HIGH IDEALS: A Letter on the Origins of Schema's 5 Activist Domains

Dear reader, I am writing to you as an idealistic, somewhat grumpy and slightly antisocial marketer to sell an idea.

The idea is contrarian, uncomfortable, unpopular and costly - but it's something that lives at the back of your mind as a professional, both junior and senior. It is the idea of telling the truth and backing it with real action, rather than staying passive under corporate pressure.

At the same time, how dare I tarnish the sacred art of SEO blogging, and rob it of its keywords, AI-generated copy and marketing slang to deliver a personal tirade on truth-saying? Very radical indeed it is, and this letter read you will.

As your one-sided pen-pal, allow me to start making the case for a seemingly dodgy form of corporate activism with a personal story on youthful contrarianism, which affected the way I think and work in marketing.

During my second job at a UK marketing agency, I learned that there is a time and place for energy and enthusiasm in the corporate world - especially when the marcomms industry tends to be somewhat liberal with the use of motivational buzz-words.

Everyday idealistic visions of "changing the world" and "corporate social responsibility" see the light of day, and everyone can feel fuzzy about them while patting their backs - but real change that is not only words or AI-generated copy is relatively rare, almost never materializing the way it was intended, if at all.

In cases of exaggerated promises on sustainability, we call it greenwashing. But do we have a keyword to describe similar -washing in every single trade and sector? We don't go after it as aggressively as we do with green stuff, do we? All I can think of is "whitewashing", and nothing else seems to have gained mainstream use. Hence most unkept promises go unnoticed, hidden behind infinite tirades of marketing noise. It's not catchy enough, I guess. And if it was catchy, we'd overuse it and leave it be as static noise.

Our agency offices were located on the grounds of my Alma Mater - a business incubation centre, that was a few steps away from the business & law study's building. For authenticity, we're talking the University of Lincoln's David Chiddick building.

As per usual, I went for a walk during lunch and found myself being stopped by a bunch of marcomms students - they were promoting themselves to become student union presidents. Alright, I bit the cookie and dropped the "what are your policies and change that you'll enact?". Genuine curiosity, gentle question that is meant to enable a conversation.

Turns out the cookie was all that I got, because that simple question was met by silence, confusion and an air of discomfort which kind of paints the image of a freshly caught carp struggling for air. Fair enough, it's not like I had any delusions on the value of British higher education - that disillusionment happened on graduation. Took my 250 kcal and walked away.

But it stayed with me for the rest of the day, and even many years later - till now. On a relatively boring afternoon, I kept thinking about the student stall. A cookie, a brochure, a person - presence with no essence. Would I do it differently? Is it worth having a stance on anything whatsoever? Does it matter if we take change seriously and practice an air of controversy? Does it risk votes or attract them? Does anyone care about anything?

To scratch this OCD itch, I looked at our real business clientele and what they ask of their marcomms wing. A social enterprise, a cafe, a tech start-up, a food award-company - what did they had us say on their behalf? One profited from promoting the products and services from other social enterprises - they took on countless statements of purpose and change-making - yet didn't commit to any original thought of their own. Fair enough, we kinda do the same as marketers.

The cafe preached sustainability, yet all they did was order fair-trade coffee beans, wrapped in plastic packaging, then called it "industry standards". Commercial grade slop. 100% arabica even. Wow so impressive. Subtle greenwashing, but ok, let's move on.

The tech start-up was the only unicorn out of the bunch - tech that enables better user experience for charities to receive donations and promote their activities. You can say that the only waste they had was aircon during the British summer heat wave and the diabolical, most ungodly amount of Nespresso capsules discarded on a day of pre-AI coding. Call it the human factor. Still better carbon footprint than a single GPT image creation prompt.

Then, the award-company was just a upper class middle-age wife hobbyl; they used every single trope they could get away with - from greenwashing to social change - without producing any value of their own (imagine 12 ladies having endless Zoom meetings with no sense of urgency or professional standards - zero creativity, only safe plays, all catering to the one who's actually funding it all). Take any political label that aligns itself with feminism, ESG, food waste, carbon footprint or whatever other trope that was popular at the time, and they'll commission a blog post before any actioning takes place. Cheap, fast, yet empty bullets - this slop-fest worked for a while.

"I hate mediocrity" - famous last words, uttered by my more youthful, idealistic-self that afternoon. And the word "mediocrity" doesn't do justice to my current, 10-year matured world of view anymore. I'd go with "lies", "manipulation", "deception", before ever breaching "mediocrity", but, after a decade of involvement in the shaping of these corporate policies, I found myself swaying into this pile of bile due to forced that are beyond the intuition of a one-man marketing army. People often associate marketers with a form of scammers, and I don't blame them. Pyramid schemes adopted the term MLM / multi-level marketing, and now it gets associated with our industry - no one's fighting the label, because if you give it attention it may even start feeling important. I don't like the approach - I'd love to put my hands in shit once in a while, if it means getting rid of it so that the house smells of Dettol, rather than all sorts of bacterial digestion. Same with the less obvious forms of ideas plaguing the marketing industry. If MLM is a pile of shit, greenwashing and mediocre half-assed execution in social change is cat piss - both stinky, both require cleaning. And that's the idea - cleaning the shit and piss that plagues the marketing industry. KEEP UP.

Sitting alone at a marketing department, after the entire roster resigned due to work pressure at this black-company in the middle of BKK, I released plenty of lies. Lies that were rarely unique; carbon copies of the next big corporate office building. Hotel buys an e-limo and an e-tuktuk, suddenly we're luxury trailblazers in the fight against noise and air pollution. Both affordable to a middle class family, and spare change in the pocket of the hotel owner - and I get to make a thing out of it as a marketer. I nodded, I took pics, I shook hands, I wrote a press release, influencers invited, driven, asked to sign a media release form - professional function complete. I thought it was ludicrous to comment on the amount of resources spent on this greenwashing push, since everyone around me seemed possessed by it - no questions asked, just do what daddy tells you. And there I was, being the epicenter of mediocrity that I promised myself to fight against.

Not my call, right? Afterall, who am I to question their statements, when greenwashed info lands on my table and demands a same-day PR release that serves no marketing value? Just pay me - I'm merely a reflection, a megaphone, a social media admin.

And so I let mediocrity slip past my filter as a marcomms leader. The same way that student fed me a dry raisin cookie, I fed you greenwashed lies of a soulless corporate establishment.

But then, a chance for redemption, a sort of professional awakening. When you start your own business - as an idealist, contrarian, maximalist - you ask yourself is it possible to do certain things that were previously unapproachable. To fix the wrongs of the past and perhaps even tell the truth, for once. At worst, you die unnoticed and find another corporate hell hole that pays you to lie; at best you scratch your soul by standing for something you value. Suddenly it's your call, and there's no friction - only miles of legal contract copy to sort out. And there we were - Schema was founded along with its corporate activist policies. Part of it is a cage of permanent higher standards, and some of it is likely to result in lost contracts - but at least it's true, human, actionable and in support of our idea of higher standards in communication.

We've created 5 activist policies that are formalized in our client contracts and strictly enforced in our business dealings and labour. Labelled as activist domains, behold:

1. War on Ukraine - disassociation from russian-aligned entities and individuals by refusal of contact; association with pro-Ukraine entities and individuals through pro-bono marcomms work. Anti-propaganda education and pro-Ukrainian charity promotion.

2. Sustainability - strict anti-greenwashing marcomms standards; disassociation from corporate blanket greenwashing frameworks, such as ESG, CSR, B Corp and similar; prioritisation of projects and brands that practice true sustainable actions and truthful communications; disassociation and expose stance on ideologically captured wasteful corporate policies in sustainability.

3. Animal Welfare - Direct pro-bono support for local feline wellness and rescue charities in Bangkok; strict disassociation from business entities in relevant industries that are hostile or conveniently neutral towards animal welfare (such as Animal Testing in the Beauty sector).

4. Mental Health - Development of real tools and products to support the total wellness of office professionals through our total wellness brand - "mindflow"; disassociation from and denial of service to known black-companies; prioritization of clientele that have a proven track record of positive, universal, non-discriminatory, non-greenwashed, realistic HR policies that ensure the wellness of employees.

5. Freedom of Speech - formal free-speech absolutism stance and activism in support of freedom of expression - legal, social, personal and creative; open and strict negative stance against any and all policies that restrict freedom of speech, be it law or public discourse.

No ESG, CSR, B Corp and other corporate slop involved - by design. As someone who had the gag-reflex inducing displeasure to practice professional yapping about ESG, I've seen its implementation in the real world, and, as you may have experienced this yourself, it's rarely more than a comfortable lie. And so we dismiss it entirely - at least for SME's. Bury it in a sea of mediocrity, inaction, sleep-deprived consciousness, manufactured urgency and analysis paralysis - let it drown in a world of corporate boot licking and double speak. The next 5 blog entries cover each of our activist policies. I'll show you how each is enforced with legal, formal, real-world business practice and activist action. It's an invitation to develop your own policies or connect with us in support of our activist domains. Next letter is on Ukraine. Unthink Marketing, Harry @ Schema