I’ve just paid my corporation tax bill and feel a little nauseous. Not because of the amount – close to £20k – but because I paid more for the privilege of running my company in the UK (employees: 1, profit: small but healthy) than did global car hire giant Avis (employees: more than 5,000, profit: £9.3m). In fact, according to a recent report, it hasn't paid corporation tax in the UK for five years. It's not illegal but the ruse requires very clever, well-paid accountants.
In a fit of pique I’ve decided that I’ll never use the company again, though I have no doubt I probably will simply because they’ve never let me down in the past. Similarly, I feel obliged to throw out all of my Apple devices, delete my Facebook page and pledge to never use Google because of what I consider to be their immoral exploitation of tax laws. The recent controversy about the Irish government being ordered by the European Commission to claw back 13bn Euros in 'unpaid' tax from the smart accountants at Apple has been particularly upsetting.
Anyway, I won’t but I want to. What they’ve done is not illegal, just not the kind of behaviour that I believe is compatible with the way companies need to behave in the 21st century.
Yes, these businesses feel compelled – as do I – to make as much profit as possible. But in an age in which millennials, in particular, expect them to operate with authentic ‘purpose’, responsibility and morality, that compulsion must be tempered by ensuring they also do ‘the right thing’.
Which is the core theme of a fascinating new advertising campaign in the UK designed to showcase the ‘purpose’ behind some of the world’s most powerful consumer brands.
Unilever, which operates in more than 130 countries and whose price estimate from Forbes of $45 is nearly the same as its current market price, has been a pioneer of what used to be called corporate social responsibility. I say used to because CSR is no longer a part of what brands represent, but often the core of it. And the ways these brands market and represent themselves in the media has changed too – they don’t just sell what they do but what they are. Which is why companies like Avis need to take notice.
Unilever’s ‘So Long Old World’ advertisement depicts scenes of people who have benefited from Unilever’s initiatives. For instance, it claims that the washing brand Persil has helped 10m children get an education whilst cleaning bleach Domestos has helped 5m people gain access to toilets.
In essence, the brands have become tools for societal change. Their ‘meaning’ goes far beyond usefulness and profits and into the realms of proven altruism.
Unilever says the campaign, created by Ogilvy & Mather and David, was inspired by research demonstrating that sustainability is now a key driver of consumer behaviour, with 54% of consumers saying their purchasing decisions were primarily influenced by sustainable issues.
Unilever’s chief marketing officer Keith Weed says: "People increasingly care about how the decisions they make affect the world we live in. Our Bright Future campaign shows people that when they buy our products they’re not just purchasing a bar of soap, they’re enabling children to live past the age of five by helping to teach handwashing; and they’re helping children access education. Brands with a purpose are at the heart of Unilever and we believe that the small choices we all make every day can make a big difference to the world we live in."
The purpose of Apple is to make our lives easier, more fulfilling and that little bit cooler. But do the consumers it most craves perceive that another purpose of the company is to exploit lenient tax laws – in ways that their consumers can’t – in order to amass even greater profits?
The purpose of Google is to – well, there have been books written about that and space is tight here. But, in the eyes of its users, is another of its purposes to bypass the governmental restrictions that the rest of us must abide by? As the brilliant columnist Hugo Rifkind recently wrote in The Spectator magazine: ‘Tax is the ultimate act of deference to pre-existing societal structures. Yet the core mission of any tech company is to render those structures obsolete, because they reckon they can do better. They’ve done it with CDs and cameras, taxis and bookshops. Why should tax be any different?’
Consumer loyalty used to be extremely hard to break but now reputations can be made and destroyed in a second due to the frightening power not just of social media but media in general. Reputation is the Zeitgeist of the moment because, in an era of interchangeable brands all doing the same thing, we’re looking for something more tangible to pledge our loyalty to.
Unilever recognises that more than most companies. Perhaps next year, when I fork out another £20k just so I can base my tiny business in the UK, companies like Avis might appreciate that whilst they’ve operated within the law, in the unforgiving forum of the media that’s sometimes just not good enough.
