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