Friday morning I walked past two hundred kids on the courthouse steps downtown, holding signs cut out of cereal boxes. It was raining, because it is December in Portland and it is always raining. None of them had umbrellas. They stood there for two hours and then they went back to class.
By lunch, the brand accounts had arrived.
Proud to stand with the next generation. A green leaf emoji. A stock forest with a sans-serif line laid over it in white. One apparel company I will not name posted a solidarity graphic and, four hours later, a flash sale.
Here is the part that gets lost. Those kids were not asking anyone for a graphic. They skipped school, which has a cost. They stood in the rain, which has a cost. The entire rhetorical force of a strike is that the people striking gave something up. A brand that posts a leaf has given up nothing, and everyone can do the arithmetic.
Solidarity that costs the brand nothing is not solidarity, it is marketing wearing a borrowed coat.
So what actually counts. Three things I would put in front of any client this month.
One, money that leaves the building. Patagonia announced last month that the ten million dollars it saved from the corporate tax cut is going to grassroots environmental groups. That is a line on a P&L. It is checkable. It is the opposite of a leaf.
Two, a decision that hurts. Sacrifice means a thing you wanted and did not take. A supplier you dropped even though they were cheapest. A material you stopped using even though it shipped better. A sales window you sat out. If your climate position has never once shown up as a worse quarter, it is a preference, not a position.
Three, showing up when there is no photograph. The strike was Friday. The real question is what your brand is doing about this in March, when the kids are back in class and nobody is covering it.
I have watched this from inside brand strategy rooms, so I know the instinct is not cynical exactly. Somebody senior sees a cultural moment, asks what we are doing about it, and the only thing that can ship by two o'clock is a graphic. The graphic is not a strategy. The graphic is a symptom of not having one.
A brand that posts a leaf has given up nothing, and everyone can do the arithmetic.
I got home soaked. Truffles watched me drip on the entryway rug with the specific contempt of an animal who has never stood outside in December for a principle. Barnaby was asleep in the laundry. Neither of them is going to save anything, but neither of them has ever posted a leaf about it.