The World Needs To Change Fast, And Marketing Can Help

As mentioned in my previous article, "Technology And Society: Can Marketing Save The World?" the way we are managing technological innovation and exponential growth today is not really the answer to the problems that harass the world.

Through science and creativity, we continue to acquire skills and capabilities that were previously deemed impossible to humankind. We are on the verge of beating death and very close to being able to live on another planet. Yet, there are people — 785 million, to be accurate — who have no access to clean drinking water. And the more than 2.5 million homeless children in the U.S. (estimation based on an American Research Institute report) are living, brutal proof that the benefits of our technological developments are still reserved for a few.

When it comes to talking about the environment, we have only proven that we can destroy our world. Can we prove that we can save it? Obviously, there is a need for a change that will build social equity and improve the environment. But how can we jump-start this change?

We live in a society where our personal and professional lives are separate from each other. Our interactions tend to be a balance between what we do as consumers (personal) and what we do in our working environment (professional). Our material life is driven by our economic actions: We earn salaries and profits that we spend mostly on products and services. Those interactions are the ones that generate the monetary resources needed for everything nowadays.

At one end of the value chain, we have corporations and public organizations, and at the other end, we have society. The connection between these two worlds is the only discipline that really acts as the liaison between our personal and corporate life: marketing.

As Peter Drucker once mentioned in his 1954 book The Practice of Management, the two most important functions of a business are innovation and marketing. Marketing is the translator of the functional and emotional features of products and services, triggering acts of purchase that generate revenue streams in return. The essence of marketing is creating, communicating and making products available in an effort to generate an act of purchase. And it is in using this essence that marketing can reveal an unprecedented leveraging force to change society and corporations.

What changes are needed? On one side, we need corporations to go beyond profits. While profits are the air companies breathe, making money should never be the sole business objective. The real issue is how much money and how we make it. The “how” is where the difference lies. And it demands a new management model that incorporates social and environmental issues within the business planning process. This way, organizations can make profits and surpluses while also contributing to society and the environment.

In short, it's not only about making money, but about how we make it. Marketing can generate profitable products, projects, and campaigns that contribute to more than just profits. On the society side, marketing needs to make visible to consumers and citizens at large the contributions of those business models, products and services from which all stakeholders benefit.

In this regard, there is a need for more education and a change in mindset. Marketing can provide that as well. In order for consumers to embrace profitable companies that show a clear commitment to society and the environment, they need to learn how to differentiate between a standard product or service and one that also has a positive impact on society and the environment.

Marketing needs to focus on campaigns that clearly show the real impacts not only on the consumer side (functional and emotional), but on those other two dimensions as well (social and environmental). Marketing also needs to face a more excruciating challenge. For a long time, some political currents have demonized profitability as "evil" and the source of all social inequalities and unfairness. For large portions of society, it is not admissible for corporations to earn money while helping others or contributing to a good cause.

The argument that companies shall not speculate with people’s needs caused the corporate world to disconnect from social needs. For these sectors of society, it was for governments and public organizations to solve population struggles and not for corporations to benefit from them. What this thought is overlooking, however, is the fact that the economic resources used by public organizations to solve those needs come from taxes that are paid by profitable companies and people whose salaries are earned thanks to profitable businesses.

In the end, companies will keep making money, regardless of whether they help people or not. Isn’t it time for society to support companies that make money while helping others and the environment? Here are a few specific steps marketing leaders can take to ignite this change:

• Convince society of this mindset shift through efficient marketing that shows authentic intention from businesses to commit to more than profits.

• Earn people’s trust in businesses' social and environmental purposes as a key element of this equation.

• Make your company's mission and vision more relevant during business planning and less rhetorical as a communication tool.

• Plan around not only economic indicators, but also true, easy-to-understand, robust and credible social and environmental metrics.

It all starts with marketing conveying these messages internally and externally, driving a changing force that really reflects the overall potential of our ever-growing knowledge and technology.

Innovating should not only happen around technology but in management models as well. And to put this process in motion, business managers and owners should focus on two things. First, plan beyond profits and aim to generate value to all stakeholders (in addition to shareholders). Then, put together an efficient marketing department that not only generates value for the business through profits but also through economically sustainable social and environmental projects that align with the business.