Companies Are Not People, and We Shouldn’t Expect Them to Act Like Us

The Axe/Dove twitter storm is a good reminder that marketing, at its core, is a selfish industry.

The story we tell idealistic and creative young people is that they will never make money as an artist or a writer or a musician. It’s silly to pursue those passions because everyone knows you’ll never make any money at it, and as a result you’ll be unhappy.

Instead—we tell them—go into marketing. You’ll have the freedom to be creative AND people will pay you for it. And we put our positivity and creativity to work to understand our customers and give them the messages that will help them become the people they want to be.

However, our admirable intention to help people improve their lives through better products and services is—at its core—a money-making scheme. We whisper in our customers’ ear about how much we care about them while sticking our hands in their pockets.

Are there marketers who care desperately about creating positive change in the world? Certainly. I count myself as one of them. But it’s important not to forget that, no matter how much we care or how good out intentions are, our jobs exist only as long as someone is making money.

I’m sure there are hundreds of Dove employees who are deeply committed to the message of positive body images for women—and that’s a noble ideal to commit to. But their counterparts at Axe care just as much about giving erections to adolescent boys.

Dove marketing — no matter how much positive change it actually creates — has co-opted the positive body image message because it’s profitable for them. Axe has co-opted douchebags for the same reason.

As marketers, it’s important to separate, in our own minds, the difference between positive messages and profitable messages. Sometimes, they are the same (Dove), and sometimes they are not (Axe). But we should not be surprised when a company spouts positive messages out of one side of its mouth while tearing down those messages with the other.

Companies are not people. At the end of the day, a company count success in dollars earned for itself, not lives changed for the better.