A Decade of Very Demure, Very Mindful Marketing

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
​author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing 

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It’s hard to believe that Mindful Marketing has been shining a light on ethics in the field for ten years! TikTok didn’t exist in September 2014, when I wrote “CVS Quits Smoking,” the very first article on MindfulMarketing.org. Likewise, the appetite for influencer content, such as Jools Lebron’s “Very demure, very mindful” viral videos, was just starting to grow. The world looked different in many ways during the fall of 2014:  

• Barrack Obama was a year-and-a-half into his second term as president.
• Prince Harry was still single and part of the British royal family.
• Tom Brady had won just three of his seven Super Bowls.
• Instagram was only six years old.
• Apple’s newest phones were the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
• On May 23, Tesla stock closed at a mere $13.82 a share.
• Russia had invaded Crimea just a half year earlier.
• George Floyd was still alive.
• The #MeToo movement was several years away.
• The world didn’t know what a global pandemic would be like.
• It was still a year before Volkswagen’s notorious Dieselgate.
• The URL MindfulMarketing.org was still available.
• I had less gray hair

 
When I created the Mindful Marketing concept and Mindful Matrix ten years ago, I dreamed of doing the impossible: moving the needle on ethics in my field. As most people realize, marketing unfortunately has a reputation for being among the most morally suspect professions.
 
Each year Gallup conducts a poll in which it asks respondents to rate the honesty and ethical standards of 20 or so occupations. Inevitably, at the top of the list are jobs like doctor, nurse, and pharmacist, while near the bottom are several marketing occupations such as telemarketer, advertising practitioner, and car salesperson.
 
High-profile morale lapses like Volkswagen developing a defeat-device to trick emission tests, Wells Fargo employees creating fake accounts, and Turing Pharmaceutical’s CEO Martin Shkreli increasing the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000%, have suggested that marketing ethics are easily forgotten.
 
Several other fields like accounting and law have continuing education requirements that include focus on ethics. Unfortunately, marketing does not. Consequently, a main aim of Mindful Marketing has always been to make ethics sticky.
 
A research paper I coauthored by Laureen Mgrdichian, published in Marketing Education Review, explains how Mindful Marketing utilizes a common analytical tool, a 2 x 2 matrix akin to the Boston Consulting Group’s portfolio matrix, to encourage conversations about ethical issues. The article also describes how Mindful Marketing leverages branding – a tool that organizations large and small use to differentiate their products from those of competitors and make them more memorable, i.e., stickier.
 
Admittedly, in ten years Mindful Marketing hasn’t come close to grabbing the incredible social media attention that Jools Lebron has gained in a few months – 2.2 million followers on TikTok – but it has received other significant recognition and exposure including:

• Dozens of articles republished on CommPro.biz
• Interviews by The New York Times, Fast Company, U.S. News & World Report, National Public Radio, and The Boston Globe
• Many speaking opportunities such as at the American Marketing Association’s annual Leadership Summit, the Marketing & Public Policy conference, the Marketing Management Association conference, and a special AI-focused conference of the British Academy of Management.

 
The most exciting new development is that there will soon be a Mindful Marketing book!

I’ve signed an agreement with Kendall Hunt to write “Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick,” which should be published this December. I am grateful to have been granted a sabbatical from teaching this fall to work on the book, which is now 80 percent complete.
 
Over the years, several people have asked me whether I might write a book on Mindful Marketing. Initially, I brushed off the suggestions, but as the site’s marketing ethics content continued to grow and gain traction, I began to give the idea more serious consideration.
 
A few years ago, I traveled back in the Mindful Marketing archives to September 2014, reviewed all the articles from that time forward, and curated them into specific categories to match topics I teach in my business ethics class. There are now over 320 Mindful Marketing articles, which provide a wealth of choices for engaging real-world applications to almost any ethical issue in marketing imaginable.
 
The articles have served my business ethics students well for discussions of topics ranging from utilitarianism, to economic and social justice, to decency. So, I thought if Mindful Marketing works for my course, it might work for others' classes. Moreover, a book seemed like the logical way to extend Mindful Marketing’s reach.
 
Some may wonder why marketing should be the focus of a business ethics book. Among other strong support, there are the arguments that marketing:

• “Is the distinguishing, unique function of business”
• “Is the lifeblood of any company”
• Touches every business area
• Directly impacts consumers many times a day
• Is used by business leaders (e.g., CEOs, VPs, partners)
• Is used by everyone (e.g., market their ideas, themselves)
• Is replete with moral issues to which students can readily relate

 
While students are the primary audience, I believe the book also will have value for marketing practitioners, who are the ones making the moral decisions that ultimately determine the ethical perceptions and realities of the field. Of course I’m biased, but I believe the book also will be an interesting read for anyone who is intrigued by, or concerned about, marketing’s unique impact on our world.
 
Most important, my hope is that the book will encourage more students-turned-marketing-professionals to hit pause and ask if the strategies they see or plan to use are Mindful Marketing.
 
Our world will be a better place when there are more professionals like Kaylee Enck, who even when hearing about a rom-com’s unconventional promotional approach, remembered the Mindful Marketing conversations she engaged in a few years earlier as a student, felt moral dissonance, and questioned the film producer’s strategy. Kaylee’s experience and others like hers show that Mindful Marketing’s stickiness offers strong hope for making an impact on ethics in the field.
 
It’s interesting to see how much more often the word mindful is used now than it was a decade ago. Sometimes the contexts are physical health, or mental well-being, or even demure attire. Although those uses are different, they’re complementary – they’re all about being thoughtful and principled.

​It’s good for us to be mindful in many different ways. Given the breadth and depth of marketing’s reach, our world will especially benefit from more Mindful Marketing.

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