Ad 2 San Diego and San Diego Ad Club co-sponsored, “It’s Good to Be Good” which featured speakers Richard Demato of COMMON, Alex Bogusky (via Skype) of COMMON, Dan Burrier of Ogilvy & Mather, and Simon Mainwaring of WE First at the luxurious University Club atop symphony towers in San Diego, CA on January 18^th, 2012.  The impressive twilight views of the city, its bay and ocean beyond set the lively tone for the evening.

To kick off the event, attendees networked over their one complimentary drink (and others, for sure) along with the U-Club’s impressive buffet stations, which consisted of an entire salmon (that’s right: head, tail, and all), antipasto and roasted vegetable salads, and a chic mash potato bar (including all the fix’ins) served in only martini glasses.

Once Skype alerted the audience that Alex Bogusky was dialing in, the group entered into a three-pronged pseudo-debate between the corporate responsibility among large and small companies as well as how brands are holding up to up-and-coming accountability indices.  Each panelist represented a different segment, beginning with Alex.  He initiated his portion with a video depicting COMMON’s origins. The community-oriented theme of his organization’s mission resounded throughout his commentary as the idea behind COMMON is that many communities—composed of many missions—will work together for collective advancement.  Alex hopes that the next generation, whom he argues is more apt to promote responsible practices rather than pure profit, is poised to fully adopt this concept more so than any other…even though his brought on Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia!  Alex’s advertising experience with big brands like Coke, Mini Cooper, and Microsoft helped him (along with the help of a Buddhist monk, which was a great story) to segue into an environment where his values and purpose are applied in non-traditional ways.  When questions for Alex arose, discussions about Cause Marketing, the advancement of social tools and consumer values, and publically accountable companies pursued.  Alex concluded with advice to the audience about how to warn brands with increased transparency about emerging mega-trends through his story about the nine gorillas in his Turning the Tide brief and mention of accountability indices like goodguide.com.

Dan Burrier, the Chief Innovation Officer at Ogilvy & Mather, followed Alex’s presentation with a discussion on how big brands—such as IBM, Apple, Dove, and Ford—contribute to society and act in responsible ways.  Among the highlights of his presentation was a story and video about Dove’s Real Beauty campaign.  Dan’s paramount insight was that brands are people and big brands have massive influence on society through all of the people that those many people know.  IBM, for instance, is 116,000 employees strong and “they know a lot of people,” Burrier said.  He then presented his rules, the most notable being “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”  This is a universal maxim for achieving good karma and Dan paralleled Alex’s Buddhist interests in advertising by becoming a monk himself!  Finally, the discussion on creating brand value versus communicating brand values came up.  Dan showed a video depicting IBM and Mars researching and cracking the mutated cocoa genome and then freely distributing it to farmers the world over versus charging a massive profit to continue cultivating such a popular crop, eliciting the potential good that large, responsible corporations can and are achieving for our society.

Simon Mainwaring of WE First concluded the evening with discussion on brand reputation.  He showcased the current challenges our advertising landscape is increasingly facing due to better connectivity and more corporate distrust with his humorous (and true) story of when he walked through the lobby of a busy New York hotel lobby at 2:00am naked in order to retrieve a replacement room key after having used the wrong door (his room door) to go to the restroom.  Like Simon’s undesirable position that morning, brands are facing equally tough challenges from consumers who “don’t want better widgets, but a better world.”  People can respond and organize faster now than they ever have before as evidenced by the recent Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements.  He also provided recent examples where large institutions reversed their positions in response to consumer backlash (e.g.: Netflix’s recent decision not to split into two companies, Bank of America’s removal of one of its new ATM charges, and Verizon’s abandonment of their proposed monthly “online” fee).  For brands, Simon advised on three trends to follow: 1) achieve a sense of partnership and respect; 2) brands and customers should share contributions; and, 3) brands and customers must collaborate.  He provided two examples by Nordstrom and Toms who followed this advise when entering into new markets in responsible ways.  Then, he reviewed some of the leading accountability indices (like http://www.goodguide.com/), warning that more of them are coming.  Finally, Simon provided the group with three simple solutions for brands to embrace the newer, tougher marketplaces of distrustful and more connected consumers they are realizing.  These are: 1) the future of profit is purpose; 2) brands must be celebrants, not celebrities; and 3) brands must become day traders in social emotion.

Thanks for reading and here is an additional value-add article on a recent decision by McDonald’s to give itself a sustainability score–an interesting read to keep Alex, Dan, and Simon’s accountability conversation going!

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