The chart above displays a shift in how human beings experience transactions, plotted over a period of time since the Industrial Revolution. With the rise of one-way mass messaging it’s no surprise that personal interaction and one-to-one dialogue took a nose dive while a faceless (and relatively powerless) consumer was encouraged by corporate sales strategies. […]
Commercial brands are increasingly engaging with social movements in order to better ground and express their core values. Working out the ethical implications of this sort of approach can be tricky; they have to be considered carefully on a case-by-case basis. We know that brands capable of recognizing and aligning with social trends can attract attention through – and reciprocally reinforce awareness of – the causes they espouse. But this raises the question of distinguishing positive social trends from negative ones.
