Over the past 18 months there’s been an outpouring of corporate activism campaigns from supporting Black Lives Matter protests or in the UK publicly disagreeing with government schemes and demanding social change. In an age of social media, it can be determined that corporate activism is essential to engage stakeholders, as everyone now has a voice on important matters. However, due to this same factor, are corporate activism schemes just to please stakeholders, or are they genuine?
Corporate activism is difference from corporate social responsibility and occurs when businesses advocate that the government change public policies on social or moral issues. For example, in 2018, Nike released an advert featuring Colin Kaepernick which featured the strapline “believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything”. The advert encouraged minorities across the world to not only get involved in sport but have the confidence to excel through featuring stories of athletes who have beaten the odds to succeed in their own fields. The advert sparked mass controversy due to it featuring Colin Kaepernick, who had recently been dropped by the NFL for taking the knee during the national anthem in protest of Black Lives Matter. Nikes share price fell by 2%, and many customers took to social media with the hashtag #JustBurnIt to propose a boycott of the brand due to negative public opinion of Kaepernick’s actions. By Nike aligning themselves with Kaepernick, and other disadvantaged athletes such as Serena Williams and Alphonso Davies, they are clearly communicating to their audience that they stand behind the social injustices issues which these athletes have highlighted. By doing this, they would have been aware that some stakeholders wouldn’t have been happy and may have pre-empted the customer backlash on social media. Clearly, this campaign wasn’t financially beneficial to Nike which clearly shows that the BLM campaign was highly significant to Nike, as they were willing to compromise their reputation for the purpose of raising awareness and encouraging change.
However, corporate activism campaigns aren’t always like this. The dynamic nature of social media can be seen to encourage brands to use their platforms for activism to appeal more to audiences. Since the tragic death of George Floyd in May 2020, hundreds of organisations have announced their support for BLM, but many can be seen to be in-genuine. For example, lots of brands can be seen to capitalise from black culture but fail to speak up and use their platforms to speak about the struggles black people face in society. For example, many fast fashion brands such as Pretty Little Thing spoke out about the BLM protests yet have failed to continually campaign for change. The post itself was poorly received, as you can see below, it blends into the PLT aesthetic which for me, makes the message appear less genuine as there has clearly been a lot of focus on the communications blending into the brand message. These communications can be seen to suggest that their alignment with the BLM protests last summer were purely to please stakeholders despite many of their models and designers being from ethnic minorities, therefore suggesting that they have some sort of responsibility to speak out about rights.
What do you think? Do many brands publicly align themselves with social change initiatives to boost their reputation amongst their stakeholders.