← Clotheshorse with Amanda Lee McCarty
Clotheshorse with Amanda Lee McCarty
Episode 241: I'm With The Brand (unpacking how brands influence our brains), part three
01:52:34
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Let's travel back in time to a year that was neither simpler nor kinder than 2025, but still somehow feels slightly less devastating. I don't know. Somehow. And that year is 2018. I was working at my worst job ever. The alleged feminist brand Donald Trump was president for the first time. I can't believe I have to add that detail. And the Trump administration was separating migrant families at the border, literally putting kids and adults in cages. Remind me again how he somehow ended up becoming president a second time. Never mind, don't tell me, because I'm already filled with enough rage and despair today. I'm good. But all three of these facts working at the feminist brand Donald Trump is president and kids are literally in cages. They're an important part of the story I'm about to tell. In June of that year, first lady Melania Trump visited the New Hope children's shelter in McAllen, Texas. And at the time, the facility housed 55 children. Most of them were minors who had crossed the border unaccompanied. Some were separated from their families at the border. And this trip was a big deal because Melania was the first sort of like senior member of the administration to visit the border since Trump's immigration policies had taken effect. All eyes were on her for this visit. And wouldn't you know, she boarded her flight to Texas wearing an olive green coat that read in white capital letters on the back. I really don't care, do you? It's an important detail to tell you that the U, which would normally be, you know, Y O, U was just the letter. Uh, she did not wear it while visiting the children, but she did put it back on for her flight home where, you know, a lot of photos were snapped of her getting on and off the plane. This jacket was $39 and it was from Zara. It was an intentional statement, although Melania denied it for years. But come on, Melania Trump is not shopping at Zara. The Trumps care about image way more than just about anyone else. Even if that image is perhaps not as cool or admired as they may hope, they're definitely not shopping at Zara. Some of you might remember this jacket and the ensuing controversy, you know, quite clearly. And others, if you don't remember this, I don't blame you. It was probably just another blip in a non stop series of fucked up shit that happened and is happening while Trump is in the White House. For me, this stupid $39 jacket, which side note, $39 for a whole ass jacket with a hood. The Math does not math. But I mean, I digress. This jacket turned into months of permanent stomachache and headache for me until I finally left the quasi feminist brand at the end of the summer. By June of 2018, I was paying a lot less attention to the news, just sort of to survive. Work was slowly eroding any sense of self I had. I had withdrawn from most of my friends. I was working most of my waking hours each day. I did not cook, which is something I normally love doing. I did not read books, I did not make crafts or plant a garden. Dustin was still working primarily as a live sound engineer, so he often worked at night. I. I would walk home from work only to sit down on the couch in my living room for a few more hours, one hand on my work laptop, the other hand sharing food from the Whole Foods salad bar with my cat, George. I missed the story about Melania's jacket that afternoon, but I certainly learned all about it around 10pm when my boss, the CEO, started texting me. Basically, she and the creative director were wondering if we could sell a T shirt version of Melania's jacket. But instead it would say, I really do care, don't you? Portions of the sales would be donated to a charity, tbd, and it would be a great moment to get the brand more press. So just some brief backstory on this brand and my job there. I was director of merchandising, which meant I was in charge of everything product related from developing and finding the actual product we sold, making sure it fit right, quality assurance, negotiating the pricing, placing the orders, tracking sales, placing reorders, making sure vendors got paid, and just generally creating and executing the entire product strategy for the company. Basically everything you could buy from them was there because of me. And I was very good at my job. The company had seen a lot of growth, unprecedented growth with me in that role. To help me with all of that, I had two assistant buyers, both rad and delightful people, and an awesome planner who I just adored. In fact, I loved my entire team and I took the job of mentoring and protecting them very seriously. The mentoring was necessary because, you know, everyone should be learning and growing at their jobs if they want to. And the protecting, well, that was essential because that workplace was incredibly chaotic and toxic. And it was good that my team and I cared about one another because resources at this company, they were so slim that we all, the whole buying team, we literally sat at one table together all, all day. And it was kind of considered the buying department desk. I could go on about the Desk alone. It was ostensibly a standing desk, but it wasn't adjustable. It was just made of plywood. And so if you weren't the right height, basically the height of the creative director in heels, it wasn't comfortable as a standing desk, which meant you had to sit. And what kind of seating did we have? Stools from Ikea. It was like the back and neck problems I had at that point. Oh, my gosh, I don't even want to talk about it. This is taking me back in too much of a real way. When I joined the company, it was right after I'd been laid off from Nasty Gal and about six months before Boohoo finally bought the brand in bankruptcy court. And coming into this new smallished brand, I was so excited. The brand itself focused on what it called tomboy aesthetic, basically menswear for women. And when I was hired, most of the stuff they sold was just the smallest sizes from menswear lines, along with a horrible collection of fast fashion suits and some graphic tees that were almost always black with white lettering or vice versa. And right before I was hired, they'd had some modest success with a line of feminist tees. Like, literally weeks before I started, I saw the potential there in a major way, especially because it was looking like that year's election was going to be Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. What an amazing time to build a brand with feminist values right before we would hopefully have our first woman president here in the United States. Well, we know how that worked out. But the brand got a major bump in sales after Donald Trump's infamous Access Hollywood tape was released. He and his allies, they dismissed it as simple, everyday locker room talk. And soon after, a photo went viral, viral on Facebook, showing a group of male high school athletes wearing this brand, My employers feminist tea. This was no coincidence because the CEO, whose background was in marketing, had reached out to male athletes, high school, college and professional, offering them free teas in hopes of creating a viral moment just like this, which I'm just going to tell you, at the time, I did not know this. I thought this was a very organic thing that had happened. This is something I learned after the fact. That photo of the high school boys, which once again went viral, was posted on October 13th. My wedding was two days later on October 15th. And yes, I was in my wedding dress, being driven to the ceremony by my dad. Dustin and I were married at White Sands national park in New Mexico. It was magical. I'm so lucky to be married to such an awesome person. But there I was in my dress, the nicest thing I'd ever worn at that point in my life. Life. Negotiating and ordering more of these feminist tees with the printer in Portland. And after the ceremony, I was back in that van with my new husband, texting back and forth with my assistant buyer about placing the order immediately. Tea sales grew and grew while I placed larger orders and negotiated prices down. The blanks themselves were made who knows where under who knows what circumstances. But that didn't matter, because feminist tees were the new thing that everyone must have. And like any good buyer, I turned that graphic into pins. Sweatshirts, hats, pens, notepads, just about anything. And in the period between the election and the women's march, we kept beating our sales records. We tried other graphics and art, but nothing came close to the sales of that original shirt. But the sales from that one product allowed me to have the budget to develop new clothes for the brand that were what its core customer really wanted. Suiting, button ups and later workwear. But versions that weren't just the smallest size from a men's line actually made for women and trans people and non binary people who weren't built like a CIS male. And this felt like a worthy mission to me. I loved working on this. But by mid-2017, customers were rightly asking, like, why are you making money off of feminism? So we worked a give back component into each sale. Something like 1% of profits from sales of those teas would be donated to Planned Parenthood. And once again, it was a good marketing story. It got those people off our back who were asking, why are you commodifying feminism? And it got us press from blogs like Refinery29. It even got the CEO the opportunity to do a TEDx talk. And at one point, Forever 21 even copied the T, which in a pre shot shein world, that's how you knew you had really arrived. We were spending hours each week sending cease and desist notices to random sellers on Amazon too. This is like how big this concept of feminist merch was. And behind the scenes, I was working with the printers to bring down the cost of the T shirts so that we can make that donation while maintaining the same level of gross profit. Going into 2018, sales on the tees had slowed, along with all of the viral marketing and press. For one, the market for feminist merch was flooded. I mean, think about it. The whole girl boss era hadn't fully peaked, even though Nasty Gal had already gone bankrupt. Every fast fashion brand did a collection for March, AKA when international women's Day happens. And there were Earth Day collections and a flood of Ruth Bader Ginsburg merch everywhere along with Golden Girls stuff. Yes, I love the Golden Girls, but let's be honest, that wave of Golden Girls product was part of this whole feminist capitalism thing that was happening in the late 2010s. We're talking peak the future is female and strong female lead as T shirts and totes and all anything right. Dust plaques that said well behaved women rarely make history. Keychains that said she persist. Feminism was for sale and it was for sale everywhere, at every price for every customer who wanted it. So we had a lot of competition in the commodification of feminism, which meant sales were slowing in the feminist merch area, still much, much bigger than they were when I joined the company. But it wasn't unique anymore and nothing we were trying was was coming close. That meant that blogs and reporters were a lot less interested in it. So we weren't really getting any PR anymore either. To be honest, there have been a lot of conversations about how can we make merch related to MeToo without being gross. We didn't do it because ew, why would we? But when Melania showed up wearing that jacket, she gave the brand an opportunity. And to be clear, again, a woman like Melania Trump doesn't accidentally wear a Zara jacket, much less a Zara jacket with a statement like that. It was disgusting. Years later, Melania after, after denying any intention behind that jacket would say that she wore it as a statement against the press coverage of her. But at the time wearing a jacket like that to visit kids in cages at the border? It's pretty heinous. So back to that Thursday night in June when the jacket was filling up the news cycle. And yeah, the jacket was a gross choice, but how about continuing to talk about the families being separated at the border instead? This is just like so classic Trump administration where we get distracted by this one thing when there was this like much huger, scarier thing happening. Just repeat, repeat, repeat. Anyway, so my boss texted me at 10pm asking if I could make a tea out of it. Ultimately, profits from the shirt sales would be donated to an organization that provides social and legal services to migrants. I said sure, we just need to find a blank to use, meaning we need something to print this on and we need to coordinate production with the printer. Okay. But my boss wanted to do a pre order so it could be available for sale ASAP before the news cycle moved on. I said it was totally fine, but I needed to talk to the printer in the morning to see when he would be able to do the printing. And of course, we would also need to have blanks to print on, which would mean finding someone who had them in stock in all sizes, the right color, and at a price we could afford. And of course, they were going to have to ship them to us. All in all, the soonest we could have anything to ship, assuming that the printer had space for us and I could find something the next day, it would have been three to four weeks. Well, by the time I woke up the next morning, the T shirt was already for sale. I spent the entire day emailing and calling T shirt suppliers to find a blank that looked like the photoshopped version on the website. By late afternoon, a jacket and a sweatshirt had been added, so now I was begging for those too. I could go on for hours telling you about the horror of the next few weeks, but I honestly just don't want to relive it even talking about this right now. It took me a couple days to be like, okay, I'm okay with talking about this. I was constantly trying to find product that did not exist, Dealing with a boss who was so hopped up on the press attention that she would just periodically, like, materialize at my desk, AKA the table I shared with my team to tell me loudly that I must make it work and it was my problem to solve. Then she would go jump on the phone with the Today show or whatever. And it was just the tension in the office was overwhelming. And the thing was, while in the early days of this job, it had felt exhilarating and even rewarding to work there, and I felt like I was a part of something bigger than me, which when you work super hard and you are not well paid and you slowly are losing your work, life, balance, feeling like you are, quote, a part of something is that's how you do it. That's how you get through it. So when you lose that feeling, your job gets 100 times harder. And I had stopped having that feeling a long time ago. We were still selling fast fashion, but with a patina of activism. And the donations were not that big. If you're donating 1% of a $40T shirt, that's 40 cents. If you sell 10,000 shirts, that's a $4,000 donation, which doesn't do much for Planned Parenthood. It just felt scammy. Ultimately, I left the company a few months later. I was honestly well before this, planning it since the beginning of the year when my boss told me that no, we would never be getting health insurance because profitability was the company's number one priority. And this was something, this lack of insurance, which I think I've talked about here on the pod in the past, was destroying my family's financial well being. Because when I first took the job and Obama was president, the ACA actually had good, affordable health plans that had good coverage. The moment Trump was elected and announced his intention to get rid of the ACA because he's a fucking dipshit, Sorry. Every insurance company out there panicked, raised premiums a ton, like, my insurance almost doubled and cut the benefits quite a bit. And in the space of, like, I don't know, the six months after I'd gotten married, I became extremely ill with mono, believe it or not, that had, like, lasting, lasting health implications, required tons of testing and ultrasounds and all this stuff. And I kept worrying that if my spleen did in fact explode, which it felt like it was going to, we were going to go bankrupt. And then as I was slowly starting to feel better, my child was hospitalized multiple times for a very serious illness and the insurance, like, barely covered it. And I was like, oh, my God, we're going to have to go bankrupt. And in fact, at one point, I had mentioned that I was looking for a weekend job just to help me, like, pay some of these bills. And my boss told me that if I got a part time job on the weekends, then I no longer had a job with this company, this company that did not give me health insurance. So, yeah, I was no longer feeling as though I was a part of something bigger. And I felt like I was at my breaking point. In fact, I had reached a point where I was fantasizing about taking out life insurance and then ending my life so my family could be cared for, the medical bills could be paid, and I wouldn't have to work at that job anymore. And when I finally admitted that to Dustin one morning when he was driving me to work, we both were like, you need to quit right now. And so that was. I was in the process of leaving. It was known that I was leaving when Melania wore that jacket. Anyway, months after I left the company, the T shirts, the jackets, the sweatshirts, they still hadn't been shipped. I don't know when the donation was ever made, and I don't know how much was donated. I suspect that the company lost money on chargebacks and expedited shipping and refunds. This is what happens when marketing and press are prioritized over, you know, actually having something to sell. And I can fault my own employer for very foolishly engaging in this undertaking. But the fact of the matter is this kind of stuff is happening every day at companies all around the world. Companies of all sizes. What particularly depresses me about this whole story is I doubt that anyone has worn that T shirt if they ever received it anytime recently. Because why would you? It's an unappealing copy of unappealing Zara Art, and most people have long forgotten the original inspiration because the news cycle has been non stop and full of daily fresh horrors since 2018. Ironically, these days the Internet is flooded with print on demand copies of the T shirt and and I just wonder who is actually buying them in 2025. The thing is, I can't even judge my previous employer for doing this fundraising stuff, because for the 2010s through the early 2020s, this was just a regular part of doing business for most brands around the world. In fact, marketing and branding experts declared that brands must be doing things like this because, quote, millennials only want to shop from brands that care about the issues. So everyone was on board. Toms gave away a pair of shoes for every shoe it sold. Warby Parker was doing something similar. In 2010, American Express launched Small Business Saturday, an initiative that encouraged customers to shop at small local businesses on a specific Saturday. While AMEX racked up those transaction fees, Project Red, a brand launched by U2's Bono, was collaborating with Apple and Gap, Nike, Starbucks and more to create Red merchandise whose proceeds would be donated to charities supporting AIDS and malaria outreach in Africa. And that. That was just the beginning, right? The list went on and on. This kind of fundraising slash social benefit campaign created by a brand is called Cause Marketing, and it's one of the biggest trends of emotional branding predicted by Mark Gob in the 2000s. And in this episode, part three, in a series about brands and branding and why it all kind of feels over consumption, we're going to dissect all kinds of examples of cause marketing in this century, including fundraiser collections, roundups at checkout, 1% for the Planet B Corp certification, and so much more. We have a lot to cover, so let's jump right in. Welcome to clotheshort, the podcast that shutters every time it thinks about all of the feminist teas in the landfill right now. I'm your host, Amanda, and this is episode 241, part three in an ongoing series about brands and how they influence our identities and drive consumerism. In part one, we explored the meanings of brand and branding along with the history of Branding I also revealed some brands that are really just licensed zombies at this point. In Part two, we unpacked the concept of emotional branding and how it has influenced our own relationships with brands, building large communities of strangers who are brought together because of where they like to shop and what they like to buy. You should definitely go listen to those before you jump into this one because it will make a lot more sense to you. In this week's episode, we're going to be talking all about one of the specific branding marketing trends predicted by Mark Gob in his early 2000s book Emotional Branding, and that is cause marketing. I was going to include some of gobe's other trends in this episode, but holy macaroni, cause marketing is a dense topic. I could literally do a whole season just about cause marketing. We're going to try to nail it all in one episode, so we will be talking about more of his predictions in next week's episode along with sharing your brand stories and thoughts about branding as a whole. In fact, send me your stories about brands that you used to be obsessed with and why you aren't anymore. Or maybe you still are. Maybe a brand that disappointed you, or a brand you love now because of something they did or didn't do. Or maybe share your thoughts on cause marketing. You can record these thoughts as a voice memo on your phone and send them to me. That's my first choice. Or. Or you can write an email. Please do not DM me on Instagram. Chances are I will miss it because my notifications are always blowing up there and you will feel very sad and neglected. So just email me. My email address is always in the show notes. It's amandaosehorse World. Okay, I've got two more announcements before we get going. First, you might remember my talking about the crafternoon event in July in Philadelphia with Ruby of SLOW Fashion Academy. We are going to go thrifting. We're going to upcycle some T shirts. We were going to have some snacks, cupcakes. It's going to be a great time. Well, we had to reschedule due to illness so it is now being held on Sunday, September 21st and we have two tickets left. So if you missed getting a ticket before, now is your chance. But act fast. On the old date it had long sold out and we had a waiting list. But with the reschedule we lost a couple people. So this is your chance to go get a ticket right now. I will share the link in the show notes and you can get all the details there next. I must remind you that clotheshorse is coming to the west coast in October and I'm doing two live shows Thursday October 23rd in Seattle, Washington at Hereafter and Sunday October 26th in Portland, Oregon at Holocene. Tickets are on sale now. A limited number are available so you want to go get them asap. I know it feels far away, but it's kind of creeping up closer every single day and both venues have told me that tickets are selling very fast and will most likely sell out as we get closer to the day of the show. Fingers crossed, so don't procrastinate. Links are in the show notes and@closehorsepodcast.com and if we can sell out these shows or come very close, I will most definitely be able to do more shows next year because venues will be stoked to book me. Founded by third generation designer Emily Lemandry, MLE is a sustainable accessories brand for the modern Gentlewoman. The majority of MLE pieces are made to order in the Catskills by a team of skilled craftswomen in an effort to manufacture as sustainably as possible using remnants, upcycled and eco friendly materials. Standout pieces include the Gentlewoman's Agreement collection featuring a magnetic hand shaped clasp and inspired by women working together. MLE also makes statement hair clips from eco friendly cellulose acetate and handbags from fabric sustainably sourced from New York's garment district. You can find us@madebymle.com that's madeby letter M letter L letter E.com or on Instagram aidbymle Use code clotheshorse for 10% off your first order. In the last episode we talked about Mark Goeb's book Emotional Branding. It's essentially the flowers in the attic of marketing and branding in this century and how it really is the playbook of every employer I've had in my career. Except for, strangely enough, Urban Outfitters who for a very long time coasted without dipping into emotional branding just by focusing on cool looking stores and good visual branding. In fact, I would say that Urban Outfitters for quite some time had emotionless branding minus the promise. And I'm not saying it's a valid promise, but they kind of promised that if you shopped there you might acquire some coolness. But something that always struck me about working there is that we never cared about fundraising. Anything remotely political was discouraged unless it was ironic and the brand as a whole just focused on curation and good in store merchandising thanks to the in house display and merchandising teams in every store. Until recently, every store had a wood shop in the back, like fully equipped and people who were just building stuff all day, every day, all the display elements. I worked as a visual merchandising manager for Urban for several years where I spent a lot of time moving clothes around again and again because we got shipment almost every day. Painting walls, climbing ladders, drilling holes, dyeing fabric, painting windows, weaving macrame ing, attaching flowers to webbing, and on and on and on. Perhaps the emotion in it all was just things looked good and interesting. The customer loyalty and emotional connection was never the same as it was and has been for Anthropologie and Free People, also owned by Urban. Because the customer's relationship was intended to be fleeting, eventually they would outgrow it and move on to Anthro or Free People. In fact, the only time I remember Urban Outfitters dipping its toes into emotional branding via cause marketing or was early in my time as a buyer with the company, working as an assistant buyer in shoes, we were going to help launch a new shoe brand called TOMS that promised to donate one pair of shoes for every pair sold. This was a new and wild concept and TOMS would go on to be so successful that every startup was asked by potential investors, how can you implement a TOMS like model into your business? I know this because, well, I was dealing with this at every other job I had for years. Investors were even asking us this at the quasi feminist brand. I mean, imagine if we had donated one feminist tee for everyone we sold. What a world changer. Please please note my sarcasm. The thing about TOMS was, well, for one, the sales team was hyper aggressive, constantly harassing me for reorders, which we didn't need because the brand was initially not very successful for Urban Outfitters. Maybe because even though a million Internet think pieces were declaring Millennials only want to buy from brands that have a mission, the reality was that Millennials were also the fast fashion generation and with limited income they would rather have a bunch of Forever 21 clothes than a sort of uncute pair of canvas slip on sneakers two years later. By then I was managing a different category. Urban would try to push TOMS again, giving them a big spot in the entry of every store with like a huge sign. And even then it was just kind of meh. But it did a little bit better. And I want you to put a pin in TOMS because we're going to come back to that. Dissecting the shortcomings of its model because Toms is really a poster child for cause marketing that was successful, but also worthy of criticism. So let's get started by explaining what cause marketing is. As I mentioned in the intro, Mark Gob saw cause marketing as one of the essential branding trends of the new millennium. Cause marketing is a business strategy where companies partner with nonprofit organizations or social causes to create ostensibly, I'll just say that ostensibly, mutually beneficial campaigns. Or in theory, yeah, probably more in theory, mutually beneficial campaigns because the company gains positive brand association and more customer loyalty, while the cause, the organization, the charity, whatever it is, you know, in theory, receives funding and awareness. And cause marketing comes in many forms, like the sales of a product where, you know, a portion of the proceeds or a portion of the profits goes to the charity or organization. This is adjacent to things like 1% for the planet, an international organization whose members contribute at least 1% of their annual revenue. Revenue means all the money that came in that year. Essentially their sales to environmental causes. Another form of cause marketing is roundups at the cash register, where customers can round up their total with that additional money being donated. Also, corporate responsibility initiatives that are implemented for marketing purposes, like here's our corporate team outplanting trees today, or our staff acts as mentors for Big Brothers, Big Sisters, that kind of thing. That's also cause marketing. Another form of cause marketing, when companies donate unsold items or other supplies to survivors of a natural disaster and then post about it on social media. Even B Corp certification and other certifications can be seen as a form of cause marketing. Now, if you recall from the previous episode in this series, we talked about how the essential goal of emotional branding is to make a big, big brand feel personal. More like a small business. And before one of you sends me a very rowdy email, I know you're thinking about it. I do not think it is scammy or some kind of cynical marketing play. When small businesses donate a portion of sales or hold fundraisers for causes, I think that is legit and it comes from the heart. After all, the thing about small businesses is they're usually run by one or two people. So they don't need to pretend to be actual, sincere people. They already are. And when they engage in charitable stuff, it's because it really matters to them. They are literally giving away their time and money. And that's the thing here, right? That's going to kind of become a recurring theme as we unpack. A lot of these different cause marketing forms is that often the company itself isn't really losing anything. By doing this cause marketing, like they're not sacrificing anything of significance, but they are reaping the benefits of this charitable action as if they are doing something selfless. When a small business is donating money or printing T shirts and donating all the sales or most of the sales or whatever, donating their time, whatever it is they are that's costing them money and time. And these are both very limited resources. And so they are sacrificing something in the name of charity, in the name of their passion for this cause. In the vast majority of cases when big corporations, big brands are doing this kind of work, it's all a win win for them in every single way. And, and I also just want to add here, this is going to come up again for sure. As a person, an employee who's worked within these companies and of course worked on campaigns like this, I'll tell you that when you're in it, being a part of it makes you feel like, oh, my job is worthwhile. All the things that I sacrifice to work, whether that's like I don't have health insurance or I'm underpaid for what I do, or I never get to see my friends because I'm always working, this makes you feel like it's okay that I work all the time and this job stresses me out and doesn't pay me well until it doesn't anymore. But cause marketing benefits companies in so many ways beyond it just looking good to customers. And one of those is it keeps people working. So as I was saying, when a small business is doing cause marketing, generally they are losing something, right? They are sacrificing time, money, resources. But when free people, a huge fast fashion brand, promises to donate a portion of all sales on Earth Day to the national parks, we have to wonder how impactful that really is. Because when you take a step back, it starts to look like a really cynical marketing ploy. Because what free people or any other brand who's doing this on Earth Day is trying to say to you is because we're really passionate about the planet. We are really into environmental responsibility, land management, whatever. Here's the thing. Wouldn't it be more meaningful for the planet and its people if free people really felt that way? So passionate about the planet or whatever company is doing an Earth Day, give back. If they felt this passionate about the planet, why wouldn't they just work to clean up their supply chain, mitigate their plastic pollution, pay everyone a living wage? That would be some significant change, right? That would be like, we're really passionate about this. Oh, right. That would be a lot more effort than donating a small portion of sales for one day. And in many situations like this, this is going to come up over and over again. The number seems to be 1% of sales is what companies are donating to things like this. And I just want to be clear that 1% of sales is $0.01 for every dollar. Okay? For $100 in sales, that is $1. It is not very much and it does not affect the bottom line of any of these companies. We'll come back to it again. Cause marketing has become a fixture of branding strategy in this century. But it first picked up traction in. In 1983, American Express offered to donate a portion of a particular credit card's revenues to the renovation of the Statue of Liberty. Believe it or not, this is not the only time we're going to bring up the Statue of Liberty in this episode, which feels like a record for a podcast that never talks about the Statue of Liberty anyway. Every time a customer used that card over a three month period, $0.01 was donated to the fund to restore the Statue of Liberty. And the brand ended up raising about $1.7 million, which is more than $4 million today. And something really interesting about this beyond the money is that card use rose over 30% more people were using their credit cards. And when you think about it, it felt like a win win for the company and the consumer. The consumer got to feel patriotic, like they were doing something good for the world with a minimal amount of effort. Basically you're telling me I can just be a hero by spending money. Sign me up. Right? And also this was most consumers first experience with cause marketing. So it felt exciting, new and sincere. AMex was losing $0.01 from each transaction to this donation, but they were charging retailers and restaurants about a dollar for every transaction. So we're talking about a loss of 1% here. Let's just do the math on that for a moment. I literally have a calculator in my hand. So the company raised $1.7 million. Typing that in here, making sure I got all the zeros. Okay. And that whole total was comprised of $0.01 donations. Okay. So we're going to divide that by one penny. There's so many zeros here, I like can't even. This is the number of transactions they would have done. And if they charged a dollar for those, and then we deduct that one penny per transaction that they donated that $1.7 million, that means that they made $168 million off of this campaign. Minimal loss for them, right? Minimal sacrifice. People went out and used their card 30% more than they normally would to be a part of this. So this was not just a win win. This was like a mega win for American Express. Once again, it's that 1% to that $0.01. We're going to come back to that. Like I said, it's going to come up over and over again. 21 other companies pledged donations as part of a sponsorship role in the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. These donations total about $69 million. American Express declined the opportunity to officially sponsor the restoration because there were too many other brands involved and it was becoming too hard to rise above the noise. In other words, it would be too easy for the public to miss the company's good deeds because they would be drowned out by the other sponsors. This Statue of Liberty American Express campaign is considered like the seminal example of successful cause marketing, right? People spent more money than they would have to be a part of it, and the company made bank. Here's another great example of early and very successful cause marketing. Do you remember Tang? I personally skip all things orange flavored, but not actually made of oranges, including sunny D. Well, Tang. Tang. What a word. Sales of Tang rose 13% between August and December 1985. Was it a hot advertising campaign? Some great coupon deals? No. The only promotion the company had used during that period was a sponsorship of a March Across America to benefit Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That's literally all it took. I couldn't even find much information about how much was donated, but I'm going to tell you, their sales went up 13%. The donation was probably, you guessed it, 1% of that total increase in sales. The fight against breast cancer has widely benefited from these kinds of campaigns. Or at least retailers and brands have benefited from these campaigns. I'm sure you've all become nearly immune to all of the pink products that for years were available for sale in October, AKA Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And I'm talking a wide range of products from cake icing to socks to slow cookers, all promising a nebulous give back component with a donation to a breast cancer charity. However, this virtual industry of pink products has spiraled so far out of control, with little transparency and accountability for the companies selling the product, that in 2002, Breast Cancer Action launched Think before youe Pink, a response to the growing concern about the overwhelming number of pink ribbon products and promotions on the market. This project, which, as far as I can TELL is no longer in action. Pushed for more transparency from these companies, like how much is actually being donated. But Think before youe Pink was also pushing customers to do just that. Think before they buy something pink. Because the term pink washing was created to speak to the startling hypocrisy amongst these companies who were often creating pink product using chemicals and processes that may cause cancer. Or at the very least, these companies were pretending to care about breast cancer while also producing other products that may cause cancer. For years, selling pink versions of products during October was a given. Pink mixers, pink travel mugs, pink spatulas, and any number of other pink and plastic items. And the companies selling these products benefited in multiple ways. One, One, good vibes from customers who appreciated a brand giving back. Two, customers were motivated to buy something they didn't really need because it felt like a charitable act. Three, people bought stuff they didn't need just because it was pink. Trust me, I myself have resisted the siren song of many pink appliances over the years. But the fact of the matter is, pink product in October was a big seller, a big money maker for many years. I can remember very clearly walking into the Fred Meyer that is right off of Broadway in Northeast Portland. It's a huge Fred Meyer. That was my Fred Meyer for years. And I would walk in the side door there, which would take you into like appliances and home goods. By the way, Fred Meyer is if you don't know a grocery store, slash, I don't know, like, it's like if a grocery store in Kohl's had a baby. I mean, there's clothes, there's furniture, there's everything, right? So I'd walk in the side door, which would bring me into like home goods and toys. And there would every year in October be a huge table that was just all the pink breast cancer awareness merch. And it was everything that you could ever imagine in pink. I couldn't find any data to suggest that sales of pink breast cancer awareness fundraiser products have slowed in recent years. But I have noticed anecdotally that I see a lot less of them in stores in October. To be fair, a big part of that could be that I don't really go to stores, but just in general, I'm not seeing it on the Internet. And I also think that people kind of lost interest, which is, yes, that's fucked up because breast cancer hasn't gone away. And it's certainly no joke, but people get bored with the same old causes in their marketing. And just like breast cancer awareness pink products in October, even the feminist teas and the feminist merch had a peak and then a pretty swift decline. All of these cause marketing concepts, they just last forever. I read this amazing 2012 Fast Company piece by Cheryl Davenport that was critical of toms. The buy one, give one choose in a way that no one else was at the time. And in this article Davenport wrote, from a business perspective, TOMS is at risk. Our research with leading consumer facing companies has shown that there is a finite and unpredictable market for the feel good value proposition. Consumers are fickle when it comes to committing to brands based on non functional attributes. Tom's core value to its customer is being replicated by an increasing number of companies who can promise the exact same return. Feeling good about your purchase? And the thing is, Cheryl DAvenport, this was 2012 and cause marketing was just beginning to take off by 2016, 2017, it's so oversaturated. I honestly can't believe people were still buying into it. But you know, you take your joy where you can get it sometimes. But yes, causes are trendy, just like clothes and shoes and color palettes and contouring makeup. So let's talk about TOMS a little bit more. As I mentioned earlier, Tom's buy one, give one model made it the darling of the startup world in the 2000 and tens. It was one of the best known double bottom line businesses of that era. So what does that mean? Well, the double bottom line is a business concept that measures success using two criteria instead of just financial profit. Companies adopting this approach evaluate their performance based on their both both traditional profit and financial success and a social environmental bottom line, meaning positive impact on the world around it. Companies who embrace the double bottom line get a lot of good vibes from their customers. But I would also argue that it should be the standard, not the exception. Right. I give businesses who make decisions with their community and their planet in mind a lot of credit. But also, why don't we expect that from everyone? Like why don't we expect better from Amazon or Shein? And maybe you do, but I'm gonna tell you, I see people on the Internet all the time who are like, well what do you expect? It's capitalism. Or like you clearly don't know anything about business, you know. Rewinding to TJ Maxx copying just like everyone on the Internet somehow getting away with it. I just saw two more examples of that since the last episode came out. It's like, okay. And everybody in the TJ Maxx subreddit was like, well this is just how business is. I do not think that this is just how business has to be. While TOMS was a darling of cause marketing in the 2010s, it wasn't without criticism, although the criticism was a much smaller amount of the media coverage TOMS received at the time. But when you take a step back and give it a closer examination, you start to wonder why more of us weren't talking about it. So for all of you who are unfamiliar with toms, the business model for years was that for every pair of TOMS sold, these were these canvas shoes. A modified version was donated to children in developing countries back in the day. The TOMS website told the story of founder Blake Mycosky, who visited Argentina in 2002 while competing in the Amazing Race with his sister. He returned in 2006 to learn polo, where he met some women in a bar who were in Argentina to distribute shoes to children. The experience motivated him to start toms. Now the site no longer tells that story and instead it focuses on a variety of give back programs, stating that the company has, in the last two decades positively impacted more than 105 million lives and given away more than 100 million pairs of shoes. And while TOMS once only offered a small assortment of canvas shoes, it now sells boots, sunglasses, clothing and more. And TOMS also gets a lot less media coverage these days. And to be honest, I hadn't thought about the brand in years before working on this episode. Could people be bored with the cause? Are they inundated by too many causes to care about? Or are we just all kind of burned out on having to buy something to do good? I don't know. What were the criticisms of TOMS in its heyday? Well, one the model of giving away shoes actually disrupted local economies. One study found that for every 20 pairs of shoes donated to a community, one less pair was purchased from a local business. It's not dissimilar to how the steady flow of secondhand clothing from the Global north has destroyed local garment and textile industries in the Global South. As Cheryl Davenport said in her Fast Company piece, by undercutting local prices, Western donations have hurt the farmers, workers, traders and sellers whose success is critical to lifting entire communities out of poverty. That means every free shoe donated actually works against the long term development goals of the communities we're trying to help next. Some argued that TOMS was actually taking a very sort of like colonialism approach to charity by deciding that shoes were the solution without actually talking to communities about what they felt they really needed and ultimately, sorry to say, this shoes were not the solution, making this a very ineffective aid model. In fact, the same study I mentioned earlier, while agreeing that sure TOMS wasn't really harming communities, it also wasn't really doing much good either. Saying in a context where most children already own at least one pair of shoes, the overall impact of the shoe donation program appears to be negligible. Illustrating the importance of more careful targeting of in kind donation programs. In the 2000 and tens, Tom's website cited that it was giving shoes to a group of 30,000 people living in a landfill in the Philippines. The company pointed out that kids living in the landfill were prone to hookworms and other injuries that could be prevented by a pair of shoes. And sure, if the kids didn't already have a pair of shoes, a pair would help. Yeah, I can't argue with that. But giving them that pair of shoes doesn't eliminate the larger issues that people literally living in a landfill are going to face, including the danger of living amongst decaying trash. Shoes don't get them a better place to live or access to better healthcare. It's a band aid on a much larger wound. It's it's a temporary fix. Back to Cheryl Davenport again. Those helped by TOMS are in the long term, no more able to afford shoes or address the real social, economic and health issues that they face than they were before. Once their free shoes wear out in a couple years, the children TOMS helped will be just as susceptible to health and economic perils associated with bare feet as they were before. And it's true that a more impactful program could have sponsored healthcare or education, housing, or even made the shoes within these communities, creating jobs and economic opportunities for the residents. But would that, would any of those stories motivate people to buy a pair of shoes? I mean, think about it. It's super clever because the charitable giving only happens if someone buys a pair of shoes. And the more shoes the person buys, the more people are helped. So it's incredible marketing that directly drives sales for the company, even if the impact is murky at best. Ultimately, toms dropped the 1 for 1 program in 2021. But Sheryl Davenport's final verdict on TOMS really captures the problem with most cause marketing in this century. The fact is, TOMS isn't designed to build the economies of developing countries. It's designed to make Western consumers feel good. And that's the thing about KAZ marketing. It's not intended to make the world a better place. It's intended to make us feel good about buying something, possibly even something we don't need. And when you really dig into many cause marketing campaigns, you start to see how the biggest impact they have is on a company's annual revenue. And I just want to add here, I feel strangely guilty, like I'm picking on TOMS here, but I think that the founder of TOMS and many of the people who worked there really did have good intentions. And really all this criticism really points to is that, I don't know, maybe brands and companies are not the appropriate conduit, not the appropriate driving force for charity and mutual aid in this world, right? Perhaps we should separate these two actions and let the experts do what the experts do. So, so Let activists, let NGOs, let organizations whose entire reason for existing is working within communities and helping communities with what they actually need, let them do it right. Also let communities care for one another. Like perhaps, I don't know, what if TOMS gave a significant portion of their sales, not this 1% nonsense that a lot of brands are adopting. What if they gave a significant amount of their their sales to mutual aid programs, to small community organizations? Or even I guess, you know, maybe it is a big fat shock to someone who is helping people in the Philippines who live in landfills. You know, like there is an art and there is technique, there is science to helping people and companies and brands, they are not well equipped to deal with that because you might cynically say, well, charities are businesses too. But the fact of the matter is that the regular operations and strategies of running a company, a brand, are extremely different than running an effective charitable organization that makes a difference out in the world. And maybe if businesses want to be involved in charity, they should just be writing a check. They should not be like inventing a whole system that's supposed to fix the world's problems. Because strangely enough, charity should not be a marketing story. I don't even know why I said strangely enough, it just shouldn't be. Right? We're talking about two very separate things here. Let's take a moment to thank some of the incredible small businesses who keep clotheshorse going via their generous Patreon support. Slow Fashion Academy is a size inclusive sewing and pattern making studio based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Designer and fashion professor Ruby Gertz teaches workshops for hobbyists and aspiring designers so that anyone can learn the foundational skills of making, mending and altering their own clothes several times per year. Ruby offers her flagship Sloper Workshop, an in person two day pattern making retreat where you will learn how to drape a set of basic block patterns that capture your unique shape and proportions. You can also use these basic block or sloper patterns as a foundation for infinite styles of garments that are custom made to your body's one of a kind contours. Or compare your slipper to commercial patterns to see where you might need to alter the shape Shape. No more guessing at full bust, flat seam or sway back adjustments. Start with a foundation that fits. Ruby also provides professional design and pattern making services to emerging slow fashion brands and occasionally takes commissions for custom garments and costume pieces. She has also released several PDF sewing patterns for original designs under her brands Spokes and Stitches and Starling Petite plus. I just want to also add here on a personal note that right now Ruby is actually working with me to create a one of a kind unique to me special dress that I will be wearing for all future clothes horse events including live episodes later this year in the Pacific Northwest. I am so excited to work with Ruby because she is so talented and so knowledgeable about all things clothing creation. Check out the schedule for upcoming workshops, download PDF sewing patterns and learn about additional sewing and Design Services at www.slowfashion.academy. and it's important for me to tell you that that's slowfashion.academy Selena Sanders a social impact brand that specializes in upcycle clothing using only reclaimed vintage or thrifted materials from tea towels, linens, blankets and quilts. Sustainably crafted in Los Angeles, each piece is designed to last in one's closet for generations to come. Maximum style Minimal carbon footprint. Shift clothing out of beautiful Astoria, Oregon with a focus on natural fibers, simple hard working designs and putting fat people first. Discover more@shiftwheeler.com late to the party Creating one of a kind statement clothing from vintage, salvaged and thrifted textiles. They hope to tap into the dreamy memories we all hold. Floral curtains, a childhood dress, the wallpaper in your best friend's rec room. All while creating modern sustainable garments that you'll love wearing and have for years to come. Late to the Party is passionate about celebrating and preserving textiles, the memories they hold and the stories they have yet to tell. Check them out on Instagram 8 to the party people. Vino Vintage based just outside of LA. We love the hunt of shopping secondhand because you never know what you might find. Catch us at flea markets around Southern California by following us on Instagram Vino Vintage so you don't miss our next event. Dylan Paige is an online clothing and lifestyle brand based out of St. Louis, Missouri. Our products are chosen with intention for the conscious community. Everything we carry is animal friendly, ethically made, sustainably sourced and cruelty free. Dylan Paige is for those who never stop questioning where something comes from. We know that personal experience dictates what's sustainable for you and we are here to help guide and support you to make choices that fit your needs. Check us out@dylanpage.com and find us on Instagram ylanpage lifeandstyle Salt hats purveyors of truly sustainable hats hand blocked, sewn and embellished in Detroit, Michigan. Find us on Instagram Salt Hats Thumbprint is Detroit's only fair trade marketplace. Located in the historic Eastern Market, our small business specializes in products handmade by empowered women in South Africa making a living wage creating things they love like hand painted candles and ceramics. We also carry a curated assortment of sustainable and natural locally made goods. Thumbprint is a great gift destination for both the special people in your life life and for yourself. Browse our online store@thumbprintdetroit.com and find us on Instagram thumprintdetroit Vagabond Vintage DTLV is a vintage clothing, accessories and decor reselling business based in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. Not only do we sell in Las Vegas, but we're also located throughout resale markets in San Francisco as well as at a curated boutique called Lux and Ivy located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Jessica, the founder and owner of Vagabond Vintage DTLV recently opened the first IRL location located in the Arts District of downtown Las Vegas on August 5th. The shop has a strong emphasis on 60s and 70s garments, single stitch tees and dreamy loungewear. Follow them on Instagram vagabondvintagedtlv and keep an eye out for their website. Coming fall of 2022 back in the 2000s mark gob instructed brands to, quote, get to know who your consumers really are, what really matters to them, and show them that you feel the same way. The effectiveness of these programs can no longer be questioned because done the right way, they can bolster a brand's equity and provide an open conduit through which the consumer brand relationship will deepen. First off, ew. I don't want to have a deep relationship with a business that sells me stuff. But remember, the primary ethos of emotional branding is selling to your customers without seeming like you are selling to them. So by giving your company a mission or a cause to talk about, you're kinda selling without selling. Especially if that mission is fueled by customers purchasing a single specific product or buying something during a window of time going back to Tom's, customers had to buy a pair of shoes to get a pair of shoes donated. Rewinding all the way Back to the 1980s, the donation to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty was only made if customers used their American Express cards. And in both of these situations, I want to be clear with you as a person who has worked on so many of these campaigns. The entire structure of it, including the amount of the donation and what customers are paying for and what the cost of that product is that they're buying. All of this is engineered to ensure that the company loses no money even after the donation is made. This doesn't cost the company anything, which almost makes it Free Marketing the criticism and concerns about cause marketing and its endless plethora of give backs and fundraiser to use will not surprise you. First is the issue of authenticity. Companies may engage in so called cause washing without any real commitment to actual long term support. Rather, it's a reason to send out marketing emails and create social media content. It's a way to drive sales during a slow season. It's an opportunity to pick up some free PR. I read a New York Times article from 2009, aka the Great Recession that talked about how difficult it was to get people to spend money, obviously, but that people were more apt to open their wallets even if they were broken, if there was a charitable give back involved. So companies were leaning into that to drive sales in an otherwise challenging economic climate. And we see even as the recession sort of recedes, we see cause marketing picking up more and more momentum, just becoming a part of everyday Life in the 2010s because you have to remember by the middle of the 2000 and tens, just about every clothing and shoe or any brand really had adopted the fast fashion model, which meant they had raised one another to the bottom in terms of pricing. So they were all kind of selling stuff at the same price. Even if it didn't seem like that on the price tag, then they were all kind of buying into all the same trends because they were trying to get the trends first, right? The quality of the product was declining, although it was nowhere near where it is right now. And suddenly there wasn't a lot to compete on, right? And so for a few years there cause marketing could make you stand out. If you had a feminist tea collection, if you were collecting donations on Earth Day, these were the kinds of things that would make you stand out in comparison to other brands who were essentially selling the same stuff for the same price. It was just Another way to differentiate your brand and get your customers attention. Another one of the key criticisms of cause marketing is this. A company might say it cares about women's rights or climate change for a marketing story, but then behind the scenes, it's underpaying women or doing nothing to reduce its carbon emissions. I mean, I mean, that's pretty much any Zara sustainable collection or any fast fashion brand's feminist tees. Is it feminist to wear a tee made by women who were underpaid and worked in terrible conditions? Is any brand who doesn't talk about its garment workers really deserving credit for its latest fundraising scam? One step further. Is it feminist to over consume clothing knowing that environmental justice, this is also a feminist issue? Next, cause marketing commercializes social issues. It takes serious problems and turns them into marketing opportunities. It sells the illusion that we can shop our way to a better world. And no, we cannot. No conscious collection or Earth Day tea or feminist collection is is ever going to fix the problems our world is facing. Like, not even a little bit. Not to pick on Tom skin, but those shoes didn't really change any lives. A pithy donation of 1% of sales of one certain item or collection isn't going to either. But even more likely, cause marketing campaigns tend to be an inefficient form of giving. I mean, first off, why should we have to buy something to get a company who has far more resources than us to donate money to a cause? We don't ask that question often enough. We don't ask often enough what's in it for you. Furthermore, the actual charitable impact is often quite small compared to the marketing budget for said campaign. A company might donate a few cents per product while spending dollars on advertising the partnership. Those dollars just could have been donated instead straight out. But then, how does that drive revenue? Often these donations are given well after the fact, after everything has been double checked by the finance department. In cases where a company says it is donating a specific portion of profit, those profits are often calculated by deducting not just the cost of the product, but also any advertising budget, the staff that worked on the product, the social media and marketing teams, packaging, shipping, etc. There's just not much profit left afterwards. When a company says it's donating a portion of the proceeds, well, that could be profits or sales. It is unclear. And the thing is, there's just no transparency. Rarely do we see the final donation because it happens so much later. We have often forgotten about it in the first place. Interestingly enough, Mark gob and other marketing writers of the 2000s thought that the Internet was this massive turning point in the ways brands could market themselves because the Internet would force them to behave more transparently. And yet have they really sure, it can be sort of easier to call out brands thanks to social media, assuming that the algorithm even shows that post to enough people. But the existence of the Internet has certainly not forced brands to be more transparent about anything, including the impact of their cause marketing. If anything, the Internet has made it easier for brands to bury the bad stuff about themselves in cute Instagram posts and most definitely paid content on blogs and influencer accounts. My feeling is that by 2025 these brands have mastered the use of the Internet so well that it actually allows them to obscure just about everything from us. Another issue with cause marketing is that it often overstates the impact of the company's campaign or mission statement. Tom's is a great example. Sure, it's a feel good story, but as the study I discussed earlier indicated, the impact really wasn't that significant. And worse, companies tend to pick the most popular, non controversial causes to support because they won't alienate customers or be less appealing and marketable. Like focusing on children's health care over care for unhoused adults or helping people who are struggling with addiction. Giving shoes to kids is way more heartwarming than cleaning up landfills or creating economic opportunities. Lastly, cause marketing exploits our desire to do good, making us feel good about purchases that we might have never made, all while creating a smokescreen for companies with less than stellar policies on human rights and environmental responsibility. Once again, the obvious issue of feminist tease made by exploited female garment workers or fast fashion brands selling us an eco conscious collection. When I worked at Nasty Gal, an overall miserable place to work. I mean a place like legendarily a bad place to work. Jezebel was having a field day with Nasty Gal at peak Nasty Galness at Nasty Gal, where its primarily female workforce was overworked and underpaid, all in the name of selling low quality fast fashion made under dubious or at least opaque conditions. We were forced to chant the company's mission statement at the beginning of every all hands meeting, and it was something like like we're on a mission to help every woman live her best life. But apparently girlboss didn't apply to the employees or the women sewing the clothes the company sold. In fact, while Nasty Gal rarely pulled any fundraiser shenanigans, it didn't need to. It was coasting off the goodwill of Sofia Amoruso's Girlboss book, meaning that lots of customers thought they were buying into some kind of copy. I guess the cause was white feminism. They were buying into that with every purchase. And it's pretty silly in retrospect, but these mission statements, they are also, as I mentioned earlier, designed to keep employees engaged and maybe have them look past low pay and bad working conditions. It works. Cause marketing works not just on customers, but staff as well. And it is very potent. I get excited when I feel like people are starting to see through that stuff now. And I hope, I hope we keep that up. Okay, so Nasty Gal and its mission statement is pretty ridiculous. So here's a less ridiculous example. Even at the feminist brand where we were donating 1% of sales of feminist teas to Planned Parenthood, wouldn't it have been far more impactful for the company to have given its employees health insurance, a parental leave policy, real desks and chairs, not weird wobbly stools from ikea, a work life balance and a positive working environment? I don't know, it just seems like, huh, that could have been like, really, really significant impact. Creating good jobs that made people feel healthy and engaged would have done more for the world than writing a check for a few thousand dollars at the end of the year. That was just a drop in the bucket for a large organization like Planned Parenthood. Putting effort into cultivating a supply chain that provided safe, dignified work for the people. Sewing those feminist teas would have created more impact and it probably would have meant more to customers too. And it definitely would have been more feminist, right? In fact, anytime a retail company is doing a give back campaign of some sort, I'm like, what about your retail workers? What about your warehouse workers? What about your factories? Start by caring for those people properly. And then you won't need to trick us into buying stuff from your latest cause washing campaign because we'll know that you are the right place to spend money for things we need. Because that's the thing about cause marketing. Marketing. It's not charity, it's marketing. And as I mentioned earlier, not only is it not charity, it's just marketing. It is the least risky and least expensive way to market your brand. And I'll be honest with you, I have a certain amount of cynicism toward cause marketing that I certainly didn't have at the beginning of my career. But after years of working on campaigns like this, and yet experiencing as an employee myself, and observing amongst my coworkers and peers that many of us were underpaid, we were unable to get health care or we were like, one paycheck away from not being able to have a place to live. And yet here we were, working all the time, sacrificing aspects of our personal life for these companies. Because the sort of spell of this cause marketing is so beguiling that even as an employee, you feel like you're doing something important and that as a result of that, you should sacrifice a good quality of life for yourself. And it's like, no, we're here selling T shirts and candles and pins. Why would we be sacrificing things for that? This is a business. Around the time I left the horrible feminist company, I was really struggling with the disconnect between the actual experience of working there, the internal culture, and what people on the the outside thought it was. They thought that I had, like, the coolest job ever. That this company was somehow, like, groundbreaking, was like changing what it meant to be a retailer. I guess that this company was more charity and activist than store, which was just so not true. And none, none of the people outside of the company could have ever imagined how hard it was to. To work there. And in my last month or two working there, I worked with some of my co workers to write Glassdoor reviews. And everybody was really frightened because it was such a small team that it would become apparent immediately who wrote the Glassdoor review if just one person did it. So we all needed to write them together. And what happened after a few of us posted our reviews is that there was sort of this, like, avalanche of many reviews coming from. I don't even know who, maybe people who had worked there in the past, maybe people who are working there currently. What's interesting, and I don't know what the deal is with Glassdoor, is that the majority of the reviews that we wrote back then are now gone from this company's profile. I don't know if it considers them too old. I don't know why they take things down. But there was one review that really stuck with me. And to this day, I have no idea who wrote it. I mean, I have a suspicion that person wrote, company donates money to fund women's health, but employees don't have health care. I was like, yeah. To get down to brass tacks, this summarizes why this business model. Because that's what it is. It is a business model. It is marketing. It is not charity. It summarizes how broken this is. Because if you can't take care of your own, meaning your staff, the people who are fueling this business, why are you giving anything away? It's sort of like to be a responsible business owner. If you, if you really care about that triple bottom line, if that's what you're going for, then you have to care for your staff, your employees before you start extending money to the outside world. And that's just the reality of it. And so if you're not doing that, then you're really not doing social good. You're just marketing social good. And so if I sound really cynical about cause marketing, it's because I've had to spend a lot of time reflecting on this, on where business ends and charity begins, and what good actual authentic social responsibility is in a world full of fake social responsibility, of illusions of social responsibility, of marketing packaged as social responsibility. While we're here talking about companies pledging a portion of sales to charity, let's talk about 1% for the planet, an international organization whose members contribute at least 1% of their annual revenue to environmental causes. 1% for the planet was funded by Yvonne Chunot. I probably botched that, guys. I watched a video about how to pronounce this. I'm sorry, you might know him as the founder of Patagonia. And the other founder is Craig Matthews. And 1% for the planet was founded in 2002. How it works is that member companies pledge to donate 1% of their annual sales, not profits, to environmental nonprofits that have been approved by the organization. Part of that 1% of sales donation is annual dues to the organization to cover operating expenses. This also gives these companies the right to use the 1% for the planet logo on their websites. I will say that 1% for the planet is not sketchy or even a bad thing. But like a lot of cause marketing, the impact is maybe not that significant. And that logo, it can give brands a powerful greenwashing Shield. First off, 1% of sales just isn't that much money. As I've told you so many times in this episode, large companies could likely donate far more than that. One percent of a million dollars is $10,000. It's just not that much. And while I would love for someone to give me $10,000, it often doesn't do much on a charitable donation level, but surely would have some significant impact from a mutual aid perspective. So it's also just like, how is this money being used? Where is it going? How are the organizations receiving it? It using it, there's not a lot of transparency. Next, it shifts the focus from the real environmental impact of many businesses where a better use of their resources would be cleaning up their supply chain, mitigating their plastic pollution, cutting their carbon footprint, taking care of their employees, etc. Etc. A company could open their own landfill, fill it with plastic, set it on fire, and then stop paying all of their employees and still keep that 1% for the planet certification. Huh? Please. I hope no one opens their own landfill and fills it with burning plastic. But you know it's still early in 2025, right? If you're enjoying this episode, then this is a great time to remind you that my work here at Clothesforce is made possible by the support of listeners like you. Just like NPR and these great small businesses. Please go give them your support. Blank CAS or Blanket Coats by CAS is focused on restoring, renewing and reviving the history held within vintage and heirloom textiles by embodying the love, craft and energy that is original to each vintage textile. As I transfer it into a new garment, I hope we can reteach ourselves to care for and mend what we have and make it last. Blank CAS lives on Instagram @blankcas and a website will be launched soon@blankcasts.com Located in Whistler, Canada, Velvet Underground is a velvet jungle full of vintage and secondhand clothing plants, a vegan cafe and lots of rad products from other small sustainable businesses. Our mission is to create a brand and community dedicated to promoting self expression as well as educating and inspiring a more sustainable and conscious lifestyle both for the people and the planet. Find us on Instagram shopvelvetunderground or online at www. Do shop velvetunderground.com Republica Unicornia yarns Handmade yarn and notions for the color obsessed. Made with love and some swearing in fabulous Atlanta, Georgia by head yarn wench Kathleen get ready for Rainbows with a side of Giving a damn. Republica Unicornia is all about making your own magic using small batch, responsibly sourced, hand dyed yarns and thoughtfully made notions. Slow fashion all the way down and discover the joy of creating your very own beautiful hand knit, crocheted or woven pieces. Find us on Instagram @republicaunicorniarns and at www.republicaunicornia.com picnic wear a slow fashion brand ethically made by hand from vintage and dead stock materials, most notably vintage towels. Founder Dani has worked in the industry as a fashion Designer for over 10 years, but started Picnic Wear in response to her dissatisfaction with the industry's shortcomings. Picnicware recently moved to rural North Carolina where all their sewing and accessories are now designed and cut, but the majority of their sewing is done by skilled garment workers in New York City. Their customers take comfort in knowing that all their sewists are paid well above New York City minimum wage. Picnic wear offers minimal waste and maximum authenticity Future Vintage over Future garbage Cute Little Ruin is an online shop dedicated to providing quality vintage and secondhand clothing, vinyl and home items in a wide range of styles and price points. If it's ethical and legal, we try to find a home for it. Vintage style with progressive values Find us on Instagram utelittleruans Is there a little bit of Italy in your soul? Are you an enthusiast of pre loved decor and accessories? Bring vintage Italian style and history into your space. With the pewter thimble we source useful and beautiful things and mend them where needed. We also find gorgeous illustrations and make them print worthy tarot cards, tea towels and hand picked treasures available to use you from the comfort of your own home. Responsibly sourced from across Rome, lovingly renewed by fairly paid artists and artisans with something for every budget. Discover more at theputerthimble.com Deco Denim is a startup based out of San Francisco and it sells clothing and accessories that are sustainable, gender fluid, size inclusive and high quality. Made to last for years, years to come. Deco Denim is trying to change the way you think about buying clothes. Founder Sarah Mattis wants to empower people to ask important questions like where was this made? Was this garment made ethically? Is this fabric made of plastic? Can this garment be upcycled and if not, can it be recycled? Sign up@decodenim.com to receive $20 off your first purchase. They promise not to spam you and send out no more than three emails a month, with two of them surrounding education or a personal note from the founder. Again, that's decodenim.com I see a lot less buy this and will donate that campaigns these days. But you know what I see everywhere, even at Taco Bell. Would you like to round up your total to support xyz? It happens at checkouts, even self checkout and online. And it's low key in my opinion, the laziest form of cause marketing. Before I unpack the extremely valid criticism of these roundup campaigns, I have to say that I'm not even sure if they do a lot from an emotional branding perspective for the companies that are running them. Like I don't think more highly of Taco Bell because it has a scholarship program and furthermore, because these roundups seem to be happening everywhere, people are generally feeling bored and fatigued by them and kinda annoyed by the pressure to say yes lest they appear selfish in public. It's low key. More like awkwardness and social coercion than genuine charitable giving. It's super manipulative. And when you get down to brass tack tax, once again, why isn't the company, who has way more resources than any of us, just making a donation? So if customers are generally not into these roundup campaigns, why are companies doing them? Well, for one, I think sometimes the leadership of these companies is just way out of touch with the reality of the world around them. The recent Sydney Sweeney American Eagle campaign is a great example. I highly doubt that the company was trying to make a grand Nazi eugenics statement. I mean, the founder and CEO of the company is Jewish. But what I think did happen is at least one person in one meeting said, hey, guys, I think this campaign might be inappropriate, especially now, and here's why. And everyone in charge was like, oh, you're always so woke and you worry too much. It'll be fine. It's a brilliant, funny, great, awesome campaign. Because I've been that person in so many meetings in my life. For example, when Nasty Gao produced an entire collection of clothing that was basically Chinese cosplay, like traditional Chinese clothing, but fashion. And then they did a photo shoot in Chinatown. Okay, this is getting worse. This is getting worse. And then they included an elderly Chinese American woman as a prop. She even had one of those little grandma grocery carts. And the models were standing next to her sexily in their mega cultural appropriation fast fashion clothing. And I said, in a meeting, doesn't anyone here feel like this might be cultural appropriation? And it was like, skirt record scratch. And then the person in charge being like, why would anyone ever think this we're honoring? And everybody was like, yeah, that sounds good. Moving on, there was that. How about another employer that I worked for that did a whole campaign, this is a company owned by white cisgendered women. Did a whole campaign of things that were like, we are all black, we are all immigrants, we are all queer. Sometimes the people in charge just don't want to hear that it's a bad idea. And I think in many of these companies, executives are just covering their ears like, la, la, la, la la. When anyone suggests that these roundup campaigns might be kind of done. Zo. But these companies are also thinking, one, we're going to get great PR and generate so much goodwill for collecting money at checkout. Two, we get this image boost with minimal investment on our end. Like, maybe we have to make Some signs, maybe we have to pressure our store staff to collect donations, but that's it. It like doesn't cost us anything. 3. Maybe we can get people to give us their email addresses while they're making a donation and then we can market to them. And by the way, usually email address addresses cost money, so what a win. But here is the benefit that these companies do not get. And please, for the love of all things VC Andrews, stop spreading misinformation about this on social media. Companies do not get to write off the donations from these Roundup campaigns on their taxes. Period. If, say, the company raises $10,000 from a campaign and decides to throw in $1,000 of their own money money, they can write off the thousand dollars, but that's it. Meanwhile, if a company is doing a 1% of profits or a portion of sales fundraiser, they can write off that donation on their taxes round up. Donations are not a tax write off for the company. Please spread the word. You know those signs people have outside their houses that are like in this home we believe in signs, etc. Well, clotheshorse would have a sign that says in this community we know that it's cheap because someone didn't get paid. Unskilled labor is a classist myth. There's no such thing as bad taste. Free shipping isn't free. Putting your jeans in the freezer doesn't clean them. And companies don't get to write off the donation you made when you rounded up your total at checkout. I'm very passionate about this and believe it or not, that horrible American Eagle campaign was also cause marketing. Not just, just heinous nightmare bad marketing. Just not aware of the world it lives in right now. It was also cause marketing because a portion of the sales of a specific pair of Butterfly jeans were going to be donated to a domestic violence charity that just got lost in the sauce of a really, really stupid idea. The Roundup version of cause marketing has all the same drawbacks as any other cause marketing campaign brands cherry pick charities that are most appealing and least controversial. The timeline of when the actual donation is made is kinda unclear. These donations may not be very impactful. Businesses shouldn't serve as intermediaries for charitable giving. It's kind of weird when you think about it. And of course, why aren't these companies just donating that money themselves? Taco Bell, I get it that you have a scholarship program. That's great. Why do I need to be a part of it? It you have way more money than me. That's all I'm saying okay, well, we're going to round up JK round out this episode by talking for a few minutes about B Corp certification, which is another creation of the Cause Marketing Triple Bottom Line brand with a mission era of the 2000s and 2010s. A few weeks ago, within minutes of one another, I read a post on Reddit where someone declared that they only shop from B corporations. And then immediately after an article about how fast fashion brand Princess Polly had just attained B Corp certification and I thought my brain might just explode. So let's talk about B Corp certification, okay? It is granted by a nonprofit organization called B Lab, which was founded in 2006 and the first 82B Corps were certified in 2007. And for a long time it really stood for something because ostensibly it means that companies met verifiable standards of social and environmental responsibility, accountability and transparency. Certified companies must score at least 80 points on B Lab's assessment and legally commit to considering stakeholders beyond shareholders. It sounds great, although Dustin is always like this should be the bare minimum. And I agree. Earlier this year, Dr. Bronner made headlines by releasing a statement explaining why it would no longer be renewing its B Corp certification, saying the integrity of the B Corp certification has been compromised and remaining certified now contradicts our mission. The increasing certification of multinationals, including Unilever Australia and Nespresso in 2022, followed by Nestle Health Sciences in 2023, demonstrated that B Lab is not committed to protecting the integrity of the B Corp certification and movement, nor ensuring that the certification won't be used to mislead consumers. This was definitely not a surprise to B Lab or any of the mega B Corp watchers out there like me, because Dr. Bronner's, along with a long list of other B Corps Corps, had published an open letter a few years earlier expressing concerns about B Lab certifying companies that frankly should not have been certified. At that point, Nespresso had just been granted B Corp Status, and the letter calls out why this is such a problem. Although Nespresso has achieved the minimum currently required for certification, scoring 84 out of out of 200 points, Nespresso's abysmal track record on human rights, from child labor and wage theft to abuse of factory workers, is well documented by the media and NGOs. Indeed, Nespresso's extractive business model is publicly known to be fundamentally at odds with the ethical and just future B Corps want to build and should have structurally been a barrier to Nespresso's B Corp certification instead. The fact that Nespresso can achieve a score that allows them to be certified as a B Corp and use the certification to greenwash its business model and practices demonstrates that the B impact assessment scoring system and certification process is in serious need of repair. And to be clear, not only were the signers of this letter concerned about child labor, forced labor and wage theft theft in Nespresso's supply chain, which are horrible. Obviously they were also concerned about a company that makes most of its revenue from selling single use coffee pods. Now I posted about this on Instagram the same day I saw Princess Polly had also achieved B Corp status, which Fast Fashion should never be able to pass that certification. Anyway, I posted about this and somebody really came for me accusing me of not doing my research when it came to the Nespresso pods. Which actually means two things. One, that person didn't do their research because it was very easy to find the truth about Nespresso's pods and two, Nespresso's greenwashing is so convincing that it makes people show up to fight with strangers on the Internet, which we know means that the emotional branding is really effective. Per Nespresso itself, only about a third of their coffee pods are ever recycled, and that number has not been independently verified by anyone. Other experts think the recycling rate is actually more like 5%. The pods are made of complex layers that mean regular municipal recycling facilities cannot handle them, so they must be sent to Nespresso by customers. And of course most are not doing that. Furthermore, these pods tend to grow mold because of, you know, wet coffee grounds, and that renders them unrecyclable too. To put this in perspective, a 2020 Guardian article calculated with a conservative estimate of 14 billion capsules being sold each year and 0.9 grams of aluminum per caps, that means 12,600 tons of Nespresso aluminum end up in landfill annually, enough for 60 Statues of Liberty. I told you the Statue of Liberty was coming back. That is a lot of aluminum. Furthermore, the crux of Nespresso's more premium branding and greenwashing claims is that because these pods are made of aluminum, not plastic like Keurig, they are all around better in every way. But actually, mining aluminum is a resource intensive process that creates toxic byproducts in the process. I'm going to link to an article from Fairworld Project about Nespresso that includes this zinger about Nespresso's partnership with mining company Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto is a mining giant dubbed a poster child for corporate malfeasance for their lengthy rap sheet of environmental, labor, and human rights violations, as well as corruption and bribery. Oh, that's cool. Wait, why does Nespresso have B Corp certification? Also, why are strangers ready to fight me about Nespresso on the Internet? Oh yeah, sick branding. That's right. Okay, okay, well, Nespresso is the most controversial company to receive B Corp status, but like I said, they have also given that certification to a literal fast fashion company and several MLMs. And these controversial choices are indicative of much of the criticism, or at least skepticism B Lab has been facing for the past few years. B Corp certification relies on self assessment, which, to be clear, means these companies are literally assessing themselves, right? There's no outside independent auditor doing this. And furthermore, companies can spin the data however they want. This means that they can avoid bigger, more complex issues within their business practices while spotlighting smaller, less significant wins, because companies only have to provide a snapshot score every three years. Also, that score, once again is self assessed, meaning they're giving themselves the test, if you will, and then they're grading it. It means they can do whatever sketchy shit they want in the years in between. B Lab itself has never actually been accredited by a third party organization, which has raised concerns that maybe certifications are not being granted consistently, bending the rules for some, or even that funds from the certification fees are being used appropriately. And while losing B Corp certification could be embarrassing, there's no real repercussions for losing it. And why would you, when you're the one greeting yourself, you're going to give yourself a good score, right? And lastly, but definitely, not leastly, at this point, it seems like a B Corp certification is a great way to greenwash the rest of your business because people just assume that you must be doing great things. Nespresso is an extreme example of this. But what about the other big companies who have managed to be certified? I do want to take a moment here to say that there are plenty of amazing companies who are doing things the right way because they genuinely care and they have B Corp certification. But there are also many who do not. Because the process to be certified, that self assessment process is intense and it does cost money and time that many businesses cannot afford. In 2018, I worked with a client who was working on B Corp certification and it was intense. Intense. Everything, and I mean everything, had to be documented, from the kinds of towels being used to clean the bathroom at the office, to transparency into pay structures ensuring that no one was being paid less due to gender, race or disability. This company was amazing and already super sustainability minded. But even they had to make changes to get the certification because they were being super honest about it and they were paying me and other staff members to work on the self assessment which took months. That work cost the company money. A lot of great sustainable brands cannot do that. So when you take a step back and really think about this in terms of B corporations, two important themes emerge. One is that just because a company has B Corp certification certification doesn't mean that it's a place where you should be spending your money. And two, just because a company doesn't have B Corp certification doesn't mean that it's a bad company. The company may just not be able to afford the process of self assessment. They may also be like Dr. Bronner's and be like eh, this certification certification kind of doesn't mean anything right now in 2025. And that's okay too. I respect sticking to your values. When you really believe in the principles of B Corp certification and then you see someone like Nespresso having it, well then why would you want it? It almost feels dishonest. Whether it's Nespresso and its B Corp certification feminist tease with a give back or even asking to round up your purchase at Petco, the intention is always clear. Creating more good vibes with customers in hopes of gaining some loyalty and maybe even motivating someone to defend your business on the Internet. And you know what? It works. Although maybe now maybe it's starting to lose its luster. Like a lot of things we talk about here on Clothesh, most people don't really know know about cause marketing. They probably don't even know that term and they definitely don't know its real impact. And that's where we come in. We can talk with them about these things in a non judgmental, super kind way. There's no shame in being sort of beguiled by cause marketing because it's a proven successful technique for marketing a brand. And for those of us who know the full story worry, it's kind of our job to share what we know with others. So get out there and tell people about cause marketing. Thanks for listening to another episode of Close Horse. Written, researched, edited, hosted all the things by me, Amanda Lee McCarty. Can you tell that Brenda's on my lap purring right now? I don't know. It's glorious but a little distracting. Anyway, part four in this series will be coming in the next week or so. Timeline is a little bananas right now because my work load is really intense and Dustin is on tour, which means I have to send files back and forth and it slows the whole thing down. But hopefully in the next week you'll get to hear part four. If you liked what you're hearing, please leave a rating a Review Tell your friends if you didn't like what you're hearing, you don't need to do any of those things. I would prefer if you didn't. Actually, if you'd like to support my work financially, there are many ways you can do that. There's also merch for sale@closehorsepodcast.com I also just want to throw in here that I added a new section to the Clotheshorse website. It's called the Slow Fashion Resource center. And there I am gradually taking some of the more text dense posts from social media and converting them into just like text with a few graphics and they'll live there forever. So if you're looking to go do some reading, go check that out. And lastly, but of course, never leastly thanks to my other half, Mr. Dustin Travis White, who is out on tour right now for the next couple of weeks with his band American Motors. Thank you Dustin. Thank you for our music and audio support and I will talk to all of you very soon. Sam.