Platitudes are performative. When offered without a solid foundation built on meaningful actions, they are hollow. And I'm a writer. Words are my thing.
Organizations love sharing inspirational words during Black History Month or Pride. Most recently, companies flooded social media with "We are women, hear us roar" messages to recognize International Women's Day. And hey, that's great... providing you're on solid ground.
If you remember nothing else from this post, please remember this: if the corporate social justice messaging I see is any indication, organizations don't respect the intelligence of the people they want to reach. Your audience is smart and savvy, and they — we — have statement fatigue.
Yesterday, a nifty little Twitter bot called @PayGapApp would quote-tweet every corporate message using the hashtag #IWD2022, calling out the organization's mean pay gap between their male and female employees. If you haven’t seen the media coverage, it’s worth it. There are some gems!
So here's some advice. You don't always need to be part of the trending conversation. It is better to let an opportunity go by than to lead with hypocrisy and insincerity. People aren't just smart and savvy — they also don't trust that your inspirational words are anything more than an attempt to gain online capital.
And it isn't to say you must stay silent every year (although there's nothing wrong with that). Use these moments as touchpoints to identify what you're doing right and what opportunities you have to improve.
Then when you're ready, show, don't tell. Be transparent. It's okay if you're a work-in-progress. We all are.
Nike put out a great ad supporting Black Lives Matter following George Floyd's death. And before it was up for a day, social sleuths quite easily found that the shoe brand had no Black members on its board or on its leadership team. And they certainly weren't the only brand to get called out for woke-washing — Mark' Ritson’s 2020 Marketing Week article on the topic should be mandatory reading.
Social activism is not a marketing tactic. Either diversity, equality, and inclusion are core to your business (looking at you Ben & Jerry's) — or they're practices you're working toward — or they're neither and jumping into these conversations could — and justifiably should — backfire.
TL;DR: No one is buying into your corporate advocacy campaigns. As Ritson said, "Walk the walk before you tweet the tweet."