The Age of Cant 2.0
If Marketing and Customer Experience becomes an everlasting inquisition into customers' beliefs, how can trust prevail?
The Progress of Cant by Thomas Hood (1825). © Copyright: The Trustees of the British Museum.
Alice felt sick. Just two hours to go and she realized that her daughter’s birthday party would have to be cancelled. Miranda would be distraught: after all, a 16th birthday is a really special occasion and this one had even more added specialness. But what else could Alice do?
The thing was, she had only just heard about the problem, revealed by the family’s AI bot: “Alice, I’m sure you’ll want to know that an executive at Super Corp has dead-named a trans person.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, realizing, the moment the words came out of her mouth, what a stupid thing it was to say. Of course Sicko - their pet name for the Sycorax AI 36/D - was sure. It could not have said such a thing had it not been verified by the system’s failsafe quantum fact checker. Could it?
“But the whole thing’s planned around Super Corp’s metaverse,” said Alice.
Sicko did not respond but she could swear that it smiled. How was that even possible? Bots were getting ever more sophisticated but the Sycorax AI 36/D still didn’t have a malleable face. Yet it had smiled at her.
She thought of all the time and expense that had gone into planning the party. The super surreal location. The fabulous avatars. The great graphics where ‘HAPPY 16th BIRTHDAY, CALIBAN’ morphed into ‘HAPPY BIRTH DAY, MIRANDA”, just like her child’s real metamorphosis from spotty, sullen, aggressive male to beautiful, outgoing, compassionate female.
A tear trickled down her cheek. “You’re upset,” observed Sicko, “Have a chocolate - you’ll feel better.”
Alice reflexively reached for one of the chocolate bars in the bowl on the table. She stared at it for a few seconds but the thought of it didn’t seem to alleviate the pain. She looked at it again and irritatedly asked, “Why is this chocolate bar trying to tell me about the evil patriarchy?”
There was no mistaking it this time. Sicko smiled.
The above vignette is fictional. I made it up. I feel obliged to make that point because, these days, it often seems impossible to distinguish fact from fiction. Now, some schoolchildren are identifying as cats, dinosaurs, horses, and there’s even a planetary moon. Also, a teacher in a British secondary school branded a 13-year old girl ‘despicable’ because she had the audacity to state the opinion that sex is binary.
Perhaps no surprise, therefore, that a recent article makes the point that “schools increasingly see themselves as instruments of social engineering. Their job is not to inspire kids to learn, but to inculcate the correct worldview.”
The same seems to me to hold true for business and commerce. Just rewrite the sentence … “businesses increasingly see themselves as instruments of social engineering. Their job is not to satisfy customer needs through the provision of products and services, but to inculcate the correct worldview.”
How else is one to explain, for example, the numerous recent instances of withdrawal of financial services to customers by banks and building societies? As a marketer and customer experience (CX) specialist I find the case of UK cleric, Reverend Richard Fothergill, particularly alarming. You know all that stuff from businesses that declares “Your opinions are important to us” and pleads with us to “Let us know what you think”? Well, Rev. Fothergill volunteered some feedback suggesting that the Yorkshire Building Society might concentrate more on managing customers’ money and less on promoting a particular line on sex and gender preferences. The company’s response? It cancelled him. Thoughtcrime, it seems, has come to pass.
So, a lot of businesses appear to be saying: “Your opinions are important to us so we need to check that your have the correct views.” Is this the future of Customer Experience? If so, it surely betokens a collapse of trust?
In 1776, Adam Smith (1723-1790), variously labelled ‘the father of economics’ and ‘the father of capitalism’, published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It was a manifesto for capitalism. In it he wrote:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.1
What, you may ask, has an eighteenth century reference got to do with now? Its relevance is as a foundational rule of modern business: the primacy of the product and producer was the accepted norm. Hence the “if a man build a better mousetrap” idea, known the world over, often attributed to nineteenth century American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. In fact, I learn from a web search that Emerson actually wrote:
If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.2
In whatever form Emerson expressed it, the point is that from the Industrial Revolution onwards and right through until the late twentieth century ‘Product’ was the leading game in town. And this first business generation of the modern era was built on a straightforward and obvious foundation: A supplying company sold Product. Customers bought its Production. Period. We bought lawn mowers because they cut grass; detergents because they cleaned clothes; mousetraps because they caught mice.
Now, admittedly, our perception of Customer Value has evolved over the past 200 years. From originally selling ‘Production’ businesses moved on to sell ‘Added Value’ and, then, ‘Customer Outcomes’ [Note: I shall post a piece on this Value issue in the near future.] But the latest move seems to be a reversal of any commercial sense. So how on earth did we get here?
Sincerity, Authenticity …
In earlier posts - here and here - I referenced a lecture series delivered in 1969-1970 by American literary critic Lionel Trilling, published as Sincerity and Authenticity. The core insight is that …
in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, something like a mutation in human nature took place.3
Before the mutation, people were born into fixed social positions (peasant, artisan, noble, royal, for example) and the measure of success was the degree of sincerity (‘purity’ if you will) with which the pre-ordained role was carried out.
But then came Authenticity, the arrival of which was an acknowledgment that, as the world progressed to modernity, the opportunities for each of us to fulfill multiple roles increased … which, by the by, also increased the potential for multiple personas and falsehoods, as vividly portrayed by writers and artists through the centuries.
‘Ancient history’, do I hear you say? Maybe, but today, bang on cue, Authenticity is a hot topic in our workplaces. The ideal 21st century workplace, we are told, is one that allows everyone to be ‘authentic’. Every person is encouraged to discover their ‘real me’ in order to “Bring your authentic self, your whole self, to work.”
The predominant assumption appears to be, “I am who I feel I am” and, because feelings easily trump any limiting realities, the boundaries between almost everything are expunged. Sex, gender and even species are considered fluid. So is the childhood-adulthood spectrum. And, obviously, to many people, ye olde territorial boundaries are also considered obsolete.
More than that, we are often told that each of us is a gem, a multi-faceted diamond, each with a special talent or gift. There may even be some truth in this but it does not automatically imply that all of us can become ‘glittering gemstones’.
With the emergence of the “Bring your authentic self to work” concept, the criticism leveled at Business is that, throughout the past two centuries, when the world has been transformed by industry and commerce, it has not allowed individuals in its employ to reveal all of their facets. In fact, we are told, individuals have been pressured to exhibit just one facet of the diamond at their core - the ‘Get the job done’ facet. But this is now regarded as inhuman, apparently contributing
to mental health issues, depression and burnout.
… and Self-Righteousness
In truth, the “Bring your authentic self to work” concept goes beyond Authenticity. It seems more often to result in a perversion of Authenticity that would be better described as Righteousness or, even worse, Self-Righteousness.
In a Times of London opinion piece4, Jenni Russell, quotes a business manager as follows:
One man won’t come in on time because it’s too stressful as he’s neurodiverse; three people in one office are accusing each other of racism and micro-aggressions; in another office two depressed people are depressing everyone else; and one young woman’s refusing to work on an account because she doesn’t agree with the client’s environmental policy so she’d feel unsafe. It’s all about them. They’re incredibly self-absorbed.
People are entitled to think what they like but assessing employees, or customers or prospects on the basis of their opinions about social issues is fraught with danger. It is madness. It encourages management by Cant.
The Ages of Cant 1.0 & 2.0
Two hundred years ago, in the early 1820s, Lord Byron (1788-1824) declared it “The age of cant”. Essayist William Hazlitt (1778-1830) clarified Byron’s view: “the crying sin of the age - humbug!” And, in 1825, a satirical cartoon by Thomas Hood was published titled “The Progress of Cant”. In 1850, in his book David Copperfield, Charles Dickens wrote what is perhaps the best pen portrait of cant in the person of the unctuous, devious, hypocritical Uriah Heep.
Am I alone in thinking that a lot of current corporate goings-on indicate the arrival of The Age of Cant 2.0? Consider a few examples:
In 2021, Unilever CEO Alan Jope announced that the purpose of its Hellmann’s Mayonnaise brand was “Fighting against food waste”. As investor Terry Smith commented: “A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot.” Agreed!
Also in 2021, the board of Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would not sell its ice cream in some of Israel’s territories. Ben & Jerry’s is a Unilever company but Unilever did muster the sense to fight the decision. It wasn’t until December 2022 that the legal proceedings between Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever were settled. What a silly distraction and waste of time and money.
In early 2019, outdoor clothing manufacturer Patagonia changed their mission from “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis” to “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” Surely, a grandiose-sounding statement so broad and vague as to be utterly meaningless?
More recently, brewer Anheuser Busch and U.S. corporation, Target, have found themselves in the news for bending over backwards to try to accommodate the transsexual and gender-alphabet-soup communities. Has it tolled the death knell for Bud Light beer? Only time will tell, but it’s looking pretty sick. A similar response greeted Target’s attempt to market transsexual clothing for children.
Then, of course, there is the Starbucks India commercial positioning a Starbucks outlet as the perfect public location to reveal one’s gender switch.
The truly bewildering fact is that these are just a few examples of a broad trend - a trend that appears now to be so established that an academic paper5, no less, can claim:
[A]dvertising has made a significant contribution to legitimizing cultural homogeneity, and as such, our data demonstrates that being ‘woke’ has become ‘cool’.
I can even provide an example relating directly to me. Back in 2019, I was asked to address a conference run by NHS Elect, a non-profit, “national membership and consultancy organisation that has been supporting our NHS colleagues since 2002.” The topic I’d been invited to talk about was Customer Experience (CX). However, three months prior to the event I was told that some of the delegates had checked my social media and some of my thinking was considered unacceptable. I was cancelled.
These examples surely illustrate that The Age of Cant 2.0 is with us and that Self-Righteousness is now a leading commercial objective. With their variation of the “We are so very ‘umble” messaging, corporations may try to emulate Uriah Heep but, please, let’s not fall for it. Don’t trust them.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Book 1, Chapter 2. Adam Smith (1776).
Lienhard, John H. Inventing Modern: Growing up with X-rays, skyscrapers and tailfins (2005)
Trilling, Lionel. Sincerity and Authenticity (1972)
Russell, Jenni. Do your job and leave your ‘whole self’ at home. The Times, 1st July 2023.
Middleton, Karen and Turnbull. Sarah. How advertising got ‘woke’: The institutional role of advertising in the emergence of gender progressive market logics and practices (2021)