On Wednesday this week, a Hague District Court passed a landmark climate ruling, ordering global oil giant Shell to cut its emissions by 45% by the year 2030. Climate activists are hailing this as a turning point in history, while Shell plans to appeal this “disappointing decision by the court”.
With the exception of Moderna, global COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers are resisting calls to make their vaccines patent-free, underlining not just a divide between the Global North and the Global South, but also between the potentially unchecked greed of free markets and the needs of humanity.
As India sinks deeper into the quagmire induced by the lack of planning or preparedness for the second wave of COVID-19 infections, citizens are helping each other even as Central and State governments play blame games. And while even previously supine media are discovering spines, there’s a deafening silence from the business community, beyond band-aid help and anodyne statements.
In what seems to be a parallel universe, the stock market continues to rise, and unicorns continue to attract investments from VCs, even as millions are confronting shortages not just of oxygen, beds and medical care, but of food even.
In the marketing and advertising business, there’s an ongoing tussle - partly forced by companies being beholden to increasing shareholders’ wealth regardless of anything else, and partly by managers and workers striving to stay relevant in a no-growth scenario, lest they become redundant, get laid off, and face not just an uncertain future, but certain doom.
Over here, a creative director deploys his skills to try and trigger a tsunami of good actions. Over there, a film-maker is disdainful of wearing a mask (a metaphorical one) while unleashing corrosive invectives on those he disagrees with. Over here, a company pledges to take care of the families of employees taken by COVID-19. Over there, there are reports of companies bending the law to get employees to report to work in offices, in blatant violation of prescribed safety norms during the pandemic. Destruction’s trail is littered with good intentions, good actions and good actors as much as with bad actions and bad actors.
How do all these seemingly unconnected dots connect? And what relevance do they have for the business of advertising and marketing?
ESSENTIAL CONSUMERISM
The year 2020 saw the emergence of essential consumerism - where needs took precedence over wants perhaps for the first time in a post-liberalization India - at least in the recent past. But the devastating second wave of COVID-19 infections in 2021 have even more starkly brought into focus what essential means - the very bare means to sustain life itself, viz., oxygen. All else has taken a back seat, at least conspicuously.
How then, can businesses, in good faith, blithely continue to market their wares, stoking desire here, preference there? How then, can businesses, in good faith, remain a bystander, biding their time for the good times to return? How then, can businesses, in good faith, even imagine there can be a return to the way things where, one where no stakeholder was more important than the shareholder, and no altar more worthy of worship than that of profit?
To paraphrase a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst form of economics, except all the others. On current form though, it’s proving harder and harder to justify capitalism - whether judged by its intent, actions or outcomes. But if there is no other economic system better than this, then it becomes even more imperative for capitalism to reshape itself - one with more conscience in intent, more integrity in action, and far less harm in outcome.
That means businesses need to go beyond woke-washing their reputations, beyond demarcating 2% of their profits to CSR activity, beyond articles like this one I have just penned down. It means I have to step up to the plate and question the intent, actions and outcomes that I enable with my organization - for our people, for our clients, for our communities. I have to acknowledge the problems I cause and attempt to remedy them in all seriousness.
RETHINKING OUTCOMES
Every business will have to acknowledge their role in the erosion of the foundations and building blocks of a world that is ever more intricately connected. And conduct a subsequent rethinking of what we can do to cement our place in the world and cement the world itself anew. It means marketers will have to pause and ask themselves - is this the most effective way to serve our customers, and build trust with them? It means advertising professionals will have to pause and ask themselves - is this the most productive deployment of strategy and creativity? It means businesses, including advertising networks, will have to pause and ask themselves - is relentless growth, and a relentless, unempathetic drive towards maximizing efficiency, the outcome that charts our path forward?
Because when the dust settles, as we all hope it soon will, in the aftermath of the pandemic, we will remember the ones - individuals, businesses, bureaucrats, institutions, government - who stood by humanity and served it best. And that, going forward, will be the yardstick we will judge each other by. On that at least, there is no going back. And that, I believe, is possibly one of the few good things to come out of this crisis.
(The author is CEO, dentsu Solutions in India. Views expressed are his own.)
