Arnold on ethical marketing

CHRIS ARNOLD

7p an hour – how dumb are Primnark. Tesco and Asda? Especially given the appetite for exposure, the press, charities and NGS are all looking for those who are playing dirty and exploiting people. Given all the bad publicity over the last several years over using sweat shops, you’d think that any retailer with half a brain would make sure they are clean. A prime (or maybe Primark) example of ‘brand suicide’. Primark, Asda and Tesco have been named as exploiting people in Bangladesh, according to War on Want. They are also encouraging workers to take legal action against retailers in the UK. There’s no smoke without fire and all these brands are defending themselves but the damage is done and you can’t help thinking that Primark’s prices are hardly possible without exploitation. No doubt heads will roll and their CSR department, and CSR advisors may well be getting their P45s. The public may love a discount but the growing awareness of ethics means the consumer is shopping with a conscious. And even given a recession, surveys reveal we are actually becoming more people and community focused not less. In a BBC programme looking at cotton it was revealed that a retailer buys a t-shirt for less than $1.50. The rest is profit (the average mark up is 2.5x cost). That means a £2.50 t-shirt costs the retailer less than £1. When you look at the chain, it’s shocking how little the farmer, farm worker gets, just pennies. Even more shocking when you consider there are many millions of poor people are earning less than a dollar a day. Action Aid’s brilliant WHO PAYS? campaign has been one of the most successful in recent years to challenge supermarkets about exploiting third world labour. It asked a simple question, ‘who’s paying for the discount?’ and ‘when you pick up an apple do you think about who picked it off the tree?’ The campaign forced Sainsbury’s to announce in their ads they were paying for discounts on bananas. Another example of brand suicide is the failure of some banks to pass on rate decreases. The UK's biggest lender, HBOS, will only pass on 0.25 of a percentage point. Mix this with repossessions and you have an industry that really is behaving unethically. When the recession ends those financial institutes that put their “greed before the public need” will all be paying a bigger price – mark my words. The public and press will not forgive those banks and building societies that are repossessing homes – estimated to be up to 75,000 homes next year - and being unsupporting of the public in need. A recent story that a building society sold someone’s home for half price but then told them they still owed the difference is shocking and is one reason Brown has tried to get the financial industry to behave more ethically. Brands like Northern Rock bank and Bradford & Bingley are putting people before profits and are adopting a policy of waiting six months before repossessing any of their customers who fell into arrears. Northern Rock said it normally took 15 months to repossess a home anyway. I guarantee that post recession the word ‘repossesion’ will be the one word that judges all banks and building societies and will leave some brands damaged for generations – if you doubt me, consider that students still avoid Barclays. A public body, the Public Accounts Committee (CDC Group), has come under criticism for dual standards. They are suppose to be helping to tackle poverty in developing countries, though it seems to be spending most of its money helping senior executives get rich. It’s chief executive, Richard Laing, earns almost £1m a year! It’s been criticised for awarding it’s senior people pay well above acceptable levels. Their defense that pay was performance related may well be OK if performance was linked to reducing poverty rather than making money. Sadly the organisation highlights what happens when you put profit before people and planet. My view, fire the lot and redefine its values, a profiteering ethos in the world of poverty is plain evil. On a more positive note, the government are funding a £12m campaign to raise awareness of strokes as part of a three-year £100m stroke strategy in England. Good news for the Stroke Association. The campaign focuses on how an attack affects the face, arms and speech and launches in February. Strokes are the third biggest killer in the UK, behind cancer and heart disease - responsible for over 50,000 deaths a year. One of it’s causes can be stress – something most of us in advertising need to be aware of.