The ethics of branding: Branding ethically or ethical branding?

Ethical brands have risen to prominence in recent years as a market solution to a diverse range of political, social and, in this case most interestingly, ethical problems. By signifying the ethical beliefs of the firm behind them, ethical brands offer an apparently simple solution to ethical consumers: buy into the brands that represent the value systems that they believe in and avoid buying into those with value-systems that they do not believe in. Lehner and Halliday (this issue), for example, argue that brands are a practical and effective way (13) to address the market demand for ethicality because they offer a means for firms to internalise positive externalities (23) associated with ethical behaviour. The assumption, then, is that if society desires ethical behaviour from firms, firms will not dare to behave otherwise for fear of inflicting costly damage on their carefully crafted brand images. According to economic rules of demand and supply, the market should then ensure that firms respond to the ethical requirements of the society in which they reside. As a consequence, brand management has incorporated as one of its main tasks the translation of the ethical positions on the market into communicable brand messages.