Fran Seegull spoke about the (un)successful exit for a social venture when they get bought by a larger company. My question is, even if the product remains the exact same, with the same mission, does the brand get affected by being owned by a parent company that is not CSR? What happens to the ethical brand of the original product?
Converse shoes were made in the US since the company started. Nike bought Converse around 2003, and I stopped buying the shoes because I didn't want to own Nike shoes. For me, the association with a company that has questionable labor tactics is enough to damage a once ethical brand.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
As the example of Converse pretty clearly demonstrates, it's absolutely true that an ethical brand can be damaged by corporate ownership. I think it's entirely possible, though, for the mission to be fulfilled to a greater extent than it was previously if corporate ownership is commensurate with an increase in material support. For instance, it's possible that Burt's Bees will get better shelf placement and more advertising dollars now that it's owned by Clorox; if this results in higher sales and thus stolen market share from less sustainable competitors, then it's surely a positive thing that they are now under Clorox's control.
ReplyDeleteWhat I haven't seen yet is a case where an ethical brand became *more* ethical as a result of being subsumed into a larger corporation. Perhaps this is because we don't have that many large ethical companies yet. In order for it to happen, I imagine that the buyer would have to be at least as sustainable as the newly purchased subsidiary. Or, perhaps if Andrew Kassoy's vision of a sustainable Berkshire-Hathaway type holding company ever comes to fruition, that would be a case where corporate ownership could potentially strengthen an ethical brand.