Anna S. E. Lundberg

Coach, Speaker, Writer

Making money and doing good at the same time – is it really possible?

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“Profit’s not always the point,” says Harish Manwani, the Chief Operating Officer of Unilever, in a recent Ted Talk.

Manwani argues against the classic Invisible Hand of Adam Smith, and Milton Friedman’s statement, that “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” It’s simply not good enough, he says. Companies must play a role in serving their communities, making money and doing good at the same time.

If you have eight minutes, watch the video here:

 

As an anecdote, Manwani tells a story that I recognise very well, of starting out in a multinational consumer goods corporation. His boss asked him why he was there, to which he answered: “I’m here to sell soap.” “No,” replied his boss, “you’re here to change lives.”

This mission is remarkably similar to the expressed purpose of Procter & Gamble and its slogan, “Touching lives, improving life”. And both companies’ claims are likely to be deemed absurd by the cynic who would make the cold observation that the purpose of these businesses is to make profit, delivering returns to shareholders, and nothing more.

unilever-website

Manwani offers an example of Unilever’s contribution in the form of a hygiene and health programme that benefits half a billion people. When I visit the Unilever website, the first thing I see is “Changing the climate for growth and development”, while Sustainable Living is one of the four main items in the top menu.

procter-and-gamble-website

The Procter & Gamble site likewise highlights Sustainability in its top menu, as well as in the carousel on the home page. P&G also has a number of global humanitarian initiatives such as its partnership with UNICEF on the Pampers brand, “1 pack – 1 vaccine”.

Is it all simply about building a brand image to sell more products and make more profit? And does it matter if it is, if they’re doing good in the process?

“Purpose” is a word being thrown about a lot in the last few years, but Manwani argues convincingly that purpose and values really are central to sustainable business in the 21st century. “Brands indeed can be at the forefront of social change. […] When two billion people use your brands […] small actions can make a big difference.”

That seems to have been the thinking behind Axe’s surprising new #kissforpeace campaign (incidentally, Axe is a Unilever brand). The agency responsible for the work says that it wanted to use the brand’s global influence in a positive way. As a marketer, I may well question the change of positioning, the brand character, the tone of voice… but as a human being, I say, good for them! If nothing else, Axe is donating $250,000 to Peace One Day, a non-profit organisation whose aim is to institutionalise Peace Day on 21st September every year.

In another recent campaign, Dove (another Unilever brand) continues to build on its Real Beauty campaign, which started ten years ago and addresses the issue of body confidence and women’s insecurities.

Yet another beauty brand, Pantene (Procter & Gamble this time!), recently aired a campaign in the Philippines that got global attention thanks, in part, to Sheryl Sandberg’s having endorsed the video on her Facebook page. Like Axe, the link with the brand benefit is tenuous at best… but what a powerful insight it taps into.

So from encouraging hand washing to striving for world peace, from boosting female body confidence to highlighting gender inequalities, these brands are raising, and to some extent addressing, real issues in the world. They’re selling products, yes, and they’re making money, of course; but they are also managing to do some good.

What do you think? Are you unimpressed by what these global brands are doing? Should they do more? Or should they stick to what they know, selling soap, and forget all this doing good business?

Of course, the question of doing good and/or making money is not just a question for businesses, but also for individuals, as we make our career and life choices. But that’s a topic for another day…

Ch-ch-changes: What I love most about rivers is…

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“You can’t step in the same river twice,” said Pocahontas. Or was it Heraclitus?

Everything changes, even you, despite what Take That may have had to say about it.

We must change or become stagnant, says my dad.

But not all change is good. Change for change’s sake is unlikely to be effective. Don’t change a winning horse. If it aint broke, don’t fix it, as my mum says (- sometimes even if it is broke! Hehe…). Conventional wisdom, it seems, can’t quite make up its mind.

I recently completed a psychometric questionnaire for a job interview, which placed me off the chart in terms of embracing change, adapting to change, driving change – so it seems I’m more in my dad’s camp when it comes to valuing change over stability. I’m at my most creative in situations that are rather unstructured, I enjoy new challenges, and I have zero tolerance for dogmatism. Who wants to do the same thing over and over? Been there, done that, written the tweet.

Digital marketing, then, is a pretty good fit for me. Technology is constantly advancing, consumer behaviour changing, best practices evolving. It’s incredibly stimulating: a never-ending learning curve, an opportunity to evolve along with the changes in the field.

But it’s exhausting! You’re always in flux, working towards a moving target, devouring news across a gazillion platforms to stay on top of the latest developments, always ‘on’.

And, sometimes, the old approach may still be the best one. Building further on the fundamentals you’ve already put in place may be more effective than jumping on the latest #bandwagon.

I think the same is true in life. Being constantly on the lookout for something better is exhausting, too. Life is not always greener on the other side; and, even if it is, what happens when you get to that other side? Is life even greener on another other side? You can get stuck in an ever-continuing spiral of raising the bar, setting your sights ever higher, dreaming new and more ambitious dreams.

Such is human nature. Our desire to innovate, to learn and adapt, has allowed us to survive, and thrive, where other species have faded away. We need only look at the well-documented cases of Kodak and Blackberry for evidence of this phenomenon in the business world.

So to change or not to change, is that the question? Well, a certain amount of change is inevitable. That river is going to change, whether you want it to or not. In fact, you’re going to change whether you mean to or not. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it. And, as with most things in life, the sweet spot is most likely to be found in some balance between stability and change. Yin and yang, consolidation and expansion, continuity and evolution. Such is the delicate seesaw of life.

 

This post was inspired by an article from The Shrink & The Sage in the FT Magazine, Should we embrace change?; as well as by recent discussions with my parents.

Leaning in: Women, work, and feminism

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Did you miss me? We had a power cut in Uyuni and then I went on a tour to the salt flats so I’ve been without wifi for four days. The horror! In the meantime, though, I’ve read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Based on the reviews I had read, I didn’t expect to like it. And yet I finished it in one day and found that many of the points she made really resonated, a lot of stories she shared mirroring my own experience or that of my friends.

At high school, I too won the ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ title in our Yearbook (succeed in what I wonder?), but I would have preferred ‘most well-rounded’ or ‘most likeable’. In another section of the Yearbook, a student had compiled a dictionary using the names of our classmates. For Anna, he had written something like ‘ridiculously smart’. I asked him to change it to ‘sarcastic’. This was all self-inflicted. Then at graduation, I was the valedictorian, with the highest GPA in the year; but I wasn’t asked to do the speech at the graduation ceremony, as is tradition. The chosen speaker was the other ‘most likely to succeed’ candidate, the president of the student committee; and male. I didn’t think much of it, and my shyness at the time would have made me very nervous if I had been asked to speak in front of everyone, but one of my friends was indignant on my behalf. (Incidentally, another friend and I had run for president and vice-president, respectively, and lost out to two male candidates. But they did do a great job in their election speeches.)

When it came to accepting my first job offer, I certainly didn’t negotiate for a higher salary. (Did you?) Having been a student for five years, and with nothing to benchmark against, the offer seemed generous to me, and the possibility of asking for more didn’t even enter my mind. Apparently, men are much more likely to negotiate than women. Then when it came to ongoing working life, I am absolutely guilty of the tendency that Sheryl mentions to take a seat in the back of the room, away from the table – unless, of course, I’m running the meeting! I only speak up in a large room when I have something meaningful to say, or if I am asked, while men (and, indeed, some annoying women) will freely make points that seem incredibly obvious to me or, worse, incorrect.

With my sister and friends now getting married and having children, we are all becoming very much aware that men and women are, in fact, biologically different (ya think?). If we choose to have children then we will inevitably face more disruption from our working life, however involved the fathers are in taking care of the children. Sheryl talks about using her breast pump during conference calls, which to my mind would be unappealing both to me and to my colleagues. (I heard of a woman at work who got out her breast pump during a face-to-face meeting, but surely that can’t be true?) I have a colleague who just couldn’t let go during maternity leave, constantly replying to emails and coming in to the office. During our annual global meeting with hundreds of people from our offices around the world, our president was giving a speech when I heard a baby crying. I turned around to find my colleague, still supposedly on maternity leave, standing at the side of the room with her baby in tow. Not breast feeding, I should add.

The expectations of men are still very different. Sheryl tells of an incident where a male colleague of her brother was bragging about playing a football game on the same day that his wife had given birth (actually, I have a friend who ALMOST watched an Arsenal game on the day after his wedding); and my dad, I know, was back in the office the day after my mum had given birth to my sister, probably me too. When fathers stay home to look after the babies, they are ‘babysitting’. (I must admit to the crime of using that word when my girlfriends came to see me perform in Chicago, their husbands staying home with their children. Oops.) Which mother would ever use that word for herself? Sometimes, and I’ve seen this too, it’s actually the mother’s fault, being guilty of what’s apparently called ‘maternal gatekeeping’, i.e. being too controlling and critical of the way in which their partners do things to the point that they end up doing it all themselves.

Sheryl also touches on a sore point, which is how women judge each other. Many of us are insecure, never fully comfortable with the choices we make, and so we end up resenting others who have made a different choice. An episode of Ally McBeal comes to mind, where a lawyer was suing her firm for discrimination after she was no longer on the partner track having come back from maternity leave. Nell, defending the firm, argued convincingly that it would in fact be discrimination to treat her equally to the men, and women, who had chosen not to, or couldn’t, have children, being more committed to the job and working longer hours. At work, it is perfectly acceptable to leave the office at five to pick up your children from school. It’s harder to publicly justify leaving to go to meet a friend, to do your food shopping before the stores close, or just to go home and watch some TV.

Sheryl Sandberg is certainly right in that these issues are far from resolved, and they need to be openly acknowledged and addressed. I’m not sure what the solution is (though the model of gender equality and generous parental leave in Sweden seems to be as close as you can get to an ideal), but I think we can all work on our own attitudes and tolerance towards others and their lifestyle choices. Society benefits from female leaders in corporations and government, and society also benefits from stay-at-home mothers who are willing and able to volunteer their time in schools and charities. And at an individual level, isn’t it wonderful that people are happy and can find satisfaction in different things? We can’t all be CEO of Facebook, nor can we all stay at home to look after our families without an external income to support us. Vive la différence! And good luck to you in whatever choices you make.