Tweaking ethical consumption: Civic branding in Starbucks cause-related marketing

This paper investigates the rhetorical production of citizenship within contemporary models of ethical branding. Specifically, it examines two cause-related marketing campaigns of Starbucks within a critical-semiotic framework, by drawing on Kenneth Burkes concept of Identification and Jacques Lacans concept of Desire. I argue that traditional theories of argumentation and ethical consumption fail to illuminate the burgeoning sophistication of ethical branding, which I label civic branding. As I illustrate in this paper, civic branding attempts to untie the problematic cash nexus of ethical consumption and interpellate branded citizens rather than ethical consumers. It displaces the ethical commodity with a sense of direct civic engagement, while also exploiting logics of Desire by perpetually enticing individuals back to the well of civic brand identification.