The Brand Framework Series: The 6-Dimensional Brand Activism Model of Stance Display That Changed Real Business

Brand Activism Model is Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar's Framework that structures decision-making about expressing a brand stance through 6 dimensions of mobility (Social, Legal, Business / Workplace, Economic, Political, Environmental) and 2 directions (Progressive or Regressive), emphasizing that actions must bring communication, not the opposite. This Framework is useful when businesses are pressured to take a stance on public issues.

The line between marketing and the social stance of business is getting thinner and thinner. The younger generation of customers expect the business they are funding to comment on public issues, but choosing the wrong issue, the wrong beat, or the wrong talk, within gardening organizations, creates crises faster than crises from the product itself.

What is the Brand Activism Model and where does it come from?

The Brand Activism Model was developed by Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, and Christian Sarkar, a strategy consultant. Through the book Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action, published in 2021 (first version in 2018), Kotler, the author of Marketing Management, the main texts of global marketing, decided with Sarkar to propose this framework because it saw that traditional CSR could not answer the problems of consumers and employees in a new era that required consistency between brand speech and action.

What makes this Framework distinctly different from traditional CSR is the weight of the action compared to communication. CSR starts with budgeting and figuring out projects put in that statement. While Brand Activism starts with setting a stance and giving that stance determines what a business does and doesn't do, external expressions must conform to internal decisions ranging from supply chain, compensation, procurement to partner selection.

Key principles and procedures

The Framework views brand movement as 2 axes. The first axis is the scope of issues divided into 6 dimensions.

Social Activism encompasses gender equality, race, education, and public health; it is the dimension most easily perceived by consumers and most superficially used because it enters communication easily.

Legal Activism deals with laws and policies that hit businesses, such as labor or tax laws; brands move through making statements, co-signing, or funding organizations that drive change.

Business or Workplace Activism, with its in-house structure, executive compensation, union relationships and supply chain management, measures brand sincerity most clearly because it is under direct control.

Economic Activism on Minimum Wage and Wealth Distribution Policies

Political Activism on Lobbying, Voting and Finance in Politics The executive is most cautious because it creates obvious resistance.

Environmental Activism on Conservation, Pollution, Land Use and Environmental Policy has the most obvious quantitative gauge.

The 2nd axis is that the Progressive Activism direction refers to the use of brand resources, pushing society in a direction beneficial to the collective. While Regressive Activism is that the use of the same resources impedes change. Being in Regressive mode is not necessarily a conscious choice. Many businesses become Regressive through lobbying against the public interest without the communications department perhaps even knowing.

Examples in the food and beverage industry

Brands that build a social or environmental dimension at the core from day one and embed social justice or sustainability in formulas, raw material chains, and corporate structures can make strong statements against sensitive issues without being questioned for sincerity. On the other hand, large beverage brands that try to use protest images in ads to reach Millennials without a history of working on social issues often run into violent resistance to remove ads.

Common pitfalls

Woke Washing is to express a social stance with no internal practice supported.

When the gap is unmasked, the brand is more damaged than never declaring its stance. The way to prevent it is not to start an external Activism until the internal structure is consistent.

Retreat from the stand when faced with resistance

When sales in certain groups actually drop, there is often pressure to retreat. Retreat at this pace is more damaging than never declaring a position, because it becomes evidence for the group of customers who have supported questioning everything the brand has said in the past.

Choose the most current issues, not the ones that brands drive.

A good choice is to choose the dimensions that the internal structure supports and is ready for long-term investment.

Confused Brand Activism with Marketing Campaign

Activism designed as a time-limited Campaign is often caught by consumers as marketing wearing standpoint shirts.

Let corporate lobbying go against the declared stance.

Many organizations have declared a Progressive stance on communications, but corporate lobbying parties also support Regressive policies. This inconsistency has been the root of many crises over the years.

Compare to another Brand Framework in the series.

Kotler and Sarkar's Brand Activism Model are closest to Interbrand's Brand Role in Society. Both view the role of a brand to society as a structural matter. The difference is that Kotler and Sarkar emphasize stances (Stances) in a specific field, and add an axis of direction (Progressive or Regressive) that makes the Framework used to analyze whether a brand is driving or blocking change.

Compared to Douglas Holt's Cultural Brand Strategy, which focuses on ideological occupation that responds to social disruption, Brand Activism is the lower layer because it specifies which field to stand in. When Holt's Cultural Strategy determines ideology, Brand Activism determines how to move.

Against Patrick Hanlon's Primal Branding highlighting the brand's internal belief system, Brand Activism is an extension of that stance into the social field, Hanlon answered the question "What do brands believe?" Kotler and Sarkar answered the question "What will brands act for that belief?"

Bain's Elements of Value in the Social Impact Layer and Bernd Schmitt's Brand Experience in the Affective Dimension are the layers that Brand Activism delivers directly. When a brand shows a sincere stance, customers perceive value in the Social Impact Layer and associate it emotionally deeper than general shopping. Martin Lindstrom's Sensory Branding is a tool that makes these stances manifest in the consumer senses.

When not to use (When not to use)

Businesses that internally have unsolved levels of problems with employees, suppliers or the environment should not rush to start an external Activism because the highest risk is the gap between what the brand says and what the brand does. Once the gap is exposed, the brand will lose more and may become an example of Woke Washing.

A business where senior management is not ready to stand up over the years is not the context for the Framework to yield, because changing the direction of the middle track after investing has turned the accumulated assets into reputational debt.

Businesses whose core customers clearly give more weight to features and prices than social value should also consider that Activism will be worth investing in product development.

The market at Regulator is not clear how it acknowledges the brand's stance on social issues; speeding up Activism could create unexpected legal risks.

Example of adoption to digital businesses

At SUFFIX, we use the Brand Activism Model with customers who want to build a bond on a value level and are ready to experience the impact of standpoint. The first step is to complete the Honest Position Audit of the business in all 6 dimensions, not in the angle of image that the brand wants to project, but in the angle of actual behavior born in the organization. This assessment requires a higher level of integrity than the average Brand Audit.

For HR Tech customers, the team chose Workplace Activism as the core because it is under direct control of the customer and aligned with the core business. Customers designed their own internal compensation structure that revealed the payroll range of all positions on the website. Before pushing companies using their platform to follow the announcement, Pay Transparency was not a blank communication, but self-evidence. As a result, the customer base agreed with their position and credibility in the HR market that competitors who did not disclose their data.

For customers who are Climate Tech, the team chooses Environmental Activism as its natural core, but it is laid out in a Progressive model that drives industry standards, not just reducing its own impact. Customers publish their own Carbon Accounting Methodology as an Open Source for competitors to use and participate in national carbon tax policy lobbying. These investments are so aligned with the core business that being Activism is not a burden apart from strategy, but an expansion of strategy.