Carolyn McCarron writes in Communication Arts about "changing world perception through corporate branding."#

The premise of the article is that the rest of the world sees America as vile, evil, and greedy. This is not good for international relations, nor for business both abroad and at home. And how do you fix it? Find a better way to sell companies to people based on the supposed values that a company has. So, this branding-biz article defines the problem, proposes solutions, and asks ethical questions about supporting "unethical" firms.

Here a choice quote, to get a feel for the style:

Corporations and their branding communications will continue to exist with or without us. Don't abandon them for strictly nonprofit and cultural work because it seems more politically correct. We should stay in the game and help guide these brands to a better place in the world. We can motivate American businesses and consumers alike to be good world citizens, to create and buy products that are sustainable and services that contribute real value to people's lives. Show clients the potential to be more successful in the global marketplace by emphasizing international human and environmental issues along with their bottom line. Company executives will always want to communicate positive values in the media, of course, but their internal and external actions around the globe may already be communicating something else. The values they endorse through their behavior must be in alignment with the visual image they want to project to the world. Help them to understand why.

There seems to a few assumptions at the core of this article and the context of groups that are against the free market (the hobgoblin word is 'globalization' - "[...] eliminating the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" that has been deepened by globalization."); those assumptions:

• Corporations must care about more than profits.
• Corporations that don't are "unethical."
• The corporations are responsible, not their customers.
• Thus, the corporations should change because they are evil.
• And, that some corporations have been changing means they realize this.

Blaming corporations for the world's problems is a great way for middle-class suburban kids to wipe their hands clean of the blood and environmental destruction that they, or their peers, support.

Corporations exist for one reason: To make money for their investors.

If it will make a corporation money to be "ethical" then they will do it. If it will not, they will not.

You are responsible for the choices of the companies you finance, not them; because you did not choice to buy from an "ethical" company.

If you really want to have more ethical business practices, do this:

• Stop buying products from "unethical" businesses--indirectly as well as directly.
• Start buying products from "ethical" businesses--indirectly as well as directly.
• If alternatives do not exist, start companies to provide them.

If other people really care about the same ethics as you, then this behaviour will spread and we'll have an ethical world. If they don't then your ethics are not other peoples. If you do not accept this, then you support coercing others into believe what you believe, rather than making their own decisions.

And a note on the specific angle of the article: branding. Branding seems to be, like most marketing schemes, an attempt to fool customers into believing something that honesty does not reveal as true. A company that did have values (or, rather that had customers who required it to) would probably benefit more by being open about their processes and the effects of their choices--rather than trying to create a closed up, compact image that dilutes the true effects of their actions.