It's interesting that you mention these 'greenwashing' marketing tactics as well, as I have never really drawn a line between these two phenomena. I am always surprised to hear how many very smart and un-naive people fall for transparent tricks like this. It seems that, like Harley stating that they don't sell motorcycles, they sell a lifestyle, these companies could be said to sell neo-liberalism along with their products. No need to worry about the fact that a system where corporations are destroying the planet might not be perfect, I bought from a company that donated $100k to save the Orangutans once etc.
Note also that the worshipping around Elon Musk is much the same thing, just for techies.
> Let’s turn to the high point of our consumerism. Let me take a drink.
> Starbucks coffee. I’m regularly drinking it, I must admit it. But are we aware, that when we buy a cappuccino from Starbucks, we also buy quite a lot of ideology? Which ideology?
> You know, when you enter a Starbucks store, it’s usually always displayed in some posters, their message, which is: “Yes, our cappuccino is more expensive than others,” but, then comes the story.
> “We give 1% all our income to some Guatemalan children to keep them healthy, for the water supply for some Saharan farmer, or to save the forest, to enable organic growing for coffee, or whatever or whatever.”
> Now, I admire the ingenuity of this solution. In the old days of pure, simple consumerism, you bough a product, and then you felt bad. “My God, I’m just a consumerist, while people are starving in Africa . . .”
> So the idea is that you had to do something to counteract your pure, destructive consumerism. For example, I don’t know, you contribute to charity and so on.
> What Starbucks enables you, is to be a consumerist, without any bad conscience, because the price for the countermeasure, for fighting consumerism, is already included into the price of a commodity. Like, you pay a little bit more, and you’re not just a consumerist, but you do also your duty towards the environment, the poor, starving people in Africa, and so on and so on.
> It’s, I think, the ultimate form of consumerism.
Huh, you mean Musk doesn't actually push R&D more than other car manufacturers / launch providers?
Its only natural those marketing tactics work. Who the hell does have the time to research environmental impact when buying a $4 brush. Don't forget to also research its durability, health impacts, social ethics, and so on. Apart from "evil" gov regulations, consumer organizations can help you to at least some degree. But i doubt that is enough for a good society.
Exactly. I can't think of a better example of this than Dove branding (love-your-body-in-any-shape-or-size feminism) compared to Axe (our deodorant will make hot chicks love you).
You can see some of this on display at
https://silk.com/our-story/history
https://silk.com/healthy-living/plant-based-diet
Notice the Danone link at the bottom of those pages (!!). (Americans will know their yogurt brand as "Dannon".)
Same with cars, buy a Bolt or a Prius and the money still goes to GM and Toyota. But the signal it sends is pretty clear (and it's clear car companies are seeing consumers voting with their wallets).
This is how it should work. We all want change to happen quickly and we want companies who suddenly (20 years ago, milk wasn't cruel) find themselves on the wrong side of morality to be punished. But it's more reasonable (and probably better) for this to happen gradually.
That some brands are less transparent than Bolt == GM, Prius == Toyota, doesn't seem materially relevant.
(I realize you weren't necessarily passing judgement, just some facts (which I didn't know!), so I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just injecting my opinion onto your facts).
And then looking at who owns all the huge companies: Vanguard, Wellington, BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity, etc.
Who owns BlackRock? PNC, Vanguard, State Street, Wellington, Fidelity, etc.
Who is this PNC? BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, State Street, Wellington, etc.
It's just a big incestuous orgy of pension fund managers pretending to diversify and skimming a little off each trade.
I still buy it, but I know to treat it like a commodity product and buy when the sale is good rather than a premium product that someone is actually taking pride in and might be worth the premium occasionally.
This is gold.
But if I buy Fair Trade products, even if they're from Unilever/P&G/whatever, don't I still influence the way they are produced? Sure, Unilever would still be producing non-Fair Trade products, but only because other people are buying those.
The brand has to reflect the reality eventually; if Dove was being made in sweatshops (for example) that would be a news story sooner or later, in a way that it wouldn't for a brand that didn't have the same image. Likewise if you work for a company whose whole image is x, the easiest way to project it is simply to be x; it takes a lot more effort to fake a position you don't believe in than it does to simply believe that position. Even if the CEO is operating on pure cynicism, if the employees are constantly told that they're working for a company with strong ethical values they'll start to believe that and that will affect how they make decisions in their work.
But that's called communism and is frowned upon in most capitalist growth-must-be-eternal countries.
Now, in some places you can absolutely vote with your dollars, buying locally produced food and keeping the money circulating within your community and so forth. But that's also a bit of a luxury choice - you're willing to pay a bit more, and have the know-how to figure out the difference between a genuine small business that's doing right by its employees/the environment/whatever you care about, and a hip brand that is associated with those values but actually yet another front for a large corporate concern. Many people don't have those choices available (their only buying options maybe through superstores like Walmart or Dollar Tree), or lack the insight to see through the multiple layers of marketing and the economic pros and cons of our complex business infrastructure.
Unilever and other big conglomerates do actually put their logo on the products so if you pay careful attention you can see that information just by inspecting the packaging at the supermarket, but to most people that's just another certification stamp.