“Institutional Neutrality” and other news (Jan. 6-10)
2025’s Central Brand Challenge
In our year-end long read, we outline the central challenge for brands in 2025: how to stand out – without being singled out. The piece evaluates the relationship between consumers/citizens and businesses/brands in the wake of the election and the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.
Harvard Business Review offers a similar conclusion – and some added commentary in studying the sentiment behind America’s pent-up populist fury, outlining the gaps in how corporations create value and urging them to recognize the shift of attitudes towards businesses.
“We seem to have moved from a world of ‘I don’t trust you’ to ‘I hate you,’ and many Americans feel a great antipathy toward capitalism and capitalists.”
Their conclusions echo what we believe. Leadership needs to re-evaluate how value creation is defined in the business model. In that effort, embracing advocacy is a relatively simple way to get started and when done thoughtfully, it helpfully drives growth and brings meaningful data to inform the broader business strategy.
Institutional Neutrality
Teen Vogue led off the new year exploring whether or not academic institutions can be ideological bystanders while encouraging freedom of thought and ideas within their walls. It’s worth a read for its broad perspectives on how young people think about the topic, and what businesses need to consider when and where they evaluate sharing a perspective.
"They can’t be neutral in their investment [or] resource allocation decisions. When a university decides to open up a climate school or open up a campus in the United Arab Emirates, those aren’t and can’t be neutral decisions,” he continues. “They have the obligation to explain [these decisions], and explaining them requires making statements and wading into the political fray.” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia.
There’s no debate in Meta’s new moderation policy for its platforms, as it made clear its position to significantly relax content moderation in favor of “free speech.” Notably, the major changes will allow more hateful speech, something Facebook and Instagram have struggled with, to flow. We recommend reading the response from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to get a deeper understanding of the changes.
Social media platforms face a particularly tough set of challenges around content moderation. But stepping into partisanship is a pitfall for any brand amid rocky political and cultural landscapes. While media often depict issues as 50/50, there’s unifying terrain in many issue sets. Companies looking to harness this and build successful businesses should embrace fresh solutions with inclusive messaging. Responding to cultural tensions by inflaming them further – especially when the profit motive is so naked – is losing path for any company, especially under current consumer sentiment.
Evolution of the CMO role
In other lessons for the year ahead, we enjoyed this look back from The Drum at what shifts happened for CMOs in 2024.
Closer connections between functions. At Etsy, marketing and comms sit in operations, giving a better understanding of the product, trust and safety pieces of the business, while at Zolando, design marketing and content are united in one reporting line to unify brand marketing efforts.
Utilitarian brands embracing creativity and fashion - utilitarian brands are turning to creative advertising to push growth. Sonofi and Progressive are two examples we’ve watched. While others are turning to the fashion world - unexpected and often hotly debated fashion collabs. From Bose/Kith to The North Face/Kim Kardashian to Toyota/Dickies in Japan.
Finally, CMOs continued to invest in brand marketing as a way to scale business in ways that programmatic can’t achieve.
We would add: CMOs can always get closer to their peers in Policy, Legal, and Sustainability. Achieving relevance in culture – especially among Gen Z and Millennial consumers – will increasingly require reflecting the real-life opportunities and challenges of the people and communities responsible for business success.