What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Share Your Company’s Values 

“Why are we allowing ourselves to get worked up over whether giant, multi-national corporations are pro-gay or have traditional American values? Corporations have but one value: shareholder value. Let’s stop pretending that a corporation can even be woke or unwoke, patriotic or unpatriotic. Let’s just let them live their truth as the profit-seeking Patrick Bateman psychopaths they are.” – Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, June 10, 2024

I love Jon Stewart and his way with words. In a recent episode, he summed up how exasperating it is to be pandered to by companies that only exist to make as much money as possible. He got pretty cynical, but some of us are not ready to cynically write off all expectations of corporate social responsibility.

What comes next?

So, how do we lead organizations that share their values without sharing a bunch of empty words? I have some examples of what to do and what not to do.

The first thing is both the most obvious and the most difficult. Your company has to have a set of values important to how you do business. For some, that might be environmental concerns. Maybe you use more expensive glass packaging to avoid filling landfills with plastic waste. That small but tangible effort is easy to communicate to the general public. But most companies can and should do more.  

The case study of Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney is almost too obvious. It’s such a painful example of what not to do. In a nutshell, Budweiser sent trans influencer Mulvaney a special Bud Light can with her name on it. Her TikTok went viral, as many of her videos do. Right-wing talking heads got angry. Budweiser then released an ad that implied it was still a brand in line with right-wing values. It did not release any meaningful defence of Mulvaney or trans rights. It’s obvious to me that Budweiser never cared about LGBTQ+ rights. It wanted to cash in on Pride in a shallow, pink-washing way.

Just don’t

This was so easy to avoid! The company’s leadership had to make a simple choice: send the product to a trans influencer and stand with her if there was any backlash, or just not work with her in the first place. Clearly, they didn’t think any backlash would affect their bottom line as much as it did. But if they wanted to work with a trans influencer in any way, they should have done a tiny bit of basic research about just how much transphobic hatred and violence there is in the world. Then, they would have known that backlash was inevitable, so they could have decided if it was worth weathering or not.

Show me the free samples

I have another example. I was doing some product training recently for brands I work with. After successfully completing a training, most brands sent me free products. Yay! One brand “rewarded” me with “points” that could be used to donate to different causes. Fair enough, but I was annoyed that these causes had never been mentioned before. Now, suddenly, they want me to donate “points” to “save the bees”? I love the bees, but how much can they care about native pollinators if they’ve never brought them up before?

My advice to all brands is the same every time: don’t pay lip service to some random cause for the sake of looking like you care. Choose causes that authentically align with the way you do business, and if necessary, defend them against criticism.

Otherwise, you’re just proving Jon Stewart right that you really don’t and can’t care about anything.