You have to choose sides
There’s a song you’ve probably never heard, ‘Pines’ by Death Mattel, that begins with the repeated line over a metronomic beat: "Don’t you have an opinion? Don’t you have an opinion? Don’t you have an opinion, baby?" It gets louder and swearier from there on in, but the core message remains intact – who are you, if you don’t have an opinion?
It used to be easy to throw your hands up, as an organisation, and declare yourself Switzerland in any red-hot culture war taking place among your potential consumers, but now you look nothing but weak when you voice-breakingly declare that you’re keeping politics out of your business to focus on delivering a great product.
It doesn’t wash with anyone, especially when those anyones make up an actual fanbase as opposed to mere purchasers of your stuff (just ask the mealy-mouthed spokespeople from the Carlton Football Club, or the LGBTQI fans correctly considering a shift of allegiance to St Kilda #howiwanttobe).
But this isn’t just about footballers supporting marriage equality, or who deserves the flag in 2018 after a 52-year drought. It’s about the corporations who have been given so much power and adulation, the ear of governments and support of populations, standing up for something beyond profits and weak gestures towards a homogenous mass of shareholders, as if those faceless dividend-clutchers aren’t made up from the same stock as the rest of society.
There’s no relationship without give and take, so tell us what you’re into before we hand over our consumer allegiance to your product, wear your logo across our chests and argue online about your clear superiority to competing brands. You don’t have to share all my correct opinions, but you should at least have the courage to share what you do believe in.
Coke’s been telling us for decades that they want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
Put bluntly, you can’t follow the advice of all those hyper-targeting marketing gurus who claim to know the inner workings of Google’s ever-shifting algorithms and how to put your brand story in front of 28-36-year-old male Facebook users in Cordeaux Heights with one son, another on the way and closeted dreams of becoming professional skateboarders … sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, you can’t buy into the microaggressive micromarketing that tailors bespoke, chunked advertising morsels to us on a one-to-one level without revealing something of yourself.
Coke’s been telling us for decades that they want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony (Death Mattel is obviously a work in progress). What do you want besides our money?