“I pledge allegiance to the logo”

Happy new year!

As we kick off what The Economist has called “the biggest election year in history”, with elections in 64 countries affecting around half the global population (according to TIME), here’s an unusually political thought from me to kick off 2024. I hope it doesn’t seem too sanctimonious.

Late last year, I attended a talk by an agency leader who declared that governments had failed to respond to the challenges of our age, and it was time for brands to take over.

My astonishment at this suggestion skyrocketed when a good portion of the audience applauded – rather than gasping in horror.

I enjoy working with brands. And I believe in the potential of business as a force for good. But the idea we might abandon democratic governments in favour of unelected corporations is so obviously dangerous, you’d hope it wouldn’t need pointing out. For me, the talk – and the audience’s reaction – was a slap-in-the-face reminder that democracy is not a given. It is forever under threat – and not always from the obvious forces.

Chatting to people afterwards, I discovered that many of those who’d applauded were – like the speaker – American. “The thing is, we’re desperate,” one of them told me. And it’s not hard to see why, with the openly monstrous Trump rampant in US opinion polls. But despair at the options in a forthcoming election surely shouldn’t lead to abandoning all faith in elected governments.

There was also some jokey chatter about which brands might be best at governing. Someone said they’d prefer Apple. Which, ironically, highlights the fact that if you throw executive power to the free market, you don’t get to choose who wields it. (Or get rid of them if you don’t like them.)

Another obvious point is that?no corporate CEO, however personally well-intentioned, is in post to deliver a better future for humanity. Their job – their fiduciary duty – is to maximise returns for their shareholders.

The roles, responsibilities, incentives and measures are fundamentally different for governments and corporations. And with good reason. If the government’s primary duty was to maximise profits, it would quickly cut back on all sorts of public spending, among other things. Especially if those affected couldn’t vote it out.

We might despair at the performance of our governments. (As a British citizen, god knows I do right now.) But why do we imagine businesses would do better?

The notion is surely influenced in large part by the popularity of “brand purpose”: the idea that brands are, or perhaps should be, “about” delivering social good beyond profits.

There’s been a good deal of debate around this idea in the past couple of years, much of it led by my brilliant fellow copywriter, Nick Asbury.

As Nick has pointed out, the encroachment of business into realms traditionally covered by governments (or non-profits) has rarely delivered the results you’d hope for. One of his examples is Dove, whose lauded “campaign for real beauty” has run alongside a dramatic rise in mental health and body image issues among girls and young women. But it has sold a lot of soap. Again, the goals and metrics of commerce and government are critically different, and we shouldn’t be confused about that.

As we head into this momentous year, I hope my clients’ brands – and my own – grow and prosper. I hope they do the good that all companies can do – creating employment, paying their taxes. I hope many of them go further – through donations, volunteering, internships, sustainability programmes, and the many other ways businesses can make a difference. (At Reed Words, for example, we’ve chosen GiveDirectly as our charity of the year.)

But let’s all hope democracy grows and prospers, too – imperfect as it may be. It’s under threat from all sorts of directions, not least the resurgence of populist “strong man” dictators like Trump, Putin and Orbán. Let’s not allow our industry to become one of those threats. Let's stay clear-eyed about what brands can do, what they can’t – and what they shouldn’t try to.

And when our own national elections come around in this landmark year, let’s do the thing that really makes a difference, and vote.