In order to gain political ground, a lot of campaigns attempt to use something called ‘Social impact marketing’, it’s a strategy in which you market off the basis of the current world problems. This occurs not only in political campaigns but even in marketing of products in general. For example, Gillete’s slogan about being “the best man you can be” and much more. I think that in our current age, we need to identify that companies and campaigns trying to use a play on social issues and the play on what people currently think is import, is extremely detrimental to our society and to the human condition in general.
We see this in grand scales during pride month, where all companies suddenly become LGBTQ ambassadors in hopes of seeking profit through those communities and making themselves look good. A lot of companies do it so they can donate to LGBTQ organizations, but a large majority just decide to use it as a marketing ploy regardless of their own opinions. This is extremely wrong. I think that there’s a certain principled justification to wanting to profit off these issues, but I don’t think its a very good justification.
When we allow companies and political platforms to gain votes because of social issues and the promotion of helping them, even though they are doing nothing, we view this as counterproductive. We put out the values that we want to see being helped and instead of them being helped they turn into a martyr in the grand scheme of business ideals.
This in general, just shows you why it’s so easy in the status quo to try and push for advocacy and have it flipped as purely a means to capitalist gain. Social impact marketing shows us exactly why no matter what humans do, most of the time, their goals stay the exact same. Money and power. This is the kind of greed that rules our society and lets people diminish issues into nothing more than a singular ant that can be stepped on and never spoken about again.
Delegitimizing issues in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of the corporation is not something we can push. It’s purely inevitable when people think that buying a product is what’s gonna fix the inequalities LGBTQ people face, or that reposting a story is what’s going to help save afghanistan. We as the people have the power, and we need to actually use it, before we all turn into the squashed ant under the shoe of corporational greed.
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