Ironically, while brands are under huge pressure to align their products with customers’ expectations, they succumb to colorwashing as a practice that in fact opposes customers’ expectations: that brands help solve societal problems and become a powerful force for change. Colorwashing does the exact opposite! It misleads customers and distracts the organization from changing an extractive business model into a sustainable one. But is it a malign intention? Does it mean brands don’t want to change? Or do they just not know how to do it?
From what I see, it’s mostly the latter. Companies see the need to change but struggle to transform their organizations as fast as consumers have transformed their behavior. But that cannot be an excuse for colorwashing. In fact, I believe actively dis-engaging from colorwashing is a priority because we will get nowhere when we pretend. Let’s not fool ourselves.
Instead, let’s build a message culture based on transparency, value communication and the transformation. Here are my top 3 questions for brands and consumers to reflect along the decision-making process in creating and buying products respectively.
Here is my colorwashing check-out.
