Great marketing is responsible marketing
Opinion
Doing the right thing will make your marketing more effective. It’s time to abandon the DEI, governance and sustainability silos.
There’s no getting away from the fact that these are challenging times.
We are seeing US companies such as McDonald’s, Walmart, Boeing and Ford backing away from DEI, while JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America have all dropped out of an ambitious, United Nations-supported alliance of banks committing to reach net zero climate emissions by 2050.
Add to this the ever-changing parameters of brand safety across social networks, presidential influence on those social networks’ future and upcoming regulations in AI being discussed in the EU, and it’s a potential marketing minefield in the making.
This kind of news could make it easy to start the year in a Blue Monday kind of mood, but it’s a perfect opportunity to reassess what a responsible marketing mindset means at an organisational level.
Business as usual
Being a responsible marketer means looking at a multidisciplinary level to where marketing and ESG intersect.
And that’s away from DEI, governance or sustainability silos and instead looking at marketing strategies where every aspect of your strategy is underpinned by these practices that are already built in.
You need to make these practices less “nice to have” and more “business as usual”, utilising them as a vital lever that contributes to marketing excellence and business growth.
My belief — and my experience of working with a wide range of companies backs this up — is that good marketing is responsible marketing. The bottom line is that if you are currently delivering great and efficient marketing, you are already applying responsible actions in multiple ways across your organisation.
For instance, it means that you are being responsible when it comes to brand safety by ensuring your brand doesn’t appear next to content that’s offensive to your target audience or comes with reputational risk.
It means building the shortest possible tech stack — both saving energy and reducing costs.
And it means being responsible when it comes to attracting the widest consumer audience as well as the very best talent for your team — making everyone regardless of ethnicity, gender or age feel welcome with your brand.
Make it mainstream
In short, 2025 should be the year we take responsibility out of the silo and into mainstream marketing operations.
There’s plenty of reasons why this makes sense, particularly from a consumer demand point of view, but here are some key facts from three authoritative recent reports.
Kantar has revealed that 93% of global consumers want to live more sustainably, driving demand for ethical governance in brand narratives. In fact, it reports that brands integrating sustainability messaging contribute $193bn to the value of the world’s top 100 brands, showcasing the power of making ESG credentials a growth driver.
According to Bain & Company, US consumers would pay a premium for products that were sustainable. That’s a 10% premium for environmentally beneficial products and a 15% premium for healthy products.
Accenture’s Life Trends 2025 found that 62% of respondents prioritise trust when engaging with brands, up from 56% last year, highlighting DEI and ethical marketing as key factors.
It also revealed that 52% of people globally report seeing fake news or articles online, with 39% identifying fraudulent product reviews — highlighting the importance of credible media partners in the digital ecosystem.
What ‘responsible’ means
By integrating responsibility into the mainstream marketing process, we are more likely to deliver better marketing that’s more effective and delivers stronger return on investment.
“Responsible” should be part of everything from conception of marketing communications through the planning process to final asset production.
By creating marketing frameworks that every member of the team buys into and acts on, you can ensure that best practice across your organisation is both effective and responsible. This will help not only with the day-to-day operation but also when it comes to partner selection, ensuring that you have clarity on the guardrails in place.
Of course, none of this is simple and the challenges will be different for every brand and organisation, but the bottom line is that great marketing is responsible marketing.
If you want better growth, more effective media, a stronger brand reputation and the ability to appeal to the widest possible audience, being responsible comes with the territory.
Hannah Mirza is founder and CEO of Responsible Marketing Advisory