Be Wary of Corporate Caremongering
By: Tiffany Horan
Tags: Startup, Caremongering, Community, Marketing, Corporate Culture

Caremongering, a name originally attributed to something intrinsically positive, is becoming more of a negative phenomenon, a way to boost sales, rather than to actually help others.

I’ll refer to negative caremongering as corporate caremongering.

If you knew the lengths some companies go to in order to make targeted groups of people feel as though they need help, for a price, you’d be surprised.

I know because for a long time, I was hired to target others. I started with good intentions, I genuinely believed what I was doing was right. I was wrong.

Prior to the pandemic and for some time during it, I would go online to try to assist people spend more time offline.

By doing so, I honestly believed I could help people live a more balanced life. I worked hard. I was, ironically, always online.

In 2017, I created a Twitter resource bot (@DigitalDetoxes) to support and amplify the voices of everyone interested in the ideas surrounding digital detoxes.

It was for people to learn more about digital detoxes, dopamine detoxes, digital minimalism and mindfulness. I would regularly turn off my phone, meditate and later document my experiences.

I went as far as to put my money where my mouth was and I backed a number of related crowdfunding campaigns. I practiced what I preached and I was heavily involved in this community of like minded people.

By interviewing people to promote their businesses, I felt like I was making a difference, I wrote and edited blog posts, I shared ideas and heavily contributed to the discourse. I gave a webinar, I wrote guides and I even went live on Instagram.

I am proud to have been mentioned in the acknowledgements section of Anastasia (@ConsciDigital) Dedyukhina’s book Homo Distractus. I attended her talk and the talks of others.

I am still excited to support the work of Medito, IRL Labs, A-GAP, the Digital Wellness Collective and several others.

There are so many organisations that get it right, such as those listed above. They are genuinely open about their work, they care and they make a conscious effort to better our lives.

However, the reality is that despite starting with good intentions, a lot of organisations and individuals end up making avoidable mistakes.

Mistakes might include greenwashing or pinkwashing products or content, lying about sources and generally creating products without sufficient market research.

Some companies go as far as to hide behind words such as ‘transparency’, when in reality, the consumer only sees what the company wants them to see.

It is, sadly, nothing more than a carefully curated facade.

Amongst other things, I created subreddits, I told my personal stories, I recommended books, articles, videos and podcasts. I attended several yoga and digital detox retreats (some of which turned out to be quite expensive).

They helped me. I felt good.

I wanted other people to feel good too. I was able to switch off, to disconnect, to unplug, to [insert yet another keyword].

The positivity I felt after those experiences didn’t last. There was an underlying issue I couldn’t put my finger on.

I went from temporarily feeling incredible to absolutely struggling with my mental health. I wasn’t alone, there were others experiencing this too.

We would go from enjoying a digital detox right back to doing unpaid overtime. There was a collective feeling of being completely overwhelmed. Something didn’t make sense. It didn’t add up.

Recently, I realised what the elephant in the room was. From my remote home office, I was unintentionally and unbeknownst to me at the time, using corporate caremongering. I did so by helping a company act as though they wanted to help people, by marketing products that they really didn’t need.

What is caremongering?

In early 2020, when the world realised what was happening, COVID started to trend, lockdowns occurred and flights were grounded, large groups of people began to selflessly and effectively help those in need.

Rather than spreading viruses, they were spreading kindness. They did so by donating to shelters, food banks, hospitals and care homes.

They asked their neighbours if they needed assistance with anything and they offered to support local communities via social media. It was beautiful.

What is corporate caremongering?

Caremongering can be both positive (if it’s genuine) and negative (if it’s part of an ulterior motive).

However, when companies and more specifically marketing teams, started to notice the attention positive caremongering was getting, when they discovered yet another way into people’s lives, they decided to hop on the trend train. They saw the recognition all of these charitable organisations were getting and they wanted to be part of it.

In the negative sense, corporate caremongering differs from scaremongering because the marketing pitch starts with what appears to be a good deed, a mission statement or some form of pseudo-empowering manifesto.

Pseudo-empowerment is often a large part of corporate caremongering.

Have you ever seen a video online where someone gives a homeless person a present? A stylist gives a homeless person a haircut? When you stop to think about what seems like an act of kindness, you realise that these videos are exploitative.

They do it for the views. There are plenty of influencers who donate to charities without making a song and dance (or in this case, a video) about it.

There is a lot of hypocrisy involved. Imagine for example, a company that requires a pandemic in order to push a specific product.

Several employees of that company might continue to spend time ignoring social distancing rules, travelling excessively, throwing parties or refusing to wear masks because they want their product to succeed and in order for it to succeed, the pandemic is necessary.

It’s an unethical example but some marketers will literally create or contribute to problems in order to trigger a demand for their product.

How can I avoid corporate caremongering?

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who do they help?

If it’s not clear who they’re helping or how, you need to dig a little deeper.

2. How do they help?

Look for evidence. Remember: talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words.

3. What are they actually doing to help?

4. Can you find any tangible ways they’ve improved someone’s life?

If the answer to question three or four is “I don’t know”, then it’s unlikely they’ve done anything to help anyone (except perhaps themselves).

5. Does the company claim that it’s fine not to be OK and then attempt to humiliate, punish or even fire employees with suspected or confirmed mental health issues?

This might sound oddly specific. That’s because it’s based on a real and fairly recent situation encountered by a friend of mine. Question five is a serious issue which should be and is often considered unacceptable in larger companies. Nevertheless, it happens.

The same gaslighting techniques used in abusive relationships are sometimes implemented by inadequate leadership within the workplace. The turnover rate at companies like this is often quite high.

Buying products from companies that don’t care about their employees is probably not a good idea. People who are considered obstacles to an agenda pushed by a corporate caremongering company might find themselves at the receiving end of this kind of behaviour. It is as unethical as it is unsettling.

According to Psychology Today, ‘When approached on the matter, the gaslighter typically denies mistreatment, and can become defensive, contentious, dismissive, and/or evasive. Instead of using verification and facts to problem-solve, the gaslighter may escalate and become more aggressive, or stonewall and become more passive-aggressive.’

When psychological manipulation is used by someone who is likely inadequate at their own job, employees on the receiving end can lose their sense of purpose or even their sense of self. This can happen over a period of time.

It’s best not to support companies who enable gaslighters to continue working for them.

6. Do employees feign an interest in caring for others or in wellness subjects (such as mindfulness and meditation) for the sole purpose of selling related products?

Don’t be fooled by imagery, aesthetics aren’t everything. Question six is likely a trap people fall into at their lowest point.

There’s no need to pay for a meditation app subscription when there are free resources (and even free apps) available.

If you’re looking for care, mindfulness or digital wellness advice, there are various search engines and forums that can provide you with all of the free information you need!

7. Does anyone who works for the company do similar work in their spare time, do they have a history of voluntary work or random acts of kindness?

If the answer to this question is a resounding no, it might be worth thinking twice about buying anything from them. Who are the experts? Where does their experience come from? Be aware of egocentric titles and awards where everyone wins or they have to pay to enter.

8. Do they advise and contribute to research or do they rely heavily on repeating pre-existing information created by others?

Analyze their content and review the timeline of information shared by the company. Who have they worked with?

Who are they working with at the moment? Do you recognise any of their partners? Has the content gone downhill?

Do they carefully review newsletter emails or social media descriptions? Are they recycling old work and sharing it rather than producing new work to the same standard? How helpful is the free content they produce and share?

Sometimes, patterns emerge in a company’s online presence that can make you question their motives. It’s important that you listen to your gut if something makes you feel uneasy.

9. What do previous employees think of the company? Are they silent?

Question nine is an important one because silence often implies there may be some fear involved. No one wants to leave a negative review for a company to later find they’ve been doxxed (or worse) due to it.

Although not impossible, it can be incredibly hard to prove who is responsible in those kinds of situations.

10. Are there other ways I could improve my life without using their product?

The answer to this question is yes.

We have become too reliant on companies.

Try to shift your focus from companies to communities if possible. Companies claim to provide us with solutions, when the reality is, we might be able to provide that solution for ourselves. My partner and I have searched for several products similar to the ones being touted by numerous corporate caremongering companies and the results were fascinating.

All of the products already existed, in one form or another. They were all reasonably priced, so we bought and tested a combination of lifestyle and electronic products. Although some could only be purchased from China by making use of AliExpress or from stores in the UK (lifestyle products), they already existed.

Caremongering companies in the US and Europe were simply rebranding existing products, some (to the best of my knowledge) were doing it without even realising. This shows an extreme lack of market research, which can usually be attributed to poor leadership.

It’s important to recognise that sometimes that heartwarming “We want to help people.” roughly translates to “We want to profit by making it look as though we’re helping people.”

Scaremongering (sometimes known as fearmongering) is based on a fear a consumer might have or a fear a company instills in a consumer.

This method is used before the company provides you with a solution to quell the fear you didn’t have before they mentioned it to you (usually through advertising). Imagine if a person constantly frightened you and then attempted to comfort you when you were scared… you wouldn’t put up with it, so why put up with companies who do the same thing?

Companies act as though fear based marketing (scaremongering techniques) are controversial but the truth is, they’re commonplace. Care based marketing (corporate caremongering), now that’s innovative… The reality is, both share an identical goal, to sell you something.

Whether it’s a sensationalist headline or a product that promises to improve your health, scaremongering is usually quite an obvious tactic.

Corporate caremongering is far more subtle.

You’re probably already familiar with the way headlines in tabloid newspapers (online) manipulate people into reading more.

It’s likely you recognise the way fake news articles and targeted advertisements manage to momentarily capture your attention. This approach, this form of intentionality is far more honest than the alternative, corporate caremongering.

Most of the time, marketers use these techniques to improve CTR (Click Through Rate) and collect data. They aren’t interested in the content or the people behind those numbers, only the end result. Viewing people not as human beings but as data. They become another row in a spreadsheet, another follower, another lead, another part of a larger problem.

Corporate caremongering is problematic because it convinces you to trust in a company that at their core doesn’t really care about their mission, other people or you, at all.

If you or someone you know has encountered a company using corporate caremongering in an attempt to sell you something you don’t really need, I’d love to know.

You can find me on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and sometimes even GitHub. If you enjoyed reading this article, please share and recommend it!