What’s the aim of critical marketing? According to Tadajewski and Brownlie (2008) the aim of critical marketing isn’t just to scrutinize and criticize the techniques, traditions and consequences of commercial marketing, but also to attempt to improve the way marketing actually works in contemporary society. I’m more than delighted about the latter point. Academics all too often tend to conceive of themselves as societal watchdogs on a mission to reveal limitations, shortcomings and injustices. They view this negative approach as constructive and, thereby, fail to act on their responsibility to try to improve the current state of affairs. Being influential scholars in the field of critical marketing, Tadajewski and Brownlie’s constructive approach to critical marketing deserves recognition.
On means and ends
What I can’t share with Tadajewski and Brownlie is their vision of what it takes to act proactively as a critical marketer. For instance, they argue that social marketing – the branch of marketing that aims at improving human behavior through marketing techniques – in its current forms is uncritical, because it employs existing commercial marketing techniques. Even though the aim of social marketing is to improve such goals as healthy eating, smoking cessation, physical exercise, safe sex and to fight such things as bullying, social inequalities, binge drinking, informational deprivation and the like, Tadajewski and Brownlie won’t accept social marketing as part of the critical marketing movement.
The reason can’t be with the goals. It must be because of the means. They render social marketing uncritical, because it uses the same methods as commercial marketing, which, in their view, is responsible for a fair share of this world’s failings. Ruling out all prevalent commercial marketing methods on the grounds that they have been used in ways that have caused negative impact on individuals and society at large doesn’t seem very reasonable, if the very same methods can be used to obtain a significant amount of social goods.
Methodological pluralism is – or should be – a golden rule in critical marketing. Thus, discarding a whole bunch of powerful marketing methods that can be used to promote valuable non-commercial goals is a very uncritical approach to critical marketing. Critical marketers should only fight commercial marketing techniques if they have been demonstrated to suffer from an inherent tendency to create social problems or otherwise impair quality of life. It’s not commercial marketing methods per se, but bad application of the marketing methods that deserves criticism.
Should critical marketers advocate for a new social paradigm?
Tadajewski and Brownlie argue that we need a new social paradigm. That critical marketers should rethink the relations between marketing and society along a brand new social paradigm. In their view, we should leave the current belief structure that organizes western societies around an ideology of consumption, private ownership and liberal market-oriented democracy. I can think of two reasons to try to do this. First reason would be if we could point to another, and superior, social paradigm. But in the absence of any convincing alternative social paradigms, the only reason, at least the only one that comes to my mind, to leave the actual social paradigm would be a fundamental disbelief in the ability to improve the actual paradigm. However, improvements are possible. Even from the side of commercial marketing.
Divergent marketing
In a recent paper (under review) I’ve introduced the distinction between convergent and divergent marketing. Convergent marketing addresses the consumer as he or she is and tries to target the consumer’s actual set of beliefs, desires, hopes, dreams and so forth. Divergent marketing tries to change the personal identity of the consumer by transforming his or her web of beliefs, desires, hopes, dreams, actions and so forth.
Convergent marketing that, say, appeals to a consumer’s dream universe tries to link a product or organization to the consumer’s actual dream of something. By contrast, divergent marketing would try to transform the consumer’s actual dream universe and link a product to this new dream or set of dreams. To put it a bit differently: convergent marketing taps into the portrait of the consumer obtained through market research – divergent marketing tries to change it. Thus, instead of tapping into the consumer’s actual worldview, divergent marketing encourages reflection on stereotypes and promotes new social or political ideas.
Let us have a look at a two examples of commercial divergent marketing. Back in 1996 Nike launched a pre-Olympic campaign featuring the disabled athlete Peter Hull. Below the portrait of the athlete the text says: ‘Peter is not like ordinary people. He’s done the marathon.’ Here, as Kotler, Armstrong, Saunders and Wong (1999, 5)) notes, ‘Nike forces people to reconsider stereotyped ideas’. A contemporary example (my favorite one) is Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’. The campaign portrays wrinkled, chubby and gray-haired models – that under normal conditions wouldn’t have found their way to the billboards of the cityscape – as beautiful and attractive women.
Divergent marketing as a step towards a better world
Running the risk of being labeled a completely naïve village idiot in the pocket of the industry, I must admit that I actually do believe in the power of commercial divergent marketing to make the world a better place to live in. Nike isn’t just promoting trainers but also valuable lifestyles; Dove isn’t just promoting cosmetics but also valuable ideals. In both cases the promotion of non-commercial goals (lifestyles and ideals) is for the better.
Nike encourages people to put greater emphasis on the value of physical activity (extremely important in relation to lifestyle diseases that quite often are causally correlated to lack of physical activity). Dove encourages people to revise their narrow view of female beauty and instead focus on natural beauty in order to make beauty a more inclusive ideal that can be approached by most women. This is extremely important in so far as stereotyped ideals of beauty have a tendency to impact negatively on self-esteem.
I don’t try to sell commercial marketing as a silver bullet. My point is simply that in so far as divergent commercial marketing can support the efforts to improve the existing social paradigm, then – in the absence of attractive, alternate social paradigms – we should appreciate and encourage the constructive aspects instead of flushing the whole lot down the drain.
References
Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Saunders, J. & Wong, V. (1999). Principles of Marketing – Second European Edition, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Tadajewski, M. & Brownlie, D. (2008). ‘Critical Marketing: A Limit Attitude’, Critical Marketing, M. Tadajewski & D. Brownlie (eds.), West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.
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best not to encourage companies to make efforts to coin moral particularities, bad as religion. It is the straight devolution of capitalism we want in an effort to create an ethics of the limitation of damage. Marketing should be abolished. Sociology would inform people more neutrally.
ReplyDeleteIt is the straight devolution of capitalism we want in an effort to create an ethics of the limitation of damage.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism has yielded more productive enhancement of man's quality of life in a brief span of a couple hundred years than any "evolution" of the limitation of industry. If marketing goes, so should free speech. When the most productive, efficient, creative members of society work to appeal to the needs and wants of consumers, we are invited to learn about the potentialities of human lifestyle they are risking their necks to promote. Then a few years later, a sociologist might write a paper about what happened.