it, you put together a framework so people can put brand activism into their organization. Can you describe that framework?

Dr. Kotler: The first need was to describe the different types of brand activism chosen by a company.

Categories of Brand Activism source: https://www.marketingjournal.org/finally-brand-activism-philip-kotler-and-christian-sarkar/

The first type is social activism. That means taking a stand on gender, LGBT, race problems, aging problems, education, or healthcare.

The second is workplace activism. The company might address issues of corporate organization, CEO pay, worker compensation, or labor and union relations.

The third is political activism, such as lobbying, voter rights, or gerrymandering.

The fourth is environmental activism, with concern about air and water pollution, emissions, and conservation.

The fifth is economic activism, where the company takes a stand on wage and tax policies that affect income inequality and the redistribution of wealth.

Finally, there is legal activism, where the company discusses policies that impact corporations, such as tax policies, citizenship policies, or employment laws.

That is the framework. We provide maps, canvases, and scoring systems that can help a company get serious about adopting brand activism.

Brand Activism Scorecard to measure the extent of the firm’s commitment

A scoring system helps a company understand how it was viewed before it went into brand activism, what it expected to accomplish in the minds of customers and the public, and how impactful the adoption of that issue has been.

It can also help measure the effect on sales growth, profit levels, market share, and other outcomes.

We need a scoring system to know if we should increase brand activism on that issue, stay where we are, or decide it is not working at all.

Being authentic and genuine

Brian: The thing I am hearing is that we need to decide our purpose or reason for being beyond money. From there, the framework helps show where we are today and how we can improve.

How do you see empathy fitting into this for the customer? Sometimes companies “pink it up” for women’s issues, but it is not authentic. Do you have thoughts on that?

Dr. Kotler: We are concerned about authenticity. Promoting an issue can get lost in superficial talk by the company when there is no real commitment.

We would say to the company: “You are active about being against pollution. What have you done with that position?”

If the only thing you have done is talk against pollution, but take no action, then we are not impressed.

There is a term you may remember, green-grassing. It is about appearing to be a green company through talk, but not doing much about it.

I believe there should be research with customers. For example, ask whether customers know if Company X cares about some social issue.

If, after doing brand activism, hardly any customer noticed that you took a stand on that issue, then it is not working. Probably because you are just talking it up and not committing.

When it works well, brand activism enhances the value of the firm in the minds of existing customers, employees, and potential customers.

It may even be an entry point. Discussing pollution, for example, can open your company to people who do not know much about your company but care deeply about pollution. They may be happy to see another ally in that fight.

The word empathy suggests this question: Will customers feel that the company is sincere and genuinely cares about the issue, or will they not believe it is authentic?

Additional resources

The Case for Brand Activism — A discussion with Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar

Purpose matters to marketing

Get the book: Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action