introducing: the brand ethicist

A new monthly newsletter to find answers to the tricky situations and moral dilemmas we face while building brands for change.

We live in an age where people expect companies to take a stand for social and environmental issues. Where previously CEOs and CMOs were tasked with building and growing profitable companies, we now want them to build it around a social or environmental purpose. Their campaigns need to reflect changing societal values. Social enterprises want to make a real scalable impact while also making a profit. NGOs are under pressure to raise more and more money for the crises we face, but to do so without ‘manipulative’ marketing methods. Universities are pressured to make public statements condemning or supporting events and conflicts thousands of miles away.

What is the right thing to do? is one of the most difficult questions we can ask ourselves. Followed closely by What is the right thing to say?. And yet, those two questions are now placed on the plates of brand, marketing and communications people world wide on a daily basis.

I get questions from professionals who struggle with everything from tricky situations around sustainability at work to complex and far reaching dilemmas around systemic racism. I could have turned it into the topic of my next book, but the thought was overwhelming. A book on brand ethics - where do you even start?

Inspired by Kwame Anthony Appiah’s weekly ‘The Ethicist’ column in the New York Times, I instead turned it into a more digestible format: an advice column.

This new monthly series is an attempt to help readers, myself, and all of us, navigate moral dilemmas large and small. And learn something along the way about how we can make better choices for our brands and the world. Every month I will answer a new question. What dilemmas I can’t resolve myself, I will put in front of experts from my network.