Ethical marketing and the ethical move
Marketing has many definitions, but none of the ones I know references manipulating or tricking people.
Yet all of us have probably recognised feelings of being duped while being marketed to by businesses. It’s no wonder as consumers we have our guards up when it comes to dealing with brands.
We have learned to be cynical. We expect that businesses will try to take us for a ride. Because that is what marketing has become.
And businesses? They follow the status quo and (many) do marketing in this way: trying to outdo the competition by outwitting people even more.
Sometimes they do this because they are driven only by more. More profits, more growth, more power. But most of the time, I believe, it is because they do not realise that they don’t have to do marketing like this.
There are other ways. And for those of us who believe in equality, sustainability and people over profit, there HAS to be another way.
What is ethical marketing
For me, what we are coming to know as “ethical marketing”, is the way marketing was always intended to be.
It’s about making sure the people who want and need your services or products know:
How you can solve their problems
How they can buy from you
How much it will cost
It isn’t about:
Manufacturing a need that doesn’t exist
For example, I have come to understand through my friend Camilla Chueng from Wardrobe Wellbeing that for my whole adult life I have believed fast fashion retailers when they described trends as “must have” - we usually don’t actually need The Dress.
Making them feel they have no choice but to buy from you, and now
Feeling FOMO when you see the alerts that there are only a few tickets left for something, or limited stocks, or sales from retailers that seemingly always have a sale on.
Using psychological tricks to get them to spend more money
Charm pricing that lists things as £997 rather than £1,000 (or £1000 rather than £1,000) is just one of these techniques that can be employed to trick people into thinking something is more of a bargain than it actually is.
So what are we meant to do?
First of all, a caveat: I don’t believe anyone is doing ethical marketing perfectly. I certainly am not, but I am committed to learning more about it, to unlearning mainstream practices and sharing my knowledge. It’s about having an open conversation about how we can do things better.
I believe it matters how we as marketers and business owners sell. What we sell matters, too, of course, but for now I want to look at how we sell.
This is why I have become involved in the ethical move, a movement founded by Alice Karolina.
The ethical move
As Alice explains, we are trapped in an endless loop of wanting and buying more, with the weight of responsibility on the shoulders of consumers. In doing so, we are missing half of the equation.
I’ve often said that every (insert your currency here) we spend is a vote for the kind of world in which we want to live. And that’s true. But it’s also high time for us, as the sellers of goods and services, to take responsibility for our part in the cycle of consumerism. The hamster wheel of more, more, more.
Alice says the scare tactics and manipulation employed by sellers now, dictated by rules handed to us by the mad men of the 1950s, keep buyers weak and insatiable.
“The ethical move is setting out to break the cycle and empower conscious consumers by creating a new standard for marketing based on trust and honesty,” says Alice.
“There is power in numbers, and as a collective we can move towards a world in which consumers feel empowered to make the right decisions for them, and where businesses can focus their efforts on truly serving their communities.”
The ethical move pledges
As we work towards a standard for ethical marketing, people can sign up to become a pledgee of the ethical move.
The first pledge is to do with charm pricing, which is a nice black and white thing to check for compliance.
There are so many grey areas in marketing though, which is why there are also four guiding principles to help pledgees.
These are:
Put the person before the sale
Practice honest marketing
Commit to transparency
Be a good citizen
Contributing to the ethical move
I was incredibly flattered when Alice got in touch to ask me to become involved in the ethical move. I’d signed up as a pledgee last year, and when I first met Alice on a Zoom call I knew I’d do pretty much anything she asked of me: it is so easy to say YES to something when your purpose and values align.
I’m very excited to work with Alice and the other contributors to help drive the ethical move forward. We would love more people to join us as contributors, particularly at the moment to help with Facebook, Twitter, a newsletter, a podcast or YouTube channel.
But the most important thing you can do right now is to take the pledge, and to join the conversation about what it means to do marketing and selling in an ethical way.
It is up to all of us who believe that better is possible and who recognise our own potential in being part of the solution. Together, we are stronger.
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