Hi, I believe in free speech and free press. I worked at Pret and write about them after I declined signing NDAs. I worked at Pret and had to throw away countless large bin bags of food. I encouraged a journalist to go undercover and she also had to waste food.
Perhaps corporate brands could start with not making things any worse? That's an outstandingly bad ad, wtf were they thinking with the prison/redemption storyline? But it's also a run-of-the-mill hyper-individualistic human potential movement personal responsibility freedom propaganda, so beloved of text book marketers in the good ol' USA!
One of the things with Sharp, and to a lesser degree Ritson, is their fealty to Friedman, and Hayek. They might not explicitly say so, but it's implied, see also Sharp's musings on climate change.
There is a post-'08 + ecological conscious that's gradually building up into a threat to that dominant rubric, the one we've all been living under since around 1980, the responsibility of business to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of society. "both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom."
There is a lot riding on what different groups consider to be "ethical custom" today, and from that, who gets to write the rules.
It's easy to write off the earnestly literal monoculture of corporate purpose, the censorious insipidity masking neoliberal feminism and woke capitalist careerists, add in the ball-aching social justice demands for moral purity, and so on and on and on. It's beyond boring. It's also notable how the 'debate' is so confined to big brand blob.
Sharp doesn't see brands in the fullest sense, not really, he measures commodities and consumers. His salience has an echo of 1990's 'recency theory', follow that logic you'd end up throwing money at POS, or now more likely obsessing over 'hot triggers'. I don't think it's a coincidence there's been a precipitous decline in creative effectiveness over the last decade.
Does Sharp have anything interesting to say about consumer culture? Not that I've heard. He can say people "don't care" but then he has to contend with 80 yrs of social science research that says we do care about stuff and what it says about us, hardly a revelation, altho the details are always interesting. There's even a couple of studies where people were deprived of brands. Ironically one of them was conducted by Ritson
But I come back to the legitimate challenge to the Friedman doctrine, that doing good, or even just doing the right thing, or bare minimum not making it any fucking worse, could only come afterwards as a luxury based on the bounty of the firm's bottom line. That's the main issue.
"The problem with positioning, as explained by Sharp and his crew at Ehrenberg-Bass, is that it limits a brand’s potential reach by cutting down the possible universe instead of thinking about how it can appeal as broadly as possible" . Do we really want to appeal to as much people as possible ? won't this cause brand dilution ? (actual question no sarcasme)
Hi, I believe in free speech and free press. I worked at Pret and write about them after I declined signing NDAs. I worked at Pret and had to throw away countless large bin bags of food. I encouraged a journalist to go undercover and she also had to waste food.
I explain in detail via YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpQDLyXhXoI&list=PLV9iPgXsChP9ZZW2QQ6zpc323nYo8aXU1&index=8
Perhaps corporate brands could start with not making things any worse? That's an outstandingly bad ad, wtf were they thinking with the prison/redemption storyline? But it's also a run-of-the-mill hyper-individualistic human potential movement personal responsibility freedom propaganda, so beloved of text book marketers in the good ol' USA!
One of the things with Sharp, and to a lesser degree Ritson, is their fealty to Friedman, and Hayek. They might not explicitly say so, but it's implied, see also Sharp's musings on climate change.
There is a post-'08 + ecological conscious that's gradually building up into a threat to that dominant rubric, the one we've all been living under since around 1980, the responsibility of business to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of society. "both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom."
There is a lot riding on what different groups consider to be "ethical custom" today, and from that, who gets to write the rules.
It's easy to write off the earnestly literal monoculture of corporate purpose, the censorious insipidity masking neoliberal feminism and woke capitalist careerists, add in the ball-aching social justice demands for moral purity, and so on and on and on. It's beyond boring. It's also notable how the 'debate' is so confined to big brand blob.
On the other hand, this paper shows provocative, partisan, and credible activity can increase sales. https://www.ama.org/2020/07/15/corporate-sociopolitical-activism-and-firm-value/
Sharp doesn't see brands in the fullest sense, not really, he measures commodities and consumers. His salience has an echo of 1990's 'recency theory', follow that logic you'd end up throwing money at POS, or now more likely obsessing over 'hot triggers'. I don't think it's a coincidence there's been a precipitous decline in creative effectiveness over the last decade.
Does Sharp have anything interesting to say about consumer culture? Not that I've heard. He can say people "don't care" but then he has to contend with 80 yrs of social science research that says we do care about stuff and what it says about us, hardly a revelation, altho the details are always interesting. There's even a couple of studies where people were deprived of brands. Ironically one of them was conducted by Ritson
https://bit.ly/3BmZxzl
https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/thinkbox-research/from-brand-to-bland/
But I come back to the legitimate challenge to the Friedman doctrine, that doing good, or even just doing the right thing, or bare minimum not making it any fucking worse, could only come afterwards as a luxury based on the bounty of the firm's bottom line. That's the main issue.
"The problem with positioning, as explained by Sharp and his crew at Ehrenberg-Bass, is that it limits a brand’s potential reach by cutting down the possible universe instead of thinking about how it can appeal as broadly as possible" . Do we really want to appeal to as much people as possible ? won't this cause brand dilution ? (actual question no sarcasme)
Usually when I have nothing new to add, I wait until I do.