We First is that rare marketing book that is truly visionary. It is also sure to be controversial, because Simon Mainwaring takes trends such as green marketing, cause marketing, and corporate social responsibility and pushes them to their farthest extreme, urging corporations to stop pursuing profit for profit's sake and instead refocus their efforts on pursuing profit by benefiting the world. (This, of course, flies in the face of one of the basic beliefs of certain economists, perhaps summed up most succinctly in Milton Friedman's provocative 1970 essay titled "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.")
If it sounds like Mainwaring is making a plea for environmental sustainability, that's just the tip of his very large iceberg. He is also questioning whether it's time for corporations to rethink employee compensation, including that of the CEO, to reconsider the impact of using tax havens to shield profits, and even to think about how they might help put shoes on children in poor countries, as Toms Shoes has done with its "One for One" program.
Mainwaring is calling for a "We First" economy (an interesting bit of branding given that it is also the name of his consulting firm), and he proposes it as a response to Bill Gates's call for "creative capitalism" at the 2008 World Economic Forum. Unlike the current economy, the We First economy "is a comprehensive system of mindful consumerism in which every single transaction for products and services would include a contribution toward building a better world," writes Mainwaring. "Profit for profit's sake is a mindset that drives too many investors, businesses, and corporations to neglect three critical issues that We First capitalism seeks to change: one, the methods of producing profits; two, the consequences of profits, and three, the social implications of profits."
Yes, that shouting you hear in the background is coming from people at a certain end of the political spectrum, crying: "Socialist!" (Or maybe even "Communist!") But to jump to that conclusion about Mainwaring, and his book, would be to fundamentally misunderstand what he's talking about. A former creative director at Ogilvy & Mather on the Motorola account, and also on the Nike account at the revered ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, Mainwaring hasn't abandoned capitalism. Instead, he contends that a We First approach is needed to save capitalism, if for no other reason than that humanity is consuming the earth's resources faster than they can be regenerated. Rethinking compensation, as another example, is not about redistributing wealth but making sure that people have money to buy things. "The basis for this principle is less a moral argument than an economic reality: without a reasonably prosperous middle class in any society, the engine of capitalism falters," asserts Mainwaring.
Fortunately, once Mainwaring abandons some of the preachiness that occasionally drags down We First, he offers plenty of examples of companies that are already practicing We First capitalism. Like many other observers, he lauds Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for embracing rigorous environmental values -- such as using 100 percent renewable energy -- and pushing those standards down through its vast supply chain. But the retailer's environmental initiatives mean it is meeting the mark on only one of Mainwaring's five domains of sustainability. His broad definition of the term also encompasses economic, moral, ethical, and social values. To meet those standards, Walmart would have to, among other things, pay its associates more and offer them more reasonably priced health benefits.
By now, you're probably wondering what all this has to do with marketing, or with the social media-driven consumers referred to in the book's subtitle. Mainwaring says that We First capitalism is what they demand. In reaching this conclusion, he relies heavily on the 2009 "goodpurpose" survey from public relations firm Edelman. According to the survey results, 83 percent of consumers are willing to change how they consume to make the world better and 64 percent wouldn't mind recommending brands that support good causes. If that's the case, the role of social media is an obvious amplifier of word of mouth.
But Mainwaring's bigger point about social media lies in how consumers are using it to push companies toward more responsible practices. Consumers and Greenpeace, he explains, successfully used social channels to pressure Nestlé and Cadbury to stop buying palm oil -- a key ingredient in chocolate bars -- from suppliers that were involved in deforestation. When the initial actions taken by the two companies weren't enough, social media helped push both of them further. Although Nestlé and Cadbury were playing defense in this case, it's easy to see how a company could proactively change its practices to better align with the We First philosophy and use that as a marketing differentiator.
The vision presented in We First is huge and probably too idealistic for most companies to fully implement. But that doesn't matter. It's the best marketing book of the year because anyone who reads it will begin to question how his or her company does business, and that's the initial step to change.
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MinimalMaximum
... by all sustainability professionals for how to build a better world
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2016
