What is missing from these two insights, however, is that these two trends will increasingly intersect. Social media is on the verge of evolving far beyond being “just a new marketing and branding tool.” It is actually driving a growing force for large-scale global transformation, led by socially conscious consumers seeking to use their voices and purchasing power to halt unsustainable business practices and temper reckless capitalism. In the coming years, if not sooner, social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility—and, I suggest, move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism.
The evolution of social media into a robust mechanism for social transformation is already visible. Despite many adamant critics who insist that tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are little more than faddish distractions useful only to exchange trivial information, these critics are being proven wrong time and again. In the past year, we have witnessed impressive examples of social media tools being employed in the service of substantive political reform as well as humanitarian relief. Twitter and Facebook have been vital elements of communication and political organization in the 2011 revolutions throughout the Arab world. They have proven indispensible to the aid efforts following the natural disasters in Haiti and Japan.
The leverage and influence social media gives citizens are rapidly spreading into the business world. Concerned consumers are realizing that they can use social media to organize themselves around shared values to start effective movements. Social media gives them a sounding board to share ideas, as well as a means to punish irresponsible corporate behaviors. One early example was the Greenpeace-led Facebook protests against Nestlé’s tacit support for deforestation in Malaysia, and since then, more Facebook protest pages have followed.
On the other hand, consumers are gravitating towards companies that are using social media to dialogue with them about social issues. A well-known example of this is the Pepsi Refresh Project that used crowdsourcing to invite consumers to co-create where Pepsi puts its charitable contributions.
The point is, social media creates not just a new marketing dialogue between brands and consumers but a powerful rationale for why corporations must begin partnering with the rising tide of customers who can now demand new standards for corporate behavior and a higher commitment to purpose, not just profit. In the past, many other thought leaders have proposed new versions of capitalism -- such as creative capitalism (Bill Gates), coop capitalism (Noreena Hertz), conscious capitalism (Whole Food CEO John Mackey), and constructive capitalism (Umair Haque) – but such proposals did not have the benefit of the mainstream adoption of social media that serves to renew, scale and accelerate human connections. But now the capacity of social media to link millions of people around the world, to shape opinions and foment the “cognitive dissonance” necessary to create broad-based movements for change, is putting real power behind consumer challenges to unethical, inauthentic, or irresponsible corporate behaviors.
On the horizon, I believe we will invariably see many more instances of consumer-initiated protests, boycotts, and buycotts. It will soon be standard practice for consumers to start widespread protests using social media to urge others to abandon companies that refuse to act in responsible ways.
At the same time, we will increasingly witness the rise of a new cadre of companies that recognize the opportunity to partner with consumers in transforming profit-oriented business into purpose-driven enterprises. These are the companies that will appeal to the growing ranks of socially conscious consumers, especially Millennials, who want corporations to get serious about building a better world.
The rewards for companies and brands are potentially great. Their payoff is the opportunity to become what I call “brand nations” -- a new model of business whose market is composed of consumers throughout the world, regardless of their geographic location or nationality, who believe and trust in that brand based on shared values and socially responsible behaviors. These will be brands that customers anywhere in the would will demonstrate and encourage loyalty to, using Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, and other social media tools that now empower them to make or break a brand.
