Part IV
Towards Social Equity Brands, and How a Social Capital Strategy Gets Us There
Our preoccupation with sustainability – or rather unsustainability – is a preoccupation with a symptom, rather than the cause. And like all obsessions with symptoms, a genuine and durable solution remains out of sight.
Instead, we’ve argued that the cause of our problems is the slow collapse in levels – and appreciation – of social capital. Actually more than that – we’ve argued the cause is a collapse and loss of balance in social capital. This loss of balance and quality has allowed us systematically to marginalise voices and externalise costs in the name of convenience when it has come to our exclusive and intoxicating relationships.
But where social capital is high, the propensity and desire to marginalise voices or viewpoints and externalise these costs or impacts is low. Why? Because we know, understand, care and want to act. As our focus group mother succinctly framed it, ‘When I throw something away, where is “away”?’
With high social capital, there is no ‘away’. This should spell good news for brands, as we’ve argued these products of twentieth century industrial progress are in the very business of building social capital. More than that, brands cannot function without social capital – it is their oxygen. Social capital, when looked at in the context of brands, represents the potential conductivity of society, and the more conductive a society, the more likely it is that communication ...
