What Did #BellLetsTalk Really Achieve?
Bell Canada is this country’s largest communications company. As part of their social responsibility roster, they designated February 12th as a day to talk about mental health, calling it “Bell Let’s Talk Day.” When Bell users make a long distance call or send a text message, or anyone shares the above image on Facebook or uses the hashtag #BellLetsTalk, Bell will donate 5 cents to charities dealing with mental health.
As a social media campaign, there is no doubt that #BellLetsTalk achieves some important goals. It does help open the door to talk about mental health and communication around mental health within our families, communities and society at large. This is something that is very, very necessary. At the time that I write this, Bell has already committed almost 2 million dollars to charities that aim to reduce the stigma of mental health disorders, based on the previously mentioned shares, hashtags, text messages and long distance calls.
A big corporation tossing around big money to charity can be a good thing.
But the ethical challenge arises when Bell explicitly ties in their good deeds with you advertising for them. By stating that they will give X number of dollars to charity, but only for pay up based on the performance of those who use a hashtag, share an image, “like” on Facebook, or use their services, they miss the mark on real corporate responsibility.
In a fantastic article about international aid fails, Richard Stupart talks about “ransoming” children in exchange for likes on Facebook. He uses the example of rapper and energy drink mogul 50 Cent:
If you Like the (now defunct) Facebook page for his Street King energy drink, he will provide a meal for a child in need. If the page received a million Likes before Sunday, he would donate an additional million meals.
So let’s break that down.
- If you Like Fifty’s Facebook page — without even buying the drink — a child, presumably in Somalia, gets fed.
- We can infer that there is a pot of dollars somewhere earmarked for feeding needy children. Two million meals worth of feeding if you count the million Like-meals plus the potential million bonus.
- Those meals, while they could be donated, and have presumably been budgeted for, will not be, except to the extent that you give Street King props online.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is called extortion. Dramatically photographed, concealed-as-humanitarian-activism, extortion(…) When a humanitarian issue becomes a platform for pushing an energy drink on the back of people’s suffering, we should be ashamed.
Users are not actually generating the money that Bell gives to charity through some kind of magic machinery that turns tweets into dollars. This money already exists, but Bell is only going to give it away if you send a text message or use a hashtag.
Many social media campaigns rely on likes, shares, retweets and so on in order to achieve relevance and to maximize viewership and/or engagement. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all of the times that I have BEGGED for likes and shares of Hey Receiver posts. But when a large corporation is tying their good deed (giving money to charity) to the performance of their audience and in particular, the performance of their audience in providing advertising for the company, then something is fishy.
Bell is doing a lot of different things here, but actually raising awareness about mental health and how those facing mental health challenges are treated in our society is very very low on that list. It could further be argued that Bell is capitalizing on faux internet activism, where simply using a hashtag replaces real action, like challenging Steven Harper’s proposed legislation that further criminalizes those who are found not criminally responsible for the crimes that they’ve committed due to mental “disorders”. Mental health and mental illness is a very political issue, but Bell has managed not so much to say “Let’s Talk” but rather “Let’s talk very vaguely about a hugely important issue affecting millions of Canadians.”
It’s good that Bell wants to raise money to end stigma against those dealing with mental health issues. And I would even go so far as to say that it’s understandable (though not exactly charitable) that Bell would like to see some return for their good deed. But by making their own brand central to this campaign, they just look greedy, and Bell Let’s Talk Day looks an awful lot like another sham corporate charity endeavour.
Big thanks go to Darren Barefoot’s post Why Today is About Bell Canada and Not About Mental Health
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8 Responses to “What Did #BellLetsTalk Really Achieve?”
Leave a Reply
Paul says: I think your thoughts on the role of a corporation is misguided. Corporations like Bell exist for one reason: to make a profit for its shareholders by providing a product or service for consumers.
In recent years, market research has shown that consumer choices are influenced by a company’s social responsibility image, that is consumers are more likely to purchase from a company they view as socially responsible. This has led to public corporate responsibility campaigns such as the one we see from Bell.
These campaigns have become really popular because they present a win-win proposition, the more press the company sees, the more money will be going to a good cause. These are not funds that are being “held hostage” from charitable causes, they are monies being diverted from the pockets of shareholders because they are more productive (better ROI) when invested into such campaigns.
The incentive-based compensation is comparable to standard advertising; a newspaper will increase it advertising fees if its circulation increases. In this case Bell’s donation is tied to increased exposure the same way it would to newspaper advertising.
Bell’s shareholders have no duty to provide money to charitable causes, they do it in the hopes they will attract more customers through being seen as a responsible company. Your assertion that Bell should instead challenge government legislation on criminality of offenses committed by individuals affected by mental disorders shows a striking misconception of how corporations are to be involved in social responsibility campaigns. Why would a telecommunications firm advise the government on such an issue? From what basis would they take a stand? It is not their purpose.
Personally, I commend Bell for not only executing a successful campaign but choosing an issue which has a history of being ignored. Mental health is a tougher sell than cancer or kids with diabetes, kudos to Bell for putting their weight behind it.
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Alison Terpenning says:
Hey Paul,
Thanks so much for your comments. While I obviously hold a different opinion, you bring up a lot of food for thought.
First to clarify, I didn’t intend to suggest that Bell take up political lobbying, but rather that sharing images on Facebook or using a hashtag is increasingly replacing political actions that have wider meaning. I do think that social media use can be a part of activism, and in fact is changing the face of activism globally, but simply sharing an image rarely, if ever, invokes real change in and of itself. I am arguing that Bell is making use of this easy activism to further promote their own business.
I too, would agree that mental health is a much stickier issue than kids with diabetes or cancer, and I do think that Bell took a risk in choosing this issue to get behind.
I guess one of my biggest points here is the way Bell executed this campaign made the machination of increased exposure of their brand = more money for charity look so… obvious. And while I don’t fault them for wanting return on their investment or recognition (and say so in the post) I think how blatant they were about it and the way they centralized their own brand as opposed to centralizing mental health is cause for criticism.
Amber says: Great post! Exactly how I was feeling about this as well.
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Thanks Amber! Glad you enjoyed it.
Annie says: There was just a great twitter chat on this using the hashtag #hcsmca. People may be interested in checking out the transcript here: http://t.co/8y1CrDWc
Great post, Alison!
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Thanks for adding that, Annie. It was interesting to see health care professionals divided on the effects of this campaign. I encourage everyone to check out that link, regardless of where you stand on the issue. Very informative!
Sarah says: I agree with this, in that of course, Bell as a corporation, didn’t run this campaign out of the goodness of their hearts. However, the reality is that our government/ other health organizations and non profits just don’t have (or in governments case, allocate) the funds and infrastructural ability to run successful campaigns like this to reach the number of people Bell can . I cannot count the number of campaigns organizations like CAMH and mood disorders Canada run to reduce mental health stigma, but I’m sure most people not in the field are not following them on twitter and don’t hear about them because they are not advertised as extensively. Also, Bell and companies like them appeal to the population as a whole : everyone has a phone, but not everyone is affected by mental illness and pays attention to health organizations that promote it. It’s the lesser of two evils here, and although it would be great if health organizations could compete with corporate interests, as we have seen in countless other health debates (I.e. big tobacco) they just simply don’t have the marketing power to do that. Until they do, this is the next best thing, in my opinion.
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Hey Sarah,
Thanks for your points. I think this is an interesting way of looking at it – that mental health professionals don’t have the same reach as Canada’s biggest communications company. I wonder how many mental health professionals were involved in the creation of this campaign?
I also think that it’s a massive bummer that we are relying on a corporation like Bell to provide funding for these initiatives. I think it could be argued that campaigns like this could actually end up doing more harm – by allowing people to think that raising a couple million dollars for mental health awareness does anything to affect real, systemic problems around how we see, understand and treat those who are dealing with mental illness in our communities. Maybe this is the next best thing, but I think it brings up another question: Don’t we (everyone who’s lives have been touched by mental illness) deserve better?
I think your thoughts on the role of a corporation is misguided. Corporations like Bell exist for one reason: to make a profit for its shareholders by providing a product or service for consumers.
In recent years, market research has shown that consumer choices are influenced by a company’s social responsibility image, that is consumers are more likely to purchase from a company they view as socially responsible. This has led to public corporate responsibility campaigns such as the one we see from Bell.
These campaigns have become really popular because they present a win-win proposition, the more press the company sees, the more money will be going to a good cause. These are not funds that are being “held hostage” from charitable causes, they are monies being diverted from the pockets of shareholders because they are more productive (better ROI) when invested into such campaigns.
The incentive-based compensation is comparable to standard advertising; a newspaper will increase it advertising fees if its circulation increases. In this case Bell’s donation is tied to increased exposure the same way it would to newspaper advertising.
Bell’s shareholders have no duty to provide money to charitable causes, they do it in the hopes they will attract more customers through being seen as a responsible company. Your assertion that Bell should instead challenge government legislation on criminality of offenses committed by individuals affected by mental disorders shows a striking misconception of how corporations are to be involved in social responsibility campaigns. Why would a telecommunications firm advise the government on such an issue? From what basis would they take a stand? It is not their purpose.
Personally, I commend Bell for not only executing a successful campaign but choosing an issue which has a history of being ignored. Mental health is a tougher sell than cancer or kids with diabetes, kudos to Bell for putting their weight behind it.
Hey Paul,
Thanks so much for your comments. While I obviously hold a different opinion, you bring up a lot of food for thought.
First to clarify, I didn’t intend to suggest that Bell take up political lobbying, but rather that sharing images on Facebook or using a hashtag is increasingly replacing political actions that have wider meaning. I do think that social media use can be a part of activism, and in fact is changing the face of activism globally, but simply sharing an image rarely, if ever, invokes real change in and of itself. I am arguing that Bell is making use of this easy activism to further promote their own business.
I too, would agree that mental health is a much stickier issue than kids with diabetes or cancer, and I do think that Bell took a risk in choosing this issue to get behind.
I guess one of my biggest points here is the way Bell executed this campaign made the machination of increased exposure of their brand = more money for charity look so… obvious. And while I don’t fault them for wanting return on their investment or recognition (and say so in the post) I think how blatant they were about it and the way they centralized their own brand as opposed to centralizing mental health is cause for criticism.
Great post! Exactly how I was feeling about this as well.
Thanks Amber! Glad you enjoyed it.
There was just a great twitter chat on this using the hashtag #hcsmca. People may be interested in checking out the transcript here: http://t.co/8y1CrDWc
Great post, Alison!
Thanks for adding that, Annie. It was interesting to see health care professionals divided on the effects of this campaign. I encourage everyone to check out that link, regardless of where you stand on the issue. Very informative!
I agree with this, in that of course, Bell as a corporation, didn’t run this campaign out of the goodness of their hearts. However, the reality is that our government/ other health organizations and non profits just don’t have (or in governments case, allocate) the funds and infrastructural ability to run successful campaigns like this to reach the number of people Bell can . I cannot count the number of campaigns organizations like CAMH and mood disorders Canada run to reduce mental health stigma, but I’m sure most people not in the field are not following them on twitter and don’t hear about them because they are not advertised as extensively. Also, Bell and companies like them appeal to the population as a whole : everyone has a phone, but not everyone is affected by mental illness and pays attention to health organizations that promote it. It’s the lesser of two evils here, and although it would be great if health organizations could compete with corporate interests, as we have seen in countless other health debates (I.e. big tobacco) they just simply don’t have the marketing power to do that. Until they do, this is the next best thing, in my opinion.
Hey Sarah,
Thanks for your points. I think this is an interesting way of looking at it – that mental health professionals don’t have the same reach as Canada’s biggest communications company. I wonder how many mental health professionals were involved in the creation of this campaign?
I also think that it’s a massive bummer that we are relying on a corporation like Bell to provide funding for these initiatives. I think it could be argued that campaigns like this could actually end up doing more harm – by allowing people to think that raising a couple million dollars for mental health awareness does anything to affect real, systemic problems around how we see, understand and treat those who are dealing with mental illness in our communities. Maybe this is the next best thing, but I think it brings up another question: Don’t we (everyone who’s lives have been touched by mental illness) deserve better?