Is education the answer? Through the lens of the communication industry.

INTRODUCTION

In 2022 we asked, is education the answer? What responsibility or opportunity does business have to educate society? It was a question we asked across seven different industry perspectives at our annual member discussion in September. This year, I wanted to explore the question further and curate the conversation through the lens of the communication industry; after all, without communication, surely there is no education. In partnership with communications agency MikeWorldWide and trade publication PRovoke Media, we hosted two private conversations in New York and London, exploring one question in two very different markets. What responsibility or opportunity does the comms industry have to educate society?

The conversations were designed to explore both how leaders and their businesses define education internally, and how that definition might impact society externally. How do leaders define their personal responsibility to the public? How do they walk the fine line of their fiscal responsibility – building awareness of a brand or a product – while reflecting the needs and wants of the society they serve?

In Manhattan, I was joined by Kelly Cassaro, Chief Learning Officer at Generation; Stasha Santifort, Managing Director of Global Purpose and Social Impact at Deloitte; Mishka Pitter-Armand, Chief Marketing Officer at Crisis Text Line;

Dan Wagner, Founder of Civis Analytics; Amanda Litman, Co-founder and Exec Director of Run for Something; Arun Sudhaman, Editor at PRovoke Media; Sally Susman, Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer of Pfizer; and Michael Kempner, Founder and CEO of integrated communications agency MikeWorldWide.

In London I was joined by Fiona Robinson, North and South Europe Purpose Lead at Deloitte; Grace MacDonald, Marketing Lead at Pinterest; James Scroggs, Chair of One Question; Joe Twyman, Founder of Deltapoll; Lizzy Knights-Ward, formerly Global Head of Social Content and Marketing at LinkedIn; Maja Pawinska Sims, Associate Editor at EMEA Provoke Media; Ndubuisi Uchea, CEO and Co-founder of Word on the Curb; Rebecca Lee, EMEA Communications Manager at Blackhawk Network; Gemma Young, Founder of Women in Tech Network; and UK Managing Director, of MikeWorldWide, Tom Buttle.

What follows is our report of both conversations discussing the single question, is education the answer? Whilst the conversations were very different, with individual and industry perspectives often at odds over who has the responsibility or the power to create genuine societal change, it was clear that irrespective of our individual challenges, the sheer weight of the question’s responsibility unites us all.

Sarah Parsonage One Question

An opinion from our partner

Our two conversations remind us that brands are facing a wide range of critical reputational challenges; not simply ‘crisis communications’ incidents, but profound debates as to where they have a role to play in business and in society. In today’s multifaceted media landscape, we’re seeing ever more powerful social media platforms accelerate shifts in brand sentiment.

You can’t control everything that’s said about you, but you can help steer the direction of the commentary... if you’re participating in the debate.

For a lot of brands this continues to be dauntingunderstandably. Experience has told comms professionals to avoid rocking the boat or being too controversial. Now they’re having to navigate their business through issues that might have previously been reserved for a lively dinner with friends.

The spoiler here is that there is no right answer (although a framework to help guide your thinking will be released by OneQuestion and MikeWorldWide in the Spring). The first step is even being aware that the terrain has shifted. Because after all, we’re seeing apparently exponential growth in the relation between the perceived values of

a brand, and the value people will invest in it. If you don’t make choices about how you position yourself in relation to issues, someone else will make the choice for you - and this can have serious commercial implications.

Comms professionals therefore need to consider a the shift in brand narratives - from a creative way of expressing your core value proposition to a representation of your place in the world. It means having meaningful commitments to issues that are invested in and communicated outside of just a global recognition day or in the aftermath of a public incident. It requires Boards and their comms teams to be proactive, not reactive, to issues and trends that touch not just their commercial operations, but also their customers and employees.

The brief is a complex one, but communications experts have a unique value to offer in helping brands make sense of their place in this new order.

Michael Kempner Founder and CEO MikeWorldWide

DEFINING EDUCATION

“Education is a political exercise as – And for corporations to absolve engage in politics - whether it’s brand or any other reason – misses a Amanda Litman, Run

Answers

EDUCATION

as much as an informative exercise. themselves of the responsibility to brand awareness or consumer sentiment key lever of fixing that system.”

Run for Something

Despite the diversity of their specialisms, communications industry leaders in our US conversation were near-unanimous in describing their diverse roles as ‘educational’. From Mishka Pitter-Armand of Crisis Text Line to Editor of PRovoke Media, Arun Sudhaman, the panellists acknowledged that education – in the broadest sense of sharing knowledge and raising awareness – was paramount in their daily working lives.

The UK discussion also sought to define education, but – perhaps unsurprisingly – began from a different starting point. Considering education from the perspective of its outcomes rather than its origins, questions of subjectivity and metrics arose. Based on a model like rote learning, educational success could be measured by degrees of consensus: whereby if we all agree that the sky is blue or that water boils at 100 c, then that lesson has been successful. But what about less unanimous ideas – for instance, that Pablo Neruda’s poetry is the best in the world, or my wife the most beautiful woman?

“We don’t talk about what we do as education, even though it’s clearly our mandate. If you think about it in terms of this conversation, almost everything we do is education– but I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it and defined it as such.”

Arun Sudhaman, PRovoke Media

One Question

“Disagreement isn’t a problem; the issue is that we don’t debate based on a common set of facts, and the key to resolving this is education. The more we can educate stakeholders, the greater chance we’re going to let true facts versus alternative facts rule the day. If we can’t determine what is disinformation, then it is impossible to find the truth—and there is no way to do that except through education.”

Michael Kempner, MikeWorldWide

Those statements might hinge on qualitative rather than quantitative data, but even things that can be measured don’t automatically engender agreement. Discrete data points might be easier to express than reasoned arguments, but they’re less robust than critical thinking as an educational model: at its most sustainable, education is something continuous rather than finite.

Just because you can produce statistics to show that a medicine reduces risk of death from an illness by 50%, for instance, it doesn’t follow that everyone who hears those numbers will agree to take it; after all, they may be using different metrics altogether to guide their choices, informed by other (less reliable, but no less convincing) sources.

“Learning is a continuum, it doesn’t stop – there might be moments in time that the process amplifies and accelerates, but it is a continuum. Education, experiences, all of them are completely connected.”

Mishka Pitter-Armand, Crisis Text Line

“You would think that, if you get a vaccine, your chances of dying are reduced, would be a pretty effective slogan. But of course, the reaction from certain proportions of the population was a variation on the theme of you need to educate yourself, you need to do your research… I will not be going along with all the people who are not as educated as I am, to have a vaccine for COVID.”

Joe Twyman, Deltapoll

Of course, expanding a definition requires discussion before something like consensus can be obtained. As such, talking about education beyond classrooms and textbooks unsurprisingly prompted debate; meanwhile, the questions of misinformation – how to combat it and whose responsibility that would be – and regulation – the role of mandated standards and limits to steer business towards its capacity for societal good – were both left unasked in the US conversation, mirroring a conflict beyond the round table.

“Over the last five years, we’ve found the companies and corporations that have the biggest reach, and therefore present the best opportunities, do not want to engage in education in a way that is actually meaningful. In fact, they often spend their money in a way that is counterproductive, which is its own separate ball of wax.”

Amanda Litman Run for Something

BUSINESS’S RESPONSIBILITY TO EDUCATE

“Having moved recently into climate industry so convinced of the necessity what that education should look like. gap’ in terms of the public, as a way into our mission, but I wasn’t prepared educate a market that either doesn’t exposed to it, or because they don’t want not, climate change is a political issue

Elizabeth Knights-Ward

RESPONSIBILITY EDUCATE

climate tech, I’ve never worked in an necessity of education yet so unclear about like. We talk a lot about the ‘education to explain why people aren’t buying prepared for what it would mean to doesn’t get it because they haven’t been want to get it. Whether we like it or issue and people have become polarised.”

Knights-Ward

Both the US and UK discussions prompted questions about the nature of business itself. On one hand, panellists like Pfizer’s Sally Susman were clear about the limits of their corporate responsibility – why, after all, should something so important as education on social equality be left to a pharmaceutical company? While moral imperatives and financial ones are not customary bedfellows, the question that emerged was one of ability as much as of willingness.

Other panellists noted the capacity of the world’s largest corporations to provide access to services and resources at scales and speeds that governments or non-profits could only dream of. But does it follow that, because an entity can help in a given situation, it should be obliged to? Considering the comparable helplessness of not just private citizens but institutional bodies too, it’s a proposition that arises naturally from a market – like the US’s – with almost no upper limit on the power of its corporations.

“Education is certainly at the root of the answer to all sorts of things. The thing that Pfizer does best is make breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. That’s what I think is the best, highest use of our talent and resources. And while I think that the responsibility to solve for other challenges certainly exists among us, corporations must ensure their decisions on whether or not to wade into issues are based on very strong corporate values and not socio-political pressures.”

Sally Susman, Pfizer

One Question

“

In many situations, scale and access can equal systems change, right? If you have scale, and then you make whatever the resources that are manifest through that scale accessible to as many people as possible, you can change systems. Well, the biggest companies on the planet have that scale, and they can create access points for so many people. During a hurricane, PepsiCo and Budweiser purify water, right? So why can’t that just be, like, an interesting part of a business’s model?” –

Mishka Pitter-Armand, Crisis Text Line

CAPACITY TO EDUCATE

“I do think that education, in the sense can be the answer. That information if each individual in a dialogue has if the other person in that exchange that they’re not always right, that’s Mishka Pitter-Armand,

Answers

CAPACITY EDUCATE

sense of equal access to information, information isn’t always going to be right, but has the agency to critique it, and exchange has the empathy to recognise that’s the world that I want to see.”

There’s no doubt that the topic of education – who should receive it, what its limits should be – provokes strong emotions; but in both conversations, it was clear that practical considerations needed to be addressed as well as moral ones in order for communication to be maximally effective. As two broadly separate (if undeniably overlapping) umbrellas, government and business each have plenty to learn from the other – the latter about scale and accessibility of messaging, the former about clarity and cut-through.

On one hand, even an averagely popular government comes with a built-in degree of authority that most brands could never hope to attain. On the other, and as political strategists know all too well, the average voter is more easily moved by an emotional argument that appeals to their values than a dispassionate list of policies, no matter how much they agree with them in theory. Provocative messaging is something boardrooms tend to be better at than parliaments; for better or for worse, the efficacy of a given educational programme will be determined by the tone and tact of its messaging as much as its accuracy.

“One of the problems that politicians and corporations fall into is trying to educate people by simply explaining things more. I call this the Marillion problem because when I was at university, one of my housemates believed firstly, that the band Marillion were the greatest thing ever to enter the cultural sphere. And secondly, that if you did not agree with him, it was simply because you hadn’t listened to enough Marillion.”

Joe Twyman, Deltapoll

One Question

“We saw with COVID, with Brexit, and now the cost of living crisis, the same failure of communication: the government focusing on specific details rather than stories. If organised religion has taught us anything, it’s that broad stories are a really effective way to get people to learn. And I think governments and corporations can both do a good job of remembering that.”

Joe Twyman, Deltapoll

WALKING THE

“In the Taylor Swift documentary where she decides to make a post she’s so nervous about the attacks political position – but actually, take a clear stance. I wish more

Amanda Litman, Run

THE WALK

Americana, she has that moment about LGBTQIA+ people. And that she’s gonna get for taking a it’s really good for your brand to brands were like Taylor Swift.”

Run for Something

Communities function best when consensus can be reached through independent enquiry – something that’s only possible with a shared worldview, through which discussions and eventually decisions can be framed. Fractured systems of thought lead to competing stances, which can birth healthy discussion and innovation on the one hand, disinformation and conspiracy theories on the other. Arguably, presenting a unifying and clear stance is the ultimate end game in communication, commercial or political: by articulating how an organisation sees society, comms can express its purpose in context.

With consistent application and coherent messaging, statements about specific causes on a shared cultural agenda feel natural rather than insincere. Crafted to deepen a brand’s story, contemporary campaigns have done an aboutface from the traditional marketing that sought to maintain neutrality at all costs. With this new status quo demanding a degree of outspokenness from businesses, it pays to be precise about who you’re addressing and why – but bandwagonjumpers, beware. Today’s consumer might expect their favourite brands to share their values, but insincerity is the gravest sin of all.

“Leaders are accountable to the people they serve, but I feel like that whole notion of democracy in general is massively imperilled. It’s in retreat in most countries. If you look at the world, democracy is becoming a fringe notion.”

Arun Sudhaman, PRovoke Media

If that balance feels out of reach from business’s time-honoured starting line, that’s because it is: embodying progressive values without seeming performative is almost impossible in the traditional landscape of print ads and slick campaigns –luckily, the terrain is changing along with the currency. Demographic trends in news sourcing mean that younger audiences are best reached digitally; with influencers replacing traditional media for those cohorts, organisations who want to keep up are adapting to a new – less centralised, less rigid – educational landscape. In the online ecosystem, it’s easier than ever for consumers to hold brands to account, but it’s also never been easier for corporations to interact with their consumers about the things that matter to them.

“L’Oreal decided to fire Munroe Bergdorf because she spoke out against white supremacy. And then three years later, when the Black Lives Matter movement started to escalate, they decided to create a campaign which said, “speaking out is worth it”. There was this whole Twitter storm, and L’Oreal had to apologise to Munroe directly and bring her on board as a consultant. And I think that is literally the best microcosm for this issue in the comms industry – you have brands making blanket statements, without realising what their history is or making connections to the reality of what they’ve been doing for so many years.”

Answers

Ndubuisi Uchea, Word on the Curb

SYSTEMS CHANGE

As with other popular causes – LGBTQIA+ rights, environmentalism – the issue of mental wellbeing has been conspicuously taken up by businesses over the last two years. Careers can be sources of immense satisfaction as well as huge stress; as such, it is crucial that those overseeing them take steps to cultivate sensitive and sustainable company cultures rather than simply paying lip service to those responsibilities. Part of that push begins with education – perhaps raising awareness among employees about reasonable workplace expectations, or offering resources to help with burnout – but invoking ‘education’ mustn’t use personal autonomy to eclipse corporate responsibility, foisting systemic failings onto individuals caught within them.

“The education that we’re increasingly doing is through storytelling to our people, bringing to life our values through examples and case studies. It’s a question of bringing people on a journey with you so that you create a culture and mindset, that hopefully connects to the organisation and leaves you in a good position when a crisis happens. Then, if you need to comment on something, you’ve laid the foundation rather than poking your head up and coming out with something that feels random.”

Fiona Robinson, Deloitte

Emerging from both conversations, the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’ of management came into question. Flexible leadership that can weather the storm of error has the deepest roots – vulnerability might seem inherently risky, but it needn’t undermine authority. On the contrary, it takes courage and humility to admit a mistake and act accordingly: leadership with community rather than individual reputation in mind.

“There isn’t a lot of respect for education or educators, especially in the USA]. A lot of my job is trying to explain what is important when it comes to training and supporting individuals so that they can support their dependents, so that they can improve their lives. I educate the organisations that come to us.”

Kelly Cassaro, Generation

IT STARTS AT HOME

Cultural and economic differences between the US and UK were reflected in the tones as well as the outcomes of their discussions. Whether it was owing to the country’s ‘dog-eat-dog’ free market, political polarisation or something else entirely, the former fostered less collaboration than the latter, where free-flowing discussion echoed the lower stakes of a society less directly impacted by its economy. Spurred by the belief that open dialogue is the path to real change, both conversations – with all their comparisons and conflicts – are equally illuminating for One Question’s longterm agenda. Is education the answer? As both talks demonstrated, learning has to happen internally before it can be turned outwards.

“I thought about what a great tragedy it would be to have a vaccine that the public didn’t have confidence to take, so I did a lot of things differently. I embedded a film crew with us through the whole project. We invited journalists from the Wall Street Journal to be with us, so the day we learned that the vaccine was effective, the Journal dropped a four or five page piece under the headline

“Pfizer’s Vaccine: Crazy Deadlines And A Pushy CEO.” How we run clinical trials is some of our greatest intellectual property, and we put the trial protocol up on our website so everyone could read it for themselves. This radical transparency changed everything.”

Sally Susman, Pfizer

The capacity for genuine learning within businesses themselves is invaluable. Corporate image and a desire to project something like unimpeachability is unfortunately as common as it is ultimately lethal – so what does internal education look like in practice? Sometimes it takes extraordinary circumstances to jolt individuals and organisations alike towards growth – reaching for change when stasis is no longer an option. The pandemic was such a moment for all of us, but few more so than Pfizer who developed one of the first vaccines against coronavirus. Their approach to education hinged on radical transparency, something fundamentally at odds with business’s inherently competitive culture.

STRUCTURAL

“Education in the comms industry has way we see the world,this is the thing make sure people see the world that step further and say, actually, we have perspective on the world that isn’t linked share. And I think the far end of the be open enough to just be in a debate

Tom Buttle,

MikeWorldWide

DIFFERENCES

has traditionally meant, this is the thing we’re selling to deliver it – let’s that way.You can maybe take it a have a more progressive or liberal linked to our product that we want to the spectrum is a question: can we ever debate and accept different perspectives?”

MikeWorldWide

Just as business and government overlap, so their messaging falls into step to greater and lesser degrees – in no small part, the extent of that crossover depends on the culture a given campaign emerges from. For all the US and the UK have in common, differences in economic and political systems make direct comparisons challenging. If One Question operates in the space between business and society, that gap in the US is at once much narrower and existent on a much larger scale than in the UK. And while Pfizer’s extraordinary vaccine roll out during the pandemic was worldwide, America’s privatised healthcare system – and the fact that Pfizer is a US company – gave rise to a uniquely pertinent set of constraints (both practical and ethical).

Without a nationalised health service, US businesses necessarily have a marked impact on people’s personal lives in their capacity as employers. In the American system, decisions about someone’s own body – and access to treatments for it – can be dependent on the companies they work for. From gender to disability and beyond, bodies are inherently political; policy makers at companies like Pfizer, which oversees 80,000 employees, have to grapple with balancing their own beliefs with those of a diverse workforce.

“Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the first thing we did was communicate to our U.S. colleagues that we will ensure that any healthcare services, including reproductive services, that are not available by law or regulation in their home state would be covered by our medical plan travel expense provision. But I assure you that all of our U.S. colleagues at Pfizer do not all share the same view on this topic. It is not in any individual’s purview to put their personal beliefs on a company or its people.”

Sally Susman, Pfizer

Again and again, the US conversation touched on a tension at the heart of capitalism itself: in a system where businesses must turn profits to survive, can we reasonably demand that they operate according to systems of ethics with different priorities? Between business and society, human beings look to fulfil their every need – financial and physical, emotional and social. The lines between them might be blurred, but thinking within the current confines only deepens our myopia.

“Democrats often think within narrow lanes, so we’re saying, stop listening to Democrats and try and think in the way that Karl Rove does. If there are companies who care about climate change, et cetera, ask what would Karl Rove do? Karl would assemble a coalition of companies and think, what is something that’s aligned to their cause? What is something that’s incredibly compelling to the American people? We’re competing with the natural gas industry, for whom this is second nature. We’re talking about something random and scattered, and they’re talking about American livelihood – you can’t compete with that.”

Dan Wagner, Civis Analytics

NO END IN

“It’s like the whole band t-shirt concept. like the ultimate sin for someone to can’t name three songs. But then on challenge someone for choosing what heard one song and like it and want they just like the graphics. And so it strikes education question is that it comes from Tom Buttle, MikeWorldWide

IN SIGHT

concept. As a bit of a metalhead, it seems wear an Iron Maiden t-shirt if they on the flip side, who are you to ever what t-shirt they wear? Maybe they have want to go off on the journey. Maybe strikes me that the problem with the from an assumed navigational point.”

MikeWorldWide

“Communicating uncertainty is a hugely difficult problem that the government has, because governments so often sell themselves on having all the answers.”

Joe Twyman, Director, Deltapoll

Despite their differences, US and UK panels alike spoke at length about the importance of leaving room for uncertainty in their communications, both internal and external. One of the most pertinent points to emerge involved zooming out beyond the push to define education’s purpose, querying the meaning – and value – of ‘purpose’ and ‘education’ as terms themselves.

As James Scroggs noted, the word purpose implies a fixed point from which to navigate, and therefore a presumed direction of travel; ‘education’, meanwhile, might feel too redolent of schooling, university and other formal, finite settings. ‘Learning’, on the other hand, is an altogether more exploratory process. If we want to encourage businesses to entertain the vulnerability that real growth demands, then perhaps our best bet is championing a framework that models that same flexibility.

“Actually, good leaders don’t have the answer. Why? Because they’re still learning. Maybe the best leadership comes from the people who are prepared to admit that – to say, I’m purposeful in my learning to progress because the world is changing around me and I’m going to change the world with it. It doesn’t come from these absolute positions of authority or knowledge.”

James Scroggs, One Question

CONCLUSION

Is education the answer? No, but learning is.

Following our annual event in September, I wrote in my conclusion that one of the most significant threads from each conversation was the necessity for internal education within a business. Before a business can take responsibility for its role in educating society, it must educate its shareholders, executives and employees on how they and their industry serve society – and, in turn, about the role society plays in their business. Any form of regulation, be it through an Environmental Social Governance (ESG) framework or otherwise, will be impossible to adhere to if a board does not understand that economic profitability and social profitability are intrinsically linked. And that process must start with education in our businesses.

Needless to say, my desire to further explore this question through the role of the communications industry in both the American and British markets was based on the obvious assumption that, without communication, we can’t educate at all.

However, I did not anticipate the size of the opportunity that comes with that education.

One could argue that the answer to our 2022 question is a simple yes – that education is the answer, if business is prepared to invest in learning. Learning doesn’t happen in isolation; it occurs when we collaborate inside our businesses and outside in our communities. Learning is not a rote system, based on a hierarchy of knowledge. It is the spirit of innovation and growth. To better understand our businesses and our roles as leaders, we must learn about the culture of our organisations; we must learn about our customers; we must learn about the impact we have on society; we must learn from each other that, in business as in life, we are fallible. And therein lies business’s biggest challenge: to invest in learning.

It is perhaps obvious that, to communicate externally, every business must take a position internally. We have seen far too many times the cost to a business’s reputation when what they preach is not what they practice. In America, a company’s stance on abortion rights, the climate crisis or gun crime is not a knee-jerk position, it comes at a cost – politically, emotionally, and financially. Therefore, the importance of having the right conversations is paramount if we are to continue to close the gap between business and society. Whilst many corporates need a zeitgeist moment to highlight the scale of a particular problem, be it the unnecessary death of George Floyd or the real impact of the

mental health crisis, investing in a communication strategy that focuses on learning rather than educating means we improve our knowledge, our understanding and our empathy and move away of a strategy of absolutes. By choosing to invest in learning today, we reap rewards tomorrow.

My assumption before the two-hour private boardroom discussion in Manhattan was that the gap between business and society in America was far smaller than in the UK – that the lack of state support had left the survival of society largely in the hands of business. However, the sheer size of the country has meant that the scale of change is overwhelming and politically polarised in ways that aren’t mirrored in the UK. Yet. The lack of regulation in the US was, as the report concludes, a topic that we didn’t explore – largely because the conversation was stuck in a debate between corporate America and political America on the definition of genuine change. It is however clear that, without addressing that question, US business is in danger of tying itself in knots about who is responsible (or who has the power) to create systemic change.

The UK conversation was different – not just politically, but in its sense of collaboration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, America is now so polarised that any conversation about systemic change comes with a personal agenda, not a collaborative one. In the UK, systemic change is front of

mind for many leaders – the more we can learn from each other, the better we can address the overwhelming challenge of building a business that can both effect change and keep the lights on. But again: that doesn’t start with the business, it starts with the individual. It starts with us.

Old models of leadership are playing out across the globe on a daily basis. The expectation of our leaders – and by extension, ourselves – to have all the answers is unrealistic, and the tension between traditional models of what it means to lead is growing. For me, it has never been clearer that we can no longer take a dogmatic approach; rather, we must listen and learn, admit what we don’t know and trust what we do.

This is investment in spite of profit. The choice is no longer between societal impact and economic growth. Whilst evidence of this point might yet to be proven in practice, in theory it is absolutely clear. Although of all our contributors, Pfizer is perhaps uniquely positioned – as a healthcare company with global impact, building their business without a wide lens on society is impossible – theirs is a position we must all take. In 2023, it is no longer enough to make money: how we make money is fundamental too, and it is on every leader to balance both.

I believe that it is only by investing in the right conversations, in our organisations and industries, that we can begin to understand whether our company’s purpose aligns with the people that are in service of it on a daily basis. In the words of long-term member Joe Twyman, “One of the problems that politicians and corporations fall into is trying to educate people by simply explaining things more. I call this the Marillion effect because when I was at university, one of my housemates believed firstly, that the band Marillion were the greatest thing ever to enter the cultural sphere. And secondly, that if you did not agree with him, it was simply because you hadn’t listened to enough Marillion.”

Like politicians, businesses suffer from the Marillion effect. The more we state our purpose publicly, the more we believe it internally. As Dan Wagner said at the close of our conversation in New York, when we focus on a random or unrelatable story, we ignore what’s really important. We must focus more on the stories about why our businesses take a position, and the impact of that position, and less on knee jerk reactions. Perhaps only then will we find a truer purpose, one that speaks to business and society – they are, after all, one and the same.

Sarah Parsonage One Question