What is Goodvertising?
“We don’t buy what you make or why you make it, but what you can enable me to achieve.”
Goodvertising. What does it mean? Well, the clue’s in the neologism:
Good-vertising.
Good. Advertising.
The wordplay is intentional and, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense.
It was coined by Thomas Kolster, an adman turned marketing & sustainability expert and author, to name a movement oriented around using marketing to show that doing good for the world is good for business.
Goodness begets goodness, essentially.
“Advertising is a social experiment that for the most part has gone wrong.”
With the world beginning to move towards a more conscious consumerism, it is more important than ever to understand the benefits of having a clear company purpose - an ethos that drives your brand identity.
Marketing has always been seen as a bit of the devil’s game 😈: often making the bad (gambling, smoking, environmentally damaging vehicles) seem attractive.
It’s the nature of the beast, but the beast is changing.
With conscious consumerism has come a need to feel good about your purchases, either because you have addressed a need (instead of a want) or source provides some benefit (to yourself or others).
“People create brands and if they’re created for us and by us then they need to care – just like we do.”
Goodvertising works best when there is a balance between what’s good for business, and what good the business is doing.
Goodness is a relative term, and the social and environmental benefits of a company’s actions exist on a spectrum.
You won’t ever make everyone happy.
But it’s worth a try.
Interested to learn more about the world of Goodvertising?
