Unilever has abandoned efforts to “save the world” after a backlash from investors over “virtue-signalling” that included giving Hellmann’s mayonnaise a social purpose.
The consumer goods giant, which owns Marmite, Dove, Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s, has watered down green targets and scrapped some diversity pledges after investors told it to focus more on profits and less on social and environmental issues.
The initial contention was one of those things that could - have been - be true. The young today, or people today, are so invested in these wonderfully aware and connected ways of looking at the world that a company which accorded to the usual dictates would make a greater profit.
It’s obviously possible for us to look into our own souls and decide that no, actually, fair trade cocoa really isn’t something we’re willing to pay a premium for. Nor a guarantee that packaging requiring recycling will be kept to a minimum, the wilder shores of gender equity promotion or whatever else current politics decides is a fashionable concern. But we are - whether we mean the collective us who read this, or we as individuals - obviously far, far, from the majority of the society. Maybe those others out there will direct their spending to support those issues? Therefore a company according to those dictates will make a larger profit?
If it does then fine, obviously. We are, after all, the people who insist that it is those actions of consumers in markets which dictate how capitalism does work, after all.
But what if it doesn’t? After all, there are many more claims of truth than there are truths.
Which is, we insist, one of the - many - benefits of a market based system. That we’ve a system that tests these truths.
Sure, maybe the world will be a better place if every woke and fashionable bee in bonnet is accord to. But it will only be true that all those things should be paid for if people are willing to pay for them. The claim was they would - Unilever would be more profitable because of doing those things. Apparently not. So, the claim has been tested, found to fail and that’s that. Don’t do it then.
Do note this isn’t exclusive to the sort of things we regard as silly - that market test applies to everything. It’s just one of the joys of the system, claims get tested, we find out which are true. A function which we are insistent is a vital part of feedback in any system.