Companies should focus first and foremost on “doing” and then worry about “saying” what they are doing.
I get it, we need names to refer to each other by something other than, “Hey, you!” We want to know if a movie is a horror flick versus a comedy to decide if it is something in our wheelhouse. The Recording Academy needs genres to give out Grammy awards. Heck, we are obsessed with creating new music subgenres every three years. I guess it helps sell the Grammys broadcast to a wider audience. The same can be said about the compulsion to put labels to categories, initiatives, and trends in business. Although it is true that labels and acronyms can be helpful, in fact they only set the stage; it is a business’s honest approaches and tangible actions and steps that truly makes a difference.
Labels produce gut reactions, both positive and negative, stemming in most cases from unconscious and conscious biases. This is especially true in the socio-political landscape of our time where neutral zones and gray areas are hard to come by. Also, our collective failure to have any attention span that surpasses the length of a TikTok video is driving us to only react without anything resembling a pause to read (remember that concept?), research, digest, openly discuss (another lost art), and shape informed opinions.
Look at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). OK. Take a deep breath. I know. It’s a lot. One way or another, you probably had a potent reaction just now. But hang on. Take another deep breath. Hear me out. I am not going to debate DEI as a concept, but rather the impact of the DEI label. But I will give you a break to recover and come back around to this topic.
Historically, as with most things in society, businesses go through cycles where we hang on to a particular concept as the new, shiny object we are all focusing on. Although a lot of trends have merit, they can quickly lose value as their label or acronym takes precedence to its substance. Companies should focus first and foremost on “doing,” and then worry about “saying” what they are doing.
Remember when every company was “going green”? Within what seemed like days, every company in the world was waving a flag about their “sustainability” policies. Now, with several years in the rearview mirror, it is easy to distinguish between the entities for which “sustainability” was/is a core value and the ones that merely use(d) the term as the keyword flavor of the month. Are they only saying they are committed or have they effectively embedded sustainable practices into the business? Are their designs and constructions developed and implemented to minimize environmental impacts? Do they have an established process to use renewable sources and reduce waste? Adding a statement on a website and using “green” keywords on social media is easy, the other part – not so much.
And what about what seems to be one of marketers’ favorite terms: “Account-based marketing (ABM)”? Maybe it makes folks feel sophisticated when presenting to non-marketing leaders in their companies. Who am I to judge? I have been in the industry long enough to remember when ABM was “the thing.” Chatter in marketing professional associations made it seem like the final frontier – a revelation both revolutionary and game-changing. In reality, ABM is essentially just a strategy to focus resources on target accounts and define personalized communications. Wait. That sounds like a strategy which has been used since – forever? I know I am oversimplifying, but the point is that our marketing community falters by giving more weight to the “trend” than to discussing if and when we deploy strategies which are not customized to high-value target clients. Call it AMB, IBM, or MTV, it does not really matter.
Here’s another one of my favorites: content marketing. This concept is defined by the Content Marketing Institute (you read that right, there is a Content Marketing Institute) as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.” Wait, that sounds dangerously close to ABM. To be clear, I am not disparaging the Institute as they curate meaningful and valuable resources, training programs, and events. They are focused on driving marketers to understand the value of purposeful and intentional strategies. Their “work” is valuable – more so than their name. We could call it the “Best Practices Institute” or the “Don’t Create and Distribute Generic Stuff Institute,” DCADGSI for short.
And talking about the DCADGSI, let’s circle back to DEI. If we examine a pool of companies’ websites, the language used to describe their DEI initiatives are interchangeable. This is a red flag that could indicate a superficial take on the topic rather than actionable business processes. The dangerously addictive nature of labels pushed companies to jump on a trendy bandwagon and prioritized delivering canned messages over auditing, assessing, and (re)defining systems, protocols, and methods to improve their business practices.
Author, speaker, and DEI consultant Lily Zheng said, “While backlash to DEI has challenged how many companies and practitioners approach creating more equitable workplaces, fewer have considered whether DEI work itself has room to improve.” Yes! Calling something DEI is far less consequential than managing a company which embodies fairness and inclusivity.
So, why don’t we forget about labels, buzzwords, and trends and instead work honestly to assess, improve, and measure our actions and initiatives? Let’s truly drive our companies to operate sustainably. Let’s develop and launch focused, targeted, and intentional marketing strategies. Let’s live and breathe workplaces with inclusive and fair processes which truly make a difference. Oh, and should we create the DCADGSI? Who’s in?
Javier Suarez is a principal corporate marketing manager with Geosyntec Consultants. Contact him at jsuarez@geosyntec.com.