Being a good brand is the new brand

“People trust companies less and less. They do not believe companies, they do not believe CEOs, they do not believe advertisers”. So opens the trailer for a new documentary on the revolution in the advertising world: The Naked Brand.


The Naked Brand explains how the 21st century explosion in the use of social media is making brands more transparent – whether they like it or not. Today, consumers can easily look, search and find the reality of what the company behind the brand stands for. The film documents how an increasing number of brands are responding to this, recognising that these days they can’t just say they’re great, they have to actually be great. 

The film comes hard on the heels of new research from the UK, the US, Germany, China, India and Brazil, which found that two thirds of consumers say they feel “a sense of responsibility to purchase products that are good for the environment and society”.

I haven’t yet watched the full length film but it certainly looks like it’s setting out in the right direction. Especially encouraging is the director’s emphasis that it’s about doing good business because it’s the business-savvy thing to do, not because it’s a 'nice' thing to do. This is about sustainable business in its original sense – managing a company for the long-term.

But I’m less sure about the film’s target audience. Created by an ad agency, it looks like it heavily features and focuses on the role of marketing. Although I agree that it’s absolutely essential that brand and marketing teams are informed, supportive and activating around a brand’s values, this can only be done when the business has ensured it genuinely is standing for those values. You have to walk the talk before you start talking. Over the years, far too many brands have tripped up. The reputational crises that result have been widely reported, not least by us in Value with Values.

If this film triggers businesses to improve how they do business and then communicate it more effectively to consumers – great. But if it simply makes marketing teams think they’ve found an easy win without understanding how to do it properly, oh dear. We’ll be watching.



From Director Jeff Rosenblum (courtesy of Sustainable Brands):

“The big lesson is that social media makes brands completely transparent. They’re essentially naked. What that means is, if a corporation creates a crappy product — if they behave unethically — no advertising message can cover that up. Brands are spending a ton of time figuring out how they can create great content and ads for social media, but what they should be saying is, instead of facing outward, let’s turn our focus inward — let’s focus on our own behavior. When we establish excellent corporate behavior, people will carry that message on social media platforms much more effectively than we ever could with a paid advertisement. What we don’t want the film to be is a ‘green’ story — ‘be sustainable because it’s good for the environment.’ The story we want to tell is, when you start moving the planet forward, you as a corporation can make more money. And that doesn’t sound as nice as ‘you should behave better because it’s the right thing to do,’ but I think it’s more of a sustainable business practice.”