Advertising and speech in an evolving era

Marketing and advertising are fascinating generally, but particularly in times of great societal change. I've been going deeper in all sorts of aspects. I like to joke that I'm an expert now after I power-watched the last 4 seasons of Mad Men in March and April. 

Corporate marketing is both reactive and a driver of cultural change. Over recent months, you could watch the herd of marketers leap toward ensuring they are on the right message. If you listen closely, it's a strong indicator of the values of the leadership. Are they a leader? Are they a follower? Do they think independently, or do they conform? Are the messages original or a regurgitation or merely the lowest common denominator amidst the cacophony?  

A couple things to consider:

How have brands handles Black Live Matter movement?: Here's a PowerPoint of 100 brand responses to BlackLivesMatter.

The commotion over the SnapChat 'Smile to Break the Chains' filter shows the complexities. The filter had been reviewed by Black creatives: 

“Speaking on behalf of my team, clearly we failed to recognize the gravity of the ‘smile’ trigger,” King wrote in a letter to the company. “That is a failure I fully own. We reviewed the Lens from the standpoint of Black creative content, made by and for Black people, so did not adequately consider how it would look when used by non-Black members of our community. What we also did not fully realize was a) that a ‘smile’ trigger would necessarily include the actual word “smile” on the content; and b) that people would perceive this as work created by White creatives, not Black creatives.”


Maybe the same challenge with LGBTQ? Hadn't heard the term 'rainbow-washing' before today. 'Corporations might genuinely support the LGBTQ+ community with Pride-related promotions, but is there a line between allyship and marketing that shouldn’t be crossed?' asks Wired.

How do companies deal with legacy brands with deep history?  This week, Aunt Jemima, the syrup brand, announced it was removing the image. There seem to be mixed reviews if that was the right move. History is complicated. 

Land O'Lakes similarly has taken down the image a Native American woman but a complex history reveals that the image was first based on the teenage daughter of the founders named Muriel. The article argues: Rather than accusing Land O’Lakes of bowing to political correctness or lamenting that everything is suddenly offensive—or getting annoyed at those who do—we all might ask more often where such images come from, why they’re used, what they’re meant to convey.

When I shared last week that Patagonia was protesting Facebook in July, I thought they might a lone mover and this cause would die out. Wrong. More brands have joined the charge, including Unilever, P&G, and Verizon. The scariest thing for Facebook is the potential realization that it was not effective advertising. 

Jenna Marbles, a YouTube creator with over 20M subscribers, released a 10-minute video apologizing for previous content she made that some people found offensive. She also announced she was quitting her channel, at least for now. The video is compelling for her sincerity and the amount of change that has happened in society over the last 10 years and the necessity, particularly for young people, to be allowed to make mistakes, learn, and grow. 

This isn't new. I enjoyed re-reading this Paul Graham essay from 2004 on things you can't say. 

What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.

If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said. Opinions we consider harmless could have gotten you in big trouble. I've already said at least one thing that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it — that the earth moves.

I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.


He's writing in 2004. We are going to forgive the top two paragraphs for sounding ever slightly out of touch. Clearly many industries - not least technology and venture capital - needed (and still need!) to work on having a language, culture, and idea set that any human, without regard to personal identity factors, can be successful and judged on their output. That's why the third paragraph is so powerful. The biggest source of moral taboos are power struggles. Bingo! That's why moral taboos are worth fighting over. Read the whole essay though; any argument as complex as this taken out of its full context is not done justice. 

Other exceptional resources to understand advertising: 

Katelyn Donnelly