our community.
Important question for entrepreneurs and marketing professionals who are actively trying to build their business on transparency, trust and honesty:
If there was a way to collaborate on ethical marketing without having to deal with shaming, judgey comments or ‘5-step blueprints to success’…
Here’s why we believe that learning together in a safe space is our only chance to break the harmful cycle of consumerism
Ethical marketing has become quite a buzzword. But let’s face it: a lot of us are doubting their marketing and sales practices every day.
Finding that sweet spot where you make enough to pay the bills AND your marketing feels good for the soul can feel like a huge task. Because the fear of losing clients or customers is real.
Your work is full of complexity, nuance, and intersections. It’s about the How more than the What. Unfortunately, social media and posturing on the internet favor easy answers: **this** is ethical, that isn’t.
Ironically, the term ‘ethical marketing’ increasingly turns up in ads designed to manipulate people to buy more stuff they don’t need. And you don’t want to be one of the folks placing The Ethical Move badge on their website without doing the work. In your eyes, that kind of ethical posing is harming the cause.
Our solution to what seems insurmountable is Community.
Collective action.
Because transforming the marketplace is deep, emotional labor.
If you’re hungry to learn and grow in your practice with like-minded pros, read on.
You took the pledge because you refuse to be inauthentic and follow icky marketing rules. And you want to see more businesses that you deal with also taking a stand.
We named unethical marketing tactics on our website to help you explain how you already feel to others. But giving ethical marketing advice to your clients and colleagues still makes you uncomfortable:
- “What IS the difference between good piece of advertising, straightforward messaging, and dehumanizing tactics?”
- “Are my arguments good enough in order to question ‘the done thing’?”
- “What if someone looks at my website, emails, or social media and discovers it’s not perfect?”
- “What if that badge is going to lose me clients who don’t trust that I’m going to do successful marketing for them?”
- “What if I’m getting called out for being unethical, while proudly presenting that shiny badge to the world?”
And let’s not even get started with the fear…
Of getting it wrong.
Or going it alone.
Like, being the only business you’ve ever seen that offers freebies without an email sign-up box. Being at the forefront of change can be lonely… even lonelier with an email marketing list of zero subscribers.
The Ethical Move is here to tell you: you’re not alone.
Small businesses are the largest growing sector of our global economy; how we operate will inform policy. There are a lot of us, we are courageous and adaptable — which makes us uniquely qualified to change the status quo.
We are the movement for ethical marketing. And we believe the way we sell will change the world.
Together, we are committing to transparent, responsible and honest marketing. So we can empower each other to break the cycle of consumerism and level the playing field.
If you’re keen on joining us, you can find us on Mighty Networks.
The Ethical Move Community is only available to those who have pledged, so head to our pledge page first if you haven’t yet.