Marketing With Integrity
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Teresa Rampulla |
If you are marketing with integrity, then you are promoting products that you really believe in, and you are doing it in a way that’s based on authenticity rather than hype. And that, quite simply, is the key to creating marketing campaigns that inspire.
The first step in marketing with integrity is getting in touch with your own core values, principles and beliefs. That’s the only way to know if a product is something that you can promote with all of your energy and passion.
In some cases, the match between a product and your beliefs might be perfectly aligned. For example, if you firmly believe in the need to save the environment and counter the effects of global warming, then it’s relatively easy to get behind eco-conscious products that are created with just that purpose in mind. If you’re a marketer, creating an inspirational campaign around products like electric cars or solar panels might be a no-brainer.
But what if you’re marketing a product that doesn’t align with your core principles and beliefs?
That’s where marketing with integrity really matters. If you’re heading up a marketing agency, it might mean turning down an opportunity to work with a certain client.
But most of us don’t get a choice of which products we get to market. And that’s why credibility and authenticity are so important. Those are the two factors that you want to focus on if you want to inspire people and stay true to your own values and principles.
For example, say that you’re marketing a tech product that you think is only the second or third-best product in the marketplace. That doesn’t mean that you can’t create an inspiring campaign or that you need to turn down the marketing opportunity. (Let’s face it, not every company can be Apple or Samsung!)
Instead, you need to focus on the authentic stories of people actually using the product, and you need to highlight what makes the product so popular with users. In that way, you’re not overstating what the product can deliver. And you’re telling the story of the brand in a way that’s highly credible using voices that are authentic.
This focus on credibility and authenticity is so important in today’s digital marketing environment, where a single misstep can be magnified 100x or 1000x in just a few hours. By then, you’ve already done tremendous damage to your brand.
The one example that everyone is talking about right now involves the controversial Pepsi commercial with Kendall Jenner, an ad that was quickly pulled after being mocked on social media. The goal of Pepsi was to create an inspirational ad around big ideas like “unity” and “understanding,” but the way they did it was inauthentic. The company came under fire for trivializing social activism, and for using social justice movements to sell more soft drinks.
That’s a classic case of what can happen when you don’t market with integrity – you lose focus of what makes your brand special by focusing too much on just selling more product.
The Pepsi fiasco should be a lesson for all marketers: don’t think that buzz and celebrity is enough in today’s world to market your product. People are just too smart and informed, and social media gives everyone a platform to challenge you if they think you are being inauthentic. If you stay true to your values, it’s possible to create a marketing campaign that inspires.
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