offer is it confuses strategy with objectives. Discussing whether we should be “doing good” or “driving growth,” suggesting that brands need to decide between the two, is as false a choice and unnecessary a binary as the “brand v. performance” debate. It misses the point that in a world of commoditized alternatives across product and service categories, “good” is and willbe what contributes to growth.
It's been almost 250 years since “doing well by doing good” was offered as a social and strategic imperative by one of America’s founding capitalists, Benjamin Franklin. Yet we’re still debating its efficacy, and holding its use to a standard that suggests every other part of the marketing mix works every time. To my knowledge they do not.
More recently then America’s founding, in 2011, Harvard Business School Professors Michael Porter and Mark Kramer wroteHow to reinvent capitalism—and unleash a wave of innovation and growth.” In the article, they make the connection between social progress and business success clear, as they do the difference between means and ends, that’s so often getting lost today. From their original article: