The Power & Responsibility of our Industry

We have a level of power few in the world will ever know. The very essence of our work in marketing and advertising is to change people’s minds and behaviors.

We might look at political leaders and other celebrities as the pinnacle of influence, but the podium created by our industry across all channels is unrivaled. By many counts, consumers see an average of 4,000 - 10,000 brand exposures a day. It’s a big range, but with a clear takeaway--marketing and advertising is one the most influential presences in the lives of most people.

With power comes responsibility. And now seems a good time to consider how we’re doing with the level of responsibility that we have as an industry.

Following the insurrection at the Capital, we saw lobbying companies pull dollars from lawmakers in a top-down effort to do right by people. They know their dollars move the world. But their move was to take from the top. What if, collectively, we could give to build from the bottom up?

Let’s consider what we’re willing to let go of as “wasted impressions.” Instead of thinking of what we lose, consider what people could gain if we allocate some of our platform to communication that advances humanity for humanity’s sake alone.

There have been many admirable ad campaigns in the last year alone that have pushed further in delivering more meaning and messages for the greater good. But in few circumstances is this purely to benefit the viewer. It is still a brand-serving endeavor. There’s a reason Return On Investment (ROI) or Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) are the measures of performance in our industry. And the “giving” mentality remains fragmented across one-off efforts of various practitioners and brands.

There is no industry-wide practice to examine our collective effort to improve the world.

No doubt, we’ve moved a great deal to be intentionally better. Purpose is top of tongue in industry trades for a number of years now. And it has evolved and taken on different angles and purposes itself.

We’ve fawned over brands who live corporate social responsibility as part of their DNA. And we’ve reoriented many brand strategies and narratives around purpose. We’ve studied consumers’ desire to choose brands who operate with greater purpose. And most importantly, we’ve started to look inward at how acting more purposefully translates to the make-up of our own teams and operations in our industry. All admirable and something we should be proud of. But maybe it’s not enough.

We are experts in behavioral influence. We are the connectors, creators, writers, artists and activators that know how to elicit societal change. We have both the skills and platform to expose billions of people to universal human insight they might not otherwise have the privilege of ever seeing or understanding.

How do we push ourselves beyond our current branded boundaries and consider our collective super power as an industry?

Leveraging what we have to its full potential to do right by the people in the world means the deciding minds—the organizations, media, brands, marketers and practitioners who lead this industry—must make a united and conscious decision to do more with the world’s biggest stage.

Let’s come together and think bigger.

This post was originally published in MediaPost