Engaging ethics

Chris Arnold’s new book is a wonderfully refreshing and insightful perspective on today’s new consumer and how brands can benefit from adopting a more relevant and ethical approach to marketing.

While covering a broad range of ethical issues, this book is not just about being seen to be about green or environmentally friendly branding, but more about how brands can deliver a strong ethos and personality to market that is relevant to today’s recessionary and eco-ethical consumer. 

Consumers trust people, not corporations, so what you do, not what you say, defines your brand reputation. Understanding why people buy and why they don’t, this book is an incredibly timely piece of work that offers up some real gems of opportunity for brands in today’s recessionary environment.

It’s clear that Arnold has a wealth of experience on the subject of ethical marketing relative to how the consumer of today views the world of brands. 

Ethical marketing, he maintains, is not about bolting on a few eco words such as green. In fact, he argues that the word green generally means good – unless it’s used in an ad.

Arnold proposes that consumers are looking for the ethos behind the brand, which is essentially what the company believes in. They want to know that a company isn’t just driven by money and if we consider who has been blamed for the recession in the past couple of years, it has largely been laid at the door of those who were greedy and only interested in money. It’s Arnold’s belief that companies who can demonstrate by their behaviour that profit is an outcome of having people and planet values they will be adored and rewarded by what he calls today’s ‘new consumer’. This new social attitude is being created on higher morals and values much like the post-World War Two era.

Clearly a passionate and creative marketer, Arnold suggests there’s a revolution going on silently in our supermarkets, which is as much a reaction against corporations as it is a positive act towards a better world. Whilst he touches on a number of well-known successful ethical brands such as Innocent and The Body Shop, he also provides excellent and timely advice for many brands who are wary of making ethical claims, and demonstrates how often demonised brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are doing some amazingly ethical things such as supporting clean water projects in Africa and innovative recycling initiatives.

One thing is certain: Chris Arnold cares about people, planet and the brand world we exist in. He maintains that anyone who thinks of people as numbers or letters (ABC1) is an accountant rather than a marketing person.

Refreshingly, he observes in quite passionate terms his “damnation” of A, B and C1 as the most ridiculous approach to defining consumers. He suggests a more real methodology and I must admit I have to agree having had experience of both. These are the use of the A, V and K aspects of NLP and enneagrams, the latter of which is an ancient psychology profiling system dating back to the Greeks.

Caring about the community shouldn’t be a corporate social responsibility initiative, but at the core of a company’s ethos, according to Arnold. He says that no business can be ethical if it is focused only on profit and points to the Quakers to demonstrate how basic human morals can be used successfully in business to deliver on the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) concept. I was surprised to learn that many household names such as Rowntree’s, Clarks Shoes, Barclays Bank, Lloyds Bank and, most surprisingly, Sony were founded by Quakers on these very ethics.

Arnold warns that banks repossessing now will reap the wrath of the consumer post-recession. The ones who offer support and ethical treatment of their customers as real people will reap the rewards in the future. Brands, like people, are defined by their behaviour, not how much they spend on advertising.

For any marketers embarking on an ethical strategy, Arnold points to some simple, yet very helpful marketing tools, namely The Ethical Sphere and The R&E Line (rational to emotional line).

The Ethical Sphere is a system to help brands define their key ethical values and develop an ethical marketing proposition.

The R&E Line helps to determine the correlation between purchasing mindsets and decision-making: a rational (R) sell, where people are encouraged to think logically and therefore make more informed decisions, versus more emotive (E) or impulsive sells, where quicker decisions are made. Another correlation is that cheap items tend to sit at the R end while premium items are at the E end.

Suitable for experienced marketers, students and anyone considering starting a new business, this book is informative, inspiring and highly recommended. Arnold stresses one final item: this book is not an ethical rule book as, in the words of the Wright Brothers: “There are no rules, just learnings.”

Simon Ferguson (MMII) is managing director of SalesOnline.ie.

Ethical Marketing and the New Consumer by Chris Arnold

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 978-0470743027

This article first appeared in Marketing Age magazine