A Brief History of "Woke" Advertising
I spoke with Kyle Fitzpatrick contributor at PopSugar for this story:
“A Brief History of "Woke" Advertising”
Below is a brief extract from the article. Please visit PopSugar to read the full story here.
“Cause-related marketing as we know it today was truly born in the early ‘80s. Mara Einstein, author of Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing and the Covert World of the Digital Sell and media studies professor at Queens College, believes American Express was the first to start the shift in 1983 through an advertising effort that raised $1.7 million to restore the Statue of Liberty.
”What happened back then was that the cause wasn’t specifically tied to sales of the product,” Einstein explained. “It was more within the realm of public relations and it was about making the company overall look good as opposed to being tied one-to-one with the sale of the product.”
”That’s where this started out,” Einstein tied the effort to now since American Express saw an increase in sales. As The New York Times reported in 1986, the move enabled everyone from Coca-Cola to AT&T to Tang to cash in from a higher cause.
As the 1990s approached, Americans looked to corporations to help with issues. Einstein explained: “Corporations were going to be the ones who were going to help solve our social problems and corporations had to be more fiscally responsible. If they were going to do these campaigns, the campaigns had to somehow be tied into the business of what that corporation did.”
This lesson wasn’t necessarily inspired by consumer demand but by examples some companies made of themselves on what not to do. This was learned most explicitly from Exxon after the Valdez oil spill. “What happened was Exxon suddenly said, ‘If we had a relationship with a non-for-profit who dealt in the environmental space, we wouldn’t be sitting here not knowing what to do in order to clean this up,’” Einstein said. “There was a change of mind on the part of the corporations to say we need to start tying into these organizations that are connected to what we do so that, should we find ourselves in some kind of catastrophic situation, we might be able to do something about it.””
“Both Einstein and Pope note that the rise of ads attached to social causes is the result of groups like millennials and Gen Z-ers thinking harder about what they’re purchasing and seeking brands that reflect their beliefs: “I shop, therefore I am” taken to an extreme.”
“When Pepsi attempted to act similarly with social media force Kendall Jenner, it ended up as a disaster, because the message didn’t connect with its product. Pair that with the brand’s attempt to piggyback on deeply held convictions around politics and social justice, and you have an advertisement that is dead on arrival.
”There are certain things that you cannot co-opt,” Einstein said. “It only makes sense for companies to tie into a social cause if they are somehow invested in the social cause . . . What has Pepsi ever done from a political standpoint? Nothing.”
Einstein finds a great example of this in MAC Cosmetics’ ongoing Viva Glam campaign: “If MAC Cosmetics wants to say something about the LGBTQ community, they can because they’ve been donating to that community for 10 years or more.””
“Brands must put their money where their mouths are — and that stretches well beyond advertising. According to Einstein, the real change Pepsi or a similar brand could have made was by investing in local communities, showing a commitment to having people of color in leadership positions within the company, and actively refusing to support politicians and measures that stifle equality.”