Brand Tricks

Social Responsibility refers to a business enterprise that prioritises people and the environment as much as profit-making. However, in reality, social responsibility programmes rarely cover supply chain or manufacturing processes. Brands use buzzwords such as ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ to sell more products. They create codes of conduct to supposedly safeguard their ethical practices, but these rarely translate into concrete action protecting workers’ rights in factories.

Clothing companies have responded to outside criticism of labour rights violations in their supply chains by promising to do better. While various voluntary initiatives have been established from safety to wages, working conditions and workers’ lives have not improved. Even worse, many use these voluntary commitments as a selling point, trying to signal that theirs is a socially conscious company.

Ethical code or code of conduct is a voluntary set of rules and regulations regarding ethical principles and the standards an organisation agrees to adhere to. Codes of conduct often say the right things but the failure comes in translating these principles into action. For example, the European brands who sourced from factories in Rana Plaza, Bangladesh, all had codes of conduct in place but this didn’t result in a safe workplace and over 1,130 people died when the building collapsed in 2013. After Rana Plaza became headline news worldwide, consumers voiced their expectations that brands and suppliers be held accountable for workers safety and rights violations, and for brands to treat the workers who make their products fairly. Unfortunately enforcement of labour laws may be weak in many production countries, and ethical codes/codes of conduct are a set of voluntary standards.

social auditing industries have developed into an opaque system primarily used to deflect responsibility. Auditors, working on short schedules with inadequate checklists have no incentives to look for root causes or meaningful remediation measures. Social audit firms profited at the expense of the workers who they should be protecting. Problems in the auditing business reflect only by conducting root-cause analyses of the purchasing practices.

Fast fashion, a word derived from "Fast Food," can be defined as a model of mass-producing based on fast-moving trends and cheap prices. A major problem with fast fashion is the focus on quantity and over-production at extremely low prices, which means workers wages stay at poverty levels and corners are cut on safety. Brands such as H&M, Zara, Shein and Mango produce runway knockoffs at an incredibly cheap prices and quick turnaround, and this contributes to the 53,000,000 tons of unwanted clothing that are burnt or dumped in landfill every year. While fast fashion is affordable and trendy, fast fashion results in overproduction, waste, environmental degradation and deplorable working conditions.

Greenwashing is when brands, corporations, organizations or governments use marketing strategies to portray an environmentally responsible image without sufficient corresponding action. Greenwashing is an increasing concern nowadays as companies are trying to benefit from the growing demand for ethical clothes by manipulating socially conscious customers. Greenwashing hides labour and environmental violations behind a façade of ethical business. With the help of the Internet and social media, it is easier to spot greenwashed brands via non-governmental organisations, activists, journalists and even everyday consumers.

MSI refers to Multi-stakeholder initiatives, which are frameworks for engagement between businesses, civil society, and other stakeholders such as governments. Although MSIs played a role in normalising ideas around supply chain responsibility, as well as facilitating discussions between brands, unions, NGOs, and other stakeholders, they have become little more than a fig leaf for fashion, shielding the industry against responsibility and criticism rather than protecting the workers.

A business, design and economic strategy where products are intentionally designed to fall apart or become unfashionable quickly, with the intention of pushing consumers to buy more. For example, clothes produced by fast-fashion brands are often of poor quality and can be easily damaged after wearing or washing for a few times. Fashion brands also create fast-moving “trends” that pressure people to get rid of old clothes and buy new ones frequently in order to be “fashionable”.

Social washing describes a situation when a company’s activities seem more socially conscious than they actually are. It is a deceptive practice whereby companies try to cover up their negative impacts with misleading advertising campaigns and clever branding. For example, a company may only invest in innovations that appear to be good for society but in reality they do not provide any practical sustainable benefits.