Dear Brands: Congruence, please Do what you communicate

Although it seems that many companies and brands are currently sinking, in fact, as always, the “right reading of the situation” and resilience can allow us to turn the negative into positive. It is a question of seizing the enormous opportunity in the face of the fact that consumers are becoming increasingly sensitive to the social commitment of brands.

Today, even in this crisis, people are not just satisfied with a certain price or quality, they want to know everything: where the raw material comes from, or even how the brands have behaved with their employees during the Pandemic.

Some brands, in their advertising and in the “values” section of their websites, tell us how wonderful they are. For example, they talk about “equal opportunities” for men and women, but there are only men at the management level; others tell us about diversity, painting rainbows on their social network logos during May, but the employees know that it is better not to talk about certain topics; Some say they love their family, but that no new father ever uses his right to paternity leave or that no female employee runs out 20 minutes early because her child has a fever; those from beyond say that they ” verify ” with a magnifying glass that only renewable resources are used, but they do not analyse what their suppliers’ suppliers do or we see that they use single-use bottles in their employee canteens…

Brands that say but do not do are opportunistic and do not consider consumers to be responsible and consistent, and in the end, “everything is known”. Consumers are human and that is why consistent and humanistic, ethical and courageous brands are needed

In fact, at Stanford University they are beginning to merge two concepts “fuzzy” and “techie”, humanistic and technological, to better understand the analysis of Big Data, and to work not only on the quantitative but also on the qualitative. Because both concepts are not opposites but necessary.

Thus, the congruence between what I say and what I do is decisive for the brand and cannot have any clear-cut differences. It is an ethical choice that needs to be courageous and never forget that we are human and that ultimately, whether it be an industrial or B2B sector, we work for humans.