Newsletters.
the ethics of sustainability
April 27, 2022
The organisers of Earth Day 2022 on April 22nd call for “unstoppable courage” to act boldly, innovate broadly, and implement equitably. We agree. Ethical marketing has to include a look at sustainability. There are a few aspects to examine, including: There’s so much to say about these and the rest of the huge list of topics to explore. We are most interested in the shaming of individuals for something that isn’t their responsibility – all in the name of profit generation. First of all, shaming the individual is part of our oppressive system. A green lifestyle is not universally accessible. Economically marginalised people are often priced out of buying sustainable products which cost more. There are legitimate reasons why people with medical reasons may need to buy things such as prepared food in what others may see as excessive plastic. We need to break free from the loop of misinformation that claims sustainability is about straws or plastic bags. Yes, of course that’s part of it. But we need the system to change. We need companies to improve their existing production rather than invest ‘eco’ lines that capitalise on the guilty conscience of shoppers. We want to see companies embrace ethical marketing and find new, innovative, sustainable ways to sell their stuff. As an organisation, we believe in doing our best to reduce our footprint while we keep pointing at the shaming tactics used to sell ‘green’ products.
this month raised some questions
March 30, 2022
International Women’s Day is marked every March. We are all for celebrating the achievements of historically marginalised groups, but this year’s IWD raised some questions. Through our lens of ethical marketing, a lot of the comms and campaigns focused on the day felt like little more than virtue signalling and woke washing. This was illustrated by the genius Twitter account Gender Pay Gap App which warns companies in its bio: “Employers, if you tweet about International Women’s Day, I’ll retweet your gender pay gap.” You only need to give their tweets a quick glance to know that the patriarchy is alive and well. No matter how much women are celebrated, they will remain oppressed until the patriarchy is dismantled. And of course, it goes beyond the construct of gender. What we’re dealing with is not a ‘female’ problem. It’s a problem of centuries-old oppressive systems, which will only be broken through the efforts of each of us every day – not just on International Women’s Day.
violation of ethics is the norm
March 3, 2022
The movement for ethical marketing continues to grow, and we couldn’t be happier about that! And then of course there are constantly crises all over the globe that make us feel hopeless. As we grow in momentum, it is good to take a moment and reflect on why we started. The Ethical Move is here to change the way we sell, because we believe that will change the world. Currently, our global economy only benefits a small fraction of people. We are facing a massive humanitarian, health, and climate crisis, a growing wealth gap, incredible amounts of waste, discrimination, exploitation, displacement, and fear. Nuclear weapons at the ready are just the latest piece of news. At the core sits an economy that relies on our insatiable appetite for more. In this system, violation of ethics is the norm. Psychological tactics are designed to create false demand by feeding the fear that there will not be enough. This fear has us trapped in a cycle of consumption that is uninspired, unethical, and supremely harmful to the planet and its inhabitants. But we have no need to continue using methods from the last century to generate wealth. We know better now, so let’s use the power we hold. We need to make the ethical choice for the good of all – not just a select few. At The Ethical Move, we want to go back to basics. We want to talk about how the marketplace can change towards transparency, responsibility and honesty. We want to rally, take direct action, and spread the word – with you. In a spirit of humble enquiry, we want to invite you, the reader, to share with us your thoughts on ethical marketing. We want to hear from you about the things you’re learning and realising, the marketing practices you’re noticing that need to change (or that you are changing yourself), and what it is you’re struggling with. And we’ll join you in sharing what we’ve learned. We want to have these conversations daily and out in the open. This is why we’re here: to challenge assumptions, to create conversation, and to connect us with others who want to break the cycle.
focus on community
February 2, 2022
After a restorative period off, our team members are emerging again and feeling excited about the year ahead. Resting and taking a step back was just what was needed to give us great clarity on exactly what we will focus on this year: It’s you! 2022 is the year we will launch The Ethical Move Community. The work already started last year, but now our focused attention will be on putting in place everything that is needed to build the Community. Get in on the excitement on our Instagram post last month! Everything we do will be underpinned by our 2022 commitments: Community. Open Up. Invite. That means we will be going to greater lengths to involve you in all we do. We plan to learn out loud, sharing our internal marketing conversations, co-creating and collaborating with you and others in this movement. Because things need to change. And that will take all of us.
imperfect tools
November 24, 2021
We believe business can be a force for good in the world. We believe marketing without manipulation can be successful. We believe that businesses can treat their staff, buyers and supply chain really well and still make a profit. We want The Ethical Move to be an example of such an organisation. So when The Facebook Papers hit the headlines, we asked ourselves: Can an ethical business use platforms that are at odds with their values? As always, we talked about this as a team. As always, the divergence of opinions and experiences was a beautiful thing to behold (and a reminder of why diversity in teams is crucial). And as always, we realised that while we have ideas of how the world should work, we operate in an imperfect world. That means that we have messy choices to make. We know that while we’d rather not use certain channels, there is no viable current alternative to help us progress this movement. We need more people to understand that how we sell matters, and to work together to change how we do marketing. To do that, we need our conversations to be as accessible and public as possible, which means we need to go where people are. Instead, we can choose to engage in our channels more consciously. For us, that means: Posting when we have something valuable to say rather than on a schedule. Posting for people and not the algorithm. Creating our content in a way that is sustainable for the team members in charge. We look forward to the day perfect ethical alternatives arrive, but until then we are choosing to move towards our goal with the imperfect tools we have at our disposal.
diversity awareness
October 28, 2021
October is Global Diversity Awareness Month. It is also Black History (UK), LGBT History, World Blindness, Dyslexia, and Down Syndrome Awareness Month (among others). It was Coming Out Day on October 11th. Our intersections are complex, and the further away from the ‘norm’ we appear (or act), the more marginalized we become. ‘The norm’, of course, is artificial; created for profit. Because oppression is profitable. …This is not new to you. What we are discussing at the moment is non-visible diversity. Visible differences only represent a small part in our myriad of intersections, though that small part bears the brunt of it. (it = oppression) So how do we create true diversity? How can we make it the norm? How can we recognize it and not make assumptions? I’d love for all of us to publicly share the invisible struggles we have so we can normalize having them. Rarely are we alone in it. But that’s not safe for most of us yet, which means we need to build the space for conversation first. Eventually, we’ll be able to check our assumptions before they turn into actions and navigate diversity more gracefully. This is how we create a safe space at The Ethical Move: This is the work. It’s not in the shiny examples of perfect Instagram stories and beautiful blog posts, but in how we truly embody diversity in every facet of our work. Yes, sometimes we also talk about ethical marketing 😉
creating a standard
September 29, 2021
We are back after a few weeks of taking care of our lives, our businesses, our families, our minds. Even more intenion, less ‘shoulds’ came out of our reflection when we got back together. And so much clarity on what’s important to us as a movement, as a community. Isn’t that always what happens? Rest is an inherent part of great work! In our socials, we’ve alluded to changes that we’ve been prepping for. Soo… here it is.
digital wellbeing
July 28, 2021
Over the past year, our team has grown and shifted. As a result, our work has both deepened and accelerated. In our most recent meeting, we looked back. We celebrated the fact that over 340 people have chosen to take the ethical move pledge. We celebrated our new website, new processes and systems, and even our new privacy and cookie policy. We also celebrated each one of you! 🎉 Thank you for being here with us, for reading and sharing our content, and for being part of the conversation. Over the next month, members of our team are taking some time to rest, work on our own businesses, and get ready to return to our ethical move work in September. You’ll see a bit less content coming from us, but we will be back soon! 🏖
decolonizing marketing
June 24, 2021
We’ve been talking about the big picture a lot, recently. During our team meeting in April, Dimitra Meghawaty sparked a conversation that reminded us of our roots, the reason the ethical move exists in the first place: not just to feel better about marketing, but to break the cycle of consumerism. Combined with our deep dive into accessibility this signified an important turning point in who we are (becoming) as a movement. It led us to redefine how we can grow our movement: who it is really for, but is left out of the conversation, what a new standard for ethical marketing can look like, and what our pledge needs to become to create it. And, we can’t do this without you 👇👇👇
accessibility thinking
May 28, 2021
We have been sinking deeper into accessibility, focusing on design, content, and the bigger picture conversation.The simple truth is that we all use the internet and online tools differently; and creating things that take our humanity into consideration makes for better content, better design, and better understanding of our needs. Techy things we’re doing to improve accessibility And now, the deep work begins. Changing our tech to make our content more accessible is a great start, but only the tiniest part of the much bigger conversation we need to have about our biases, how we relate to ‘ability’, what it means to take everyone into consideration as we are building/writing/creating. We can’t treat accessibility as an afterthought – that leaves most of the world’s population out of the conversation. This not a project to be checked off a list, but a life-long journey; and we’re doing it in conversation with you. Let us know what you’ve discovered!* *If this is all too daunting, please know that we are right there with you. I personally had some Big Learning to do in the last few weeks because I was not seeing the bigger picture and needed to be called forward. Share with us, knowing that we need your thoughts and opinions now more than ever.
