How to do ethical marketing at Christmas
If ethical marketing is important to you, you may feel at odds with the rest of the business world right now.
We are about to enter Q4, which is commonly referred to as the Golden Quarter for retail. For many businesses this period usually brings in the same amount of sales or even more than the rest of the year combined.
And it may be that this year’s Christmas marketing may be more frenzied than in other years.
I don’t need to tell you that a lot of businesses have suffered like never before over the past two years. In fact, a Sitecore survey of marketers found that 83% said this festive season will be “make or break time”.
Things are kind of desperate.
When poverty knocks on the door, love flies out the window
When times are tough - when your business and livelihood are at stake - does ethical marketing become the preserve of the privileged?
This is something we’ve spoken about before within the ethical move. Our team member Dimitra pointed out that concepts such as “slow down the sale” can be problematic when slowing down the sale means not putting food on the table for your kids that day.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since we had that conversation, and I realised there are parallels between the movement for ethical marketing and the sustainability movement.
As with trying to be kinder to the environment, I believe what we need isn’t a handful of businesses who “do ethical marketing perfectly”. We need a lot of us - all of us - to do it imperfectly.
So if you are on this journey of ethical marketing and you’re wondering how to approach Christmas marketing, I have a few thoughts to share with you.
You don’t have to fuel consumerism
The beauty of running your own business is that you don’t have to do things the way everyone else does them.
So even though Christmas is a time of tradition, you can break with tradition and do things your own way.
You can say “no more” to the tradition of stoking up a frenzy of buying activity. You don’t have to use false scarcity or FOMO to push people into buying from you. You can give shoppers space to make decisions in their own time instead of pushing them to “buy now!”. You can share your vision for a simpler Christmas, one that is free from the capitalist trappings of mainstream marketing.
How do we do this? I would like to invite you to reconnect with your vision for your business. What is it you are trying to do in the world? How does that relate to Christmas?
Be clear about what it is that drives you, and allow that to inform how you do your Christmas marketing.
Remember who it’s for
Before you do any marketing, it’s important to think carefully about who it is for and how you hope it will make them feel.
The same applies to Christmas marketing. Who are you creating content for? What is their current mindset? What is important to them right now?
It may be that they don’t even celebrate Christmas, or that their idea of Christmas isn’t one of traditional red, gold and green tinsel, turkey and sprouts, and board games with happy families.
Immerse yourself into the world of your people and then create marketing content that speaks to what really matters to them.
In marketing, one of the biggest mistakes people make is to try to be for everyone. You’ll never succeed if this is your goal, because it dilutes what makes you special.
Be your sparkly self
There can be misconceptions that if you’re going to do marketing in an ethical way you have to be very serious, boring and straight-laced.
That’s not the case.
There is no rule that says if you want to do Christmas marketing ethically you need to take away the tinsel and fairy lights, forget about elf antics and never be seen wearing a Christmas jumper or antler headbands with bells.
Have fun. Embrace it all and show off your festive splendour in all its sparkly glory.
Ultimately, if you are your authentic self in your marketing, it will be pretty hard to get things wrong. Ethical marketing is about being truthful, and that’s also about being truthful about who you really are.