Business: it's actions that matter
Image Sebastiano-Piazzi Unsplash
I am not black, but I was bullied ruthlessly as a child, and have at times been set apart as an adult for being a darker colour than most of my peers. I have been humiliated and shamed for my weight, and have several times been spoken to in slow, simple words when someone discovered I have high functioning autism (previously known as Asperger’s Syndrome). But irrespective of my colour, ability, sexuality, size or gender, I don’t need to see you advertising that as a business you are here to help me. What I need are suppliers that conduct themselves impeccably and who I feel I can continue to trust to accept me as a human being and to value me irrespective of who I am, or what I do, think, feel, look like, or how I make a living, without them telling the world how great they are for doing it.
Quality is important to me, which makes me a fussy shopper; but it also means that when I do buy a product or service I try to choose an organisation that I feel is the smartest, most approachable, and innovative in their category; if they are a small, independent, or family owned company even better. Once I find one, I will use and recommend them for years. The humanness and acceptance of everyone in the organisation and how they treat their customers is important to me: this takes precedence even above price and delivery timescales.
There are a lot of great companies out there and I love discovering them. They may not always get it right and their own suppliers may themselves be dubious, but the business and the management seem to have integrity and a willingness to push forward through discrimination and identity labelling. However, to those who allocate large budgets to share a message similar to: ‘black / gay / trans / disabled people we want to show our support to you, let us tell the world how great we are for doing this’ I doubt I will be using you any time soon. It is not just your product that is critical to whether or not I make a purchase; it is how you act that makes a difference. Posting your values online and in adverts just smacks of inauthenticity and a marketing grab.
Black lives matter – they absolutely do, and so do the businesses owned and organised by and shopped in by black people; as a society we have made massive errors and have behaved deplorably in the way we treat black people, and we continue to do so on a daily basis. Some of this behaviour was, and sadly still is, intentional; some of it is not but remains a question of continued education and communication. The way commerce delivers its offering is a great way of entering into that narrative, but only through action, not marketing speak. We do need to change, and the way we treat, communicate, respond and refer to both current and historical black communities and individuals, along with any groups that have been considered minorities, is a change that is long overdue. But putting a corporate message out saying we are here to help you because you are black / gay / trans / disabled / or ‘what we have been told is the current focus of virtue signalling’ seems an unnecessary and disingenuous emphasis on moral correctness to me.
Update 10 September 2020
Virtue signalling is far too polite a description for this; blatant opportunism is probably closer to the mark: Outrage as jewelry line uses names of police brutality victims
