When Going Woke Goes Right
What Your Business Can Learn From The Best Socially Conscious Marketing Campaigns of 2023
Introduction
Woke or socially conscious marketing is an important component of your business's marketing and PR strategy. Consumer support for companies whose values align with their own is at a higher rate than ever. According to a New Harris Poll and Google Cloud research from 2022, 82% of consumers want to shop from brands that hold similar values to their own. Socially conscious marketing is vital.
READ MORE: Going Woke: The Business Case for Embracing Socially Conscious Public Relations — Evocati PR
But how you engage in socially conscious marketing is just as critical as the decision to engage in it. A beer producer highlighting the importance of supporting the troops works great. That aligns with a target demographic's value set. A beer producer dipping into LGBTQ+ conversations doesn't always work so well. That may not align with a target demographic's values.
Before you start, you must know your audience and understand the reputational risks to prevent alienating consumers and losing business revenue. To do so requires an understanding of what's worked in the past for other brands and what you can apply in your marketing today.
Let's review some woke marketing campaigns of 2023 and uncover what worked, why it worked, and how you can apply those to your own campaigns.
Dove: The Cost of Beauty
Dove is a Fortune 500 company and one of the most recognizable names in the personal care industry. Their brand marketing is aligned with socially conscious topics like beauty standards, mental health, and more.
In 2004 Dove launched The Dove Self-Esteem Project to support youth around the globe with mental health issues stemming from toxic beauty standards. Since its inception, the project has helped more than 94,500,000 teens and youth develop positive body confidence, feel safer online, and more.
In 2023, Dove released the Cost of Beauty film following the story of Mary and her battle with an eating disorder. This is sensitive content, but you can view the full video here.
Key Lesson
This is Dove's latest step in a decades-long PR campaign. It has fantastic production quality and features real, emotional stories. Dove discovered a major societal issue that is deeply ingrained in their industry and dedicated resources to combatting it.
Dove capitalized on issues relevant to their brand and customers to create a meaningful social advocacy campaign. Your business can do the same by understanding how societal pressures impact your customers, and then dedicating resources around a cause via PR and marketing.
Nike: No Pride, No Sport
(Source: Nike)
As we detailed in our previous blog post Going Woke: The Business Case for Embracing Socially Conscious Public Relations, Nike is arguably the most recognized (wokest?) woke brand on the planet, especially since their partnership with Colin Kaepernick in 2018.
In mid-2023, Nike launched a new campaign: No Pride, No Sport. The campaign is centered around the LGBTQIA+ community's involvement with, and acceptance within, sports, namely youth athletics. Nike's official statement:
“Nike is on a mission to make sport available to everyone, everywhere. We’re continuing our commitment to helping shape a strong culture of LGBTQIA+ belonging and visibility in sport. We’re working to expand sport for the next generation through community grants, athlete partnerships, impactful storytelling, and products that celebrate the full spectrum of LGBTQIA+ expression. Because sport is better when all athletes are free to play as themselves.”
The campaign provides key resources and support for athletes including help finding an inclusive fitness instructor, policy recommendations teams or leagues can implement to be inclusive, and more.
Key Lesson
Nike built on their pioneering work in woke marketing to provide more support for athletes in an underserved community. It's a brilliant alignment to both customer needs and social advocacy. The campaign combines the iconic rainbow colors with Nike's existing brand to pave the way for a viral social media campaign—They highlighted and partnered with organizations that fight for the same mission.
Your business can do the same—Identify underserved or underrepresented customer segments in your industry, learn about their needs and how they align with your company values, then seek to provide actionable insights or support through a social advocacy or woke campaign.
You Got This
The choice to engage in socially conscious marketing is not easy given how controversial the topic has become in mainstream media. The examples and leadership provided by Nike and Dove outline two ways your company can engage in woke marketing while making a positive impact on society.
If you're debating and social advocacy campaign and need help or would like to run your ideas by the PR experts, click the button below and contact us today.