"Responsible corporate citizens" & their employees
WinSocially Weekly
A follow-up to last week’s letter about Ogilvy — as this article confirms, expect to see similar issues crop up across business sectors.
“Everything is political, and always has been, but that we’re hyper-aware of how politics informs our decisions during times of supercharged political turmoil,” wrote Mark Pytlik, CEO of Stink Studios, in an email. “In the era of Trump and ICE and conscious capitalism and the environmental crisis, the stakes are just so much higher these days. The old excuse of ‘business is business’ to justify a questionable contract is simply no longer a viable response, if it ever was, and the internet makes it impossible to sweep an ugly client under the rug. Brands are increasingly becoming more purpose-driven, and there’s no reason that agencies shouldn’t be as well.”
The real challenge will be for the C-suite in legacy companies — whether ad agencies or big tech — who have issues with both scale and established business practices.
What do you know about your employees’ personal convictions and how it impacts on their behaviour?
Why Google employees are donating to Warren and Sanders — presidential candidates who want to break up Google
Their support for candidates who are critical of Big Tech seems to reflect a broader movement among corporate tech employees who have begun demanding more ethical behavior and policies from their companies. In the past year, many tech employees, particularly at Google, have organized and protested against their own employers over concerns related to sexual harassment policies and controversial defense contracts with the US and foreign governments. In candidates like Warren and Sanders, these employees find an outside voice who similarly views major technology companies’ growing and unprecedented power with a critical lens.
This is not a political problem — this is about strategy, human resource management and trust.
Organisations (& corporate leaders!) have spent over a decade selling themselves as paragons of virtue.
“Corporate Social Responsibility”, "Multi-Stakeholder Engagement”, “Responsible Corporate Citizens” etc.
A generation that has grown up with this will hold organisations to account.
