It's Time for Sustainable Marketing

Inside the Marketing Accountability Council's drive to humanize the art of persuasion

strong foundation

Is this the picture that comes to mind when you imagine what “strong foundation” means? Probably not. But this is what Generative AI created for me when I asked this platform for an image with that description. AI can be quite useful, but this is an example of how it is really hard to convey nuance and context to non-humans, and how technology has gone from being a useful tool, to actually manipulating us. If this is the new definition of strong foundation because AI says so, what happens to my operating definition of what it means, something built to be exceptionally supportive?

Tower Foundation of Golden Gate Bridge - what “strong foundation” means to me

Just last week I was talking with a Gen Z woman who told me the Instagram algorithm was shadow-banning her for using certain words, and that she noticed her actual vocabulary in human-to-human conversations was being influenced by this. “I don’t want my word choice in conversations with friends being influenced by Instagram,” she said. Would anyone?

In January 2025, these two things happened:

• The CMO of a top brand everyone would recognize, said “the future of marketing is my bot talking with your bot.”

• “The Anti-Social Century” was published in The Atlantic, which gets into how more Americans are spending more time alone and isolated from others as a result of technology dis-intermediating human connections.

At the very time I am writing this, TikTok is being banned in the United States if not sold, Mark Zuckerberg has alienated millions of Meta product users with his “no more fact-checking” on his platform policy, and many people have realized Twitter’s top priority is to promote Elon Musk’s personal agendas. The new and former POTUS is threatening invasion of sovereign nations, mass deportations of essential workers, and inflation-driving tariffs. We’ve reached a time in our lives where we don’t know who to trust. We don’t know what is factual and what is made up. It all adds up to a great deal of uncertainty and instability in our lives, which may even impact our health.

The long and short of it seems to be that most of our institutions have failed us in the interest of serving power and maximizing profits, not truth or what is best for our health and well-being. This has created trust and credibility voids seemingly everywhere we turn At times like these, there is outsized value being trustworthy, for people to know you have their back or otherwise will respect and not harm them, to demonstrate your humanity as a business.

It seems like quite the questionable limb to walk out on, to think marketers and the brands they represent - who might be a driving force for all that is uncertain now - could be the ones poised to benefit from playing this role at this moment. But this is the bet Jay Mandel and his partner Jacob Sanders are making with the Marketing Accountability Council (MAC). They believe marketing based on honesty, integrity, and respect for people will be more valuable for brands in the long run than the short-term, transactional mindset that permeates corporate marketing driven by the next quarterly report, and they are willing to fall on that sword.

It’s an interesting concept, and one they believe in deeply. What does this have to do with sponsorship marketing? You’ll have to read to find out!

Origin of the MAC

Both Jay Mandel and Jacob Sanders were marketers, but while Jay had a classic background as a brand marketer, Jacob was a musician who found himself involved in a marketing role. Their paths randomly intersected at a marketing symposium on February 27, 2024. Jay launched the MAC at this event with a presentation called “From Manipulation to Empathy.” Jacob heard it and said he thought..

Finally a person in marketing talking to me like I’m a person, not just a marketer. Marketers present themselves as if they have forgotten they too are consumers being targeted.

Jacob was struck by what Jay said. He had effectively challenged marketers to adopt the “there but for the grace of god go I” mindset; that they are lucky to not be in the same situation as their customers, and that they should feel sympathy for them, by reminding the assembled marketers that they are consumers too. Jay was talking about ethical marketing, something Jacob was trying to do. Jacob was so inspired by Jay’s talk, that he invited Jay to record a podcast with him right at the event, to talk about what he had just presented. Listen to that here, especially if you want to hear an example of two people meeting for the first time, who can complete each other’s sentences because they see and experience the world the same way (you will need to request permission). This event and meeting set things in motion for Jacob to join the MAC, and its been developing since.

Defining accountability

I met Jay randomly as well, through online networking platform Lunchclub, and subscribed to the MAC Substack. We recently talked and had a Zoom call with Jacob to talk about MAC and how it could develop a sustainable sponsorship offering to fund the organization and its mission to advocate for more sustainable marketing practices. There’s a lot to consider, so let’s unpack it a bit…

“Since 2008, social media has human trafficked us from social engagement places to online, controllable things, so we can be tracked and measured.” This quote from MAC partner Jacob Sanders, is one you haven’t heard before, but you agree with 100% when you do because it is undeniably true when put that way. It’s also making clear this isn’t exactly a good thing. It is this mindset, to question the merit of what we are doing, that is at the core of the MAC.

Jay writes Substack stories that bring marketing practices in industries he observes to light, that call into question ones he sees as shortsighted, while making suggestions for improvement. It’s quite refreshing to see. There aren’t a whole lot of stories critiquing marketing practices out there, particularly within the industry. They are usually fluff pieces designed to inflate egos and act like “everything is awesome in brand land.”

But what is improvement? Why is it needed? In short, it’s doing things that create long-term value by forming a strong relationship with a customer, not doing things that are transactional and deliver only short-term gains. It’s advocating for sustainable marketing practices that are based on respectful human interactions, not unsustainable, transaction-based ones. What is an example of unsustainable and transaction based?

One of my all-time least favorite companies is Groupon. The idea for it was that a business can sell a service offering for a fixed price that is lower than the regular price of the offering, in exchange for a consumer rounding up enough people (doing the marketing for the business) to take advantage of the price discount, to justify the lowered price. The assumption was if the business could just get people to try it out, they will like the offering and come back to pay the regular price. The only problem with this is if competitors start doing the same thing, everyone expects a discount to buy anything. They did. This created a situation where Groupon would get a cut of each promotion someone bought, but the business owners offering the discounts lost profit margin and had to continually cut prices to get customers. Such a wildly dumb idea. Groupon was once somehow valued at $13.1 Billion at its height in 2011. In 2024? It’s $460 Million and falling, just a 96.5% drop in value. Case closed. Who cares how many small business owners experienced stress, lost profits or had to shut down as a result of Groupon. At least the poor Investment Bankers and Venture Capitalists all made their money. Something tells me they aren’t losing any sleep over the retail investors left holding the bag, but I digress…

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“Shitification”

Nothing encapsulates the end result of these race to the bottom, unsustainable marketing practices - and the need for the MAC - better than a YouTube creator who literally just a week before I started writing on this topic, dropped this video and coined the term “shitification” to describe how we are making our lives worse in the seeming pursuit of making them better.

I don’t think “Nicole’s” bailiwick is brand marketing, and she’s really just pointing out the fact marketing is being taken to a bad place by its corporate overlords, so she isn’t the target MAC member. But maybe there is an angle here? Perhaps she could drive a MAC consumer coalition that organizes to demand better, less shitty things from companies, that puts some real pressure on them to reform and follow a less near-term transactional, and more long-term loyal relationships with customers? Maybe MAC could survey this coalition and offer data from findings to MAC members that would give them insight into how consumers are thinking and feeling?

There’s plenty of examples of built to not last in the video, but have you opened a “Band-Aid” brand bandaid lately? The paper backing sometimes sticks to the sticky part when removing it now! So you end up trashing the ones that stick too much, hastening your time between Band-Aid buys (if you don’t switch brands, because brand loyalty is a two-way street and fuck Band-Aid for their shitty band aids!). Taking this a step further, imagine being a materials science engineer fresh out of college, going to work for Band-Aid brand and being told “we need you to save money for us on our products, we don’t care about quality anymore.” At the rate we are going, “Shitification” will become a college major, if it hasn’t already.

How to get quality attention?

If one end of the “marketing gone wrong” spectrum is poor quality, the other is ways to get attention in a world literally everyone can put out content like this Substack, be a social media influencer, or YouTube channel creator. Some 14 years after Groupon pushed small businesses to give up profits for more attention, here comes a brand just creating bizarre AI-generated content trying to get noticed. It’s pretty hard to make a case that when we’ve reached a point brands are reduced to abandoning their core identity for attention that feeds social media algorithms, that marketing is in a great place. I would just about kill to hear what luminary branding pioneer David Ogilvy would have to say about this:

Nutter Butter reportedly saw a 190% increase in sales on Amazon after this “weird” campaign, but are people going to continue buying the product because it has weird advertising or because the cookies taste good? What if a competitor comes up with something even more weird that is more attention-grabbing? Does that 190% increase become a -100% decline? Having discussions about the efficacy of these kinds of short-cut approaches to getting attention, and finding long-term sustainable alternatives that build on a core idea of what the brand is about, with different tactics to reinforce it, is core to the MAC mission. And it’s not like taking marketing classes is the best way to stay on top, unless you have a teacher who really gets it. As Jay says..

There are marketers who will come to work one day and realize what they are doing isn’t working anymore. We realize not everyone will be thinking about this stuff, but they would benefit from new ways of doing things, new training, new paradigms. I teach marketing. The textbook covers 100 things that aren’t even being done in the world anymore. I don’t even use it. I invented a whole new way of teaching marketing. The book’s all about tactics, then ends with strategy. I’m the opposite. I start with strategy, then bring in the tactics.

This isn’t to say there aren’t core principles to follow that never change. Jacob pointed out how one of the best advertising books he’s ever read was written in the 1920s. “So much of what is in it is still relevant today,” he said. Makes sense, as humans think, feel, and needed the same things 100 years ago, 200 years ago, even 1,000 years ago. The only thing that changes is technology. The MAC doesn’t want to get more marketers to follow sustainable practices because it sounds clever. It wants to because it sees the direction things are going and knows unless changes are made, we’ll be a lot worse off as people and as a society. That includes the powerful interests pushing us in unsustainable marketing directions now.

For Brand Marketers only!

The tried and true business model for professional trade organizations that do events, is to bring those in a specific professional role together to discuss best practices, market trends, etc. Then sell access to these captive audiences that give companies selling products and services intended for them to use, the ability to connect with their would-be customers. Get otherwise difficult to reach decision-makers together in one place, and there are any number of service providers who will pay a pretty penny to show support for the profession and for the opportunity to get exposure for their brand to those decision-makers.

The MAC wants to be different. It wants to be for Brand Marketers only. No service providers buying access to sell their products and services. Just marketers talking amongst themselves, who all share the MAC values of sustainable, human-friendly marketing, so they can feel safe saying things that might be unpopular, go against the grain a bit, or maybe even be controversial.

The sponsorship angle

There isn’t any media, event, or cause seeking to generate revenue off its activities that doesn’t do so as a function of its audience size. But most of them sell access to their audience to a handful of advertisers or sponsors, not for the benefit of those attending per se. The MAC doesn’t want to follow this we’ll build an audience we can sell marketers to access their customers model. But if not selling a few sponsors access to its collected audience - the most foundational principle in marketing promotion - how can it generate the sponsorship dollars it needs to bring people together to discuss and share the ideas that are foundational to its reason for existing?

Something that has always fascinated me, but doesn’t seem to get practiced much is the concept of “non-endemic sponsorship,” or having a brand sponsor an event that isn’t naturally associated with the theme or industry. So rather than having a media buying software company as a sponsor to reach brand marketers, maybe there is a consumer electronics brand getting the opportunity to be a sponsor. Why not stand out to the assembled audience or membership as the only consumer electronics brand among marketers? Beats competing against hundreds of other brands for attention at CES.

There must be many a brand or product type that appeals to people who have the sustainable marketing mindset. In fact, there are probably potential MAC members who have marketing jobs for brands that would love exclusive access to its audience to promote their brands. Maybe MAC can actually put on an events that ask participating brand marketers to share their ideas and get feedback on them from other marketers, in sort of a exhibition of sorts. This would be a really cool way to differentiate. It would make paying for the event educational, not in the macro sense of hearing about trends and case studies, but being able to get real feedback on your particular brand’s marketing concepts, from actual consumers. Remember, Jacob was first turned on to Jay because he was getting to the idea marketers are consumers too. This approach would be the real differentiator for the MAC over any competing event marketers can attend.

Some final thoughts

What never changes, and never will change, is what we as humans appreciate in others. Honesty. Integrity. Empathy. Generosity. But all forms of life are selfish to some degree. Would you rather be able to buy a water heater than lasts 7 years and see your stock portfolio increase by 10% in value, or have it last for 15+ years and see your stock portfolio increase by 5% in value? These are the kinds of questions that must be posed to consumers and be answered, or to a certain degree, the MAC mission will be in vain. That’s why it seems prudent to get a finger on the pulse of consumers as part of the MAC’s activities.

But there is no “divine right” to exist anyway. Just look throughout our relatively short human history of organized business enterprise. Brands and even companies don’t last in perpetuity. The first Fortune 500 was published in 1955. These were the Top 10, (latest company in that spot).

1. General Motors (Walmart)

2. Exxon (Amazon)

3. U.S. Steel (Apple)

4. General Electric (UnitedHealth Group)

5. Esmark (Berkshire Hathaway)

6. Chrysler (CVS Health)

7. Armour (Exxon Mobil)

8. Gulf Oil (Alphabet Inc.)

9. Mobil (McKesson)

10. DuPont (Cencora)

Only Exxon Mobil is on the list 70 years after the first, and that’s likely only because it merged with Mobil in the interim. The point is, there are some products and services that have a certain shelf life. Marketers shouldn’t allocate resources and engage in marketing practices with a “the end of saving the brand justifies whatever deceitful means to do so” mentality. Maybe this topic will be delved into at a future MAC event? It wouldn’t be surprising, because being honest is what the MAC is all about. At a time when we are all searching for an institution we can trust, the MAC just might be one we can.