Virtue marketing

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“Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

—Michael Jordan

Virtue marketing
/ˈvɜːʧuː ˈmɑːkɪtɪŋ/ (n.)
To salve your generic discomfort at your role in the dirty business of commerce by projecting it into your employer’s marketing.

Yet another manifestation of the agency problem, perhaps on the presumption that politics meaningfully drive consumer choices.

Look, they might, if you are flogging Socialist Worker, and of course the matrix of instincts that inform individual buying choices are complex, subtle and intractable — but if “politics” is a “deep-down reason” why your customers exercise their consumer choices and you’re not actually selling Socialist Worker — selling a socialist screed is a delicious irony isn’t it —then your product is a long way down the Maslow hierarchy of needs, and it might be worth finding another product.

If politics isn’t driving consumer choices then no matter how distasteful you might find the business of what you do, pitching it as way of virtue signalling is dumb. Because Republicans buy sneakers, too.

There are restaurant premises in the corner of Muswell Hill, North London. Despite a decent apron outside for alfresco dining, it struggled to make a profit. A Bill’s outlet closed down, and it is reopening as a Giggling Squid. The signage boasts: coming soon! Delicious vegan options!

Now this is great news for the 3.7% of passers-by who are vegan but is at best of no interest to the remainder, and is prone to dissuade many of them: even those who don’t have an instant, visceral negative reaction to “vegan” — and we humbly submit that more than 3.7% of passers by, even in liberal North London will — will think, “oh, it’s a vegan restaurant,” and deprioritise the idea of going there.

True there might be some — in north London many — omnivores who identify politically with the idea of veganism, to whom a vegan pitch might work, but these people will be just as susceptible to the pitch that this is genuinely delicious Thai food and who — unless you tell them to the contrary — will not deduce from the lack of vegan signage that the restaurant is hostile to vegans.

Now there is nothing wrong with vegan restaurants, nor having delicious vegan options, but marketing these options over and above the more basic needs that restaurants satisfy for most people: good food and a good experience — is to rather badly miss the point.