What you need to know:

• According to the second Leo Burnett / UTS report, The Good Study, 96 per cent of Australians believe it’s important for brands to be doing some form of good in the world today. Nearly two thirds (65 per cent) also believe a company’s role isn’t just to make money, but to have a positive impact on society.
• But even as 57 per cent claim they’ll avoid brands that aren’t perceived to be doing good, 61 per cent insist brands should not weigh in on political and social issues.
• The top three things brands can do to be seen as good are: Pay employees and suppliers fairly (9 per cent, up 11 per cent on 2022), provide stable and fair employment (92 per cent); and pay appropriate taxes in Australia (9 per cent, up 16 per cent).
• According to UTS Business School dean, author and panellist at The Good Study’s launch, Carl Rhodes, it’s clear the Australian citizen’s “bullshit detector is working really well”.  As he stated: “If you look at the low levels of trust in businesses today revealed in the research, there’s good reason for it. Look at the last 12 years, and look right now: We have a Senate Commission where supermarkets are being questioned on price gouging and profiteering, not to mention exploiting people further down their supply chain. There’s a new word that became popular in 2023 – greed-flation – the idea of inflation fuelled by corporate greed.”
• For former Diageo and Domino’s CMO, Adam Ballesty, the short answer to whether brands should get political is “fuck no” – with the odd caveat such as the business you’re in and local community involvement. “But I think what we’re talking about here is what consumers want and expect more is for brands to be real and live what they say,” Ballesty says.
• Activist, author and brand strategist Azure Antoinette, disagrees, and also points to the distinction between broadcasting and ally-ship as very real in the debate. “Is it a mutually exclusive statement to say businesses shouldn’t get involved in everything that would be considered high stakes or political unrest? No. I’m not saying it’s everything that pops up in our space or the marketing machine… but it is difficult from a consumer and employee perspective to figure out where is that compassion,” she says.

‘Greed-flation’ has led to a warranted lack of trust in businesses across Australia and greater calls for brands to do good. But don’t believe the false dichotomy between either “rapacious exploitation or flaky left” or that brands should play in politics, say academics, brand and activist leaders. Behaving with integrity, upholding human dignity and paying your taxes is just a good place to start for business.

What Australians really think of brands and their attempts to “do good” is the subject of The Good Study, a biennial intelligence report produced by Leo Burnett in partnership with the UTS Business School and Zenith Media. This year’s report, the second in the series, is based on a two-part survey of just over 1,000 consumers conducted quantitatively in January 2024, then a qualitative survey of 500 in April 2024.

The overarching result is 96 per cent of Australians believe it’s important for brands to be doing some form of good in the world today. Nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) also believe a company’s role isn’t just to make money, but to have a positive impact on society.

But drill down further on how consumers perceive “doing good” and things quickly become a quagmire. For example, only 39 per cent believe brands should be taking a position on social and political issues – even as 57 per cent say they avoid brands perceived not to be doing good.

More explicitly, half of Australians said they’d boycott brands for taking a position in current wars and conflicts. However, it’s worth noting Gen Z were more likely to support brands for getting into such stoushes, with 42 per cent saying they’d actively support brands involved in conflicts and wars if it aligns to their beliefs. This contrasted with 20 per cent of Boomers.

This concept of “doing good” gets even murkier the further you read into the report, although there are some indicators. The top three demonstrations of good people want to see from brands are remarkably prosaic, financial and reflective of how much attention we’re paying to Qantas’ CX and EX practices, supermarket prices, and Amazon’s tax practices right now. Namely, these are: Pay employees and suppliers fairly (94 per cent, up 11 per cent on 2022), provide stable and fair employment (92 per cent); and pay appropriate taxes in Australia (91 per cent, up 16 per cent).

Corruption is up there too – nine in 10 believe it’s important to have zero tolerance to corruption – as is repairing, recycling and sharing resources to reduce environmental impact (89 per cent). But notably, six in 10 of the behaviours consumers want brands to exhibit are financially oriented.

Less clearly, just over half of consumers strongly agree they want brands to be ‘authentic’ – that old chestnut panellists participating in a discussion around the report’s findings had a very tough time agreeing on.

One clue to authenticity is the ongoing belief and expectation Australians have of fairness – with some nuances across different demographics. For example, 88 per cent believe all Australians deserve a ‘fair go’ even if their religious or political views are different to their own, a figure that drops to 75 per cent across Gen Z. Three in four say they would help someone in need even if they didn’t agree with their point of view, and 87 per cent believe it’s important to do the right thing by others, with Boomers and the silent generation leading the way. 

Bullshit detectors firing

In responding to what he described as a “chasm between expectation and trust”, UTS Business School dean, author and panellist at The Good Study’s launch, Carl Rhodes, said it’s clear the Australian citizen’s “bullshit detector is working really well”.

“Australian people aren’t fooled by brands that put lipstick on a pig. It’s still the same pig. If you look at the low levels of trust in businesses today revealed in the research, there’s good reason for it,” he told attendees. “Look at the last one to two years, and look right now: We have a Senate Commission where supermarkets are being questioned on price gouging and profiteering, not to mention exploiting people further down their supply chain. There’s a new word that became popular in 2023 – greed-flation – the idea of inflation fuelled by corporate greed.

“Look at mining companies blowing up sacred mining sites. Look how we saw PwC last year get in lot of trouble, and quite rightly so, for double dealing with government on tax policy. We have seen airlines mistreat customers and employees. The lack of trust has been well, well earned. To some extent, it doesn’t mean all corps behave by that – some are tarred by the brush of others – but it’s a sign that there’s lot of work to do and Australians expect corporations to do better.

“The good news is corporations can stand up and behave with integrity and honesty – there is a great opportunity to do that. I can’t think of examples right now of that though of [companies actually doing] this.”

The pathways to getting up to good also indicate how much the Australian attitude of fair go while treading the middle ground is playing out – with a healthy dose of what’s in it for me. Treating people respectfully and fairly (90 per cent) and financial integrity (85 per cent) were first and foremost, ahead of environmental good and societal good (both 77 per cent).

Across the demographic divide, Gen Z were more passionate about several acts of good, over-indexing on areas such as mental and physical wellbeing, diversity, equity and inclusion, women’s reproductive rights, reducing sexism. Gen Z and millennials are also more inclined to research a brand to gauge their positive impact before buying from them, and recommend a brand doing good to others in higher number.

In return, 68 per cent of consumers said they’d pay more for a brand doing good.

Brands, stay in your lane

Yet there’s a counterargument in the concept of brands staying in their lanes. Take that disinclination to see brands “playing politics”, for instance.

“The short answer to whether brands should get political is fuck no,” said fellow panellist and former Diageo and Domino’s CMO, Adam Ballesty. “But there are caveats. Say you're in Sydney in 2010s, there's isolated incidents of violence late at night and they create lockout laws. I was working the booze industry at the time… And say you’re someone like Justin Hemmes, who owns 40 or 50 venues within that circle. That’s a challenge for him as a hospitality owner. And he turned into a lobbyist. He was sitting in these thinktanks, and sitting in rooms consulting, as that was about his business. Was he being political? Yes. But he was also an active member of the community and a business owner who employs a lot of people.

“But I think what we’re talking about here is what consumers want and expect more is for brands to be real and live what they say.”

An example Ballesty gave was working on Bundaberg Rum and reorienting around the purpose of celebrating the best of the Aussie spirit. In response to a shark attack on surfer, Mick Fanning, where his mate, Julian Wilson, swam towards the problem to help, the brand released limited edition bottles commemorating his spirit, sending these out to surfers.

“It went viral. Why did it work? Because we were living our values, purpose and it worked. The bullshit radar was on and it’s real,” Ballesty said. “Down the track, and the Australian Cricket Team are playing against South Africa. Players start sandpapering ball and get ousted. The brand team recognised this is the worst of Aussie spirit… we shut our mouth.

“If you try to stick something on the side, you’re opportunistic, or there’s a movement seen as advantageous to you, mostly it fails and the world moves around you.”

But author, activist and brand crisis strategist, Azure Antionette, didn’t agree to brands not saying anything when “shitty behaviour” is present.

“Where I get confused in this space is there is ultimately an ethos, marketing strategy, pillars and core values, and copywriting is going to hit your KPIs – with all of those things, there’s a person behind every one of these operations,” she said. “I also disagree when you’re looking at atrocities in any space. I have huge problem semantically that we have labelled that politics. People are being harmed in whatever way. Yet the go to is I don’t want to get political.”

Where Antoinette agreed to brands not overtly leaping into every societal challenge is someone making drill bits. “I wouldn’t say as a consumer you’re looking for them to get in the ring about breast cancer diagnosis, or talking about something that feels completely separate to that offering,” she said.

“Is it a mutually exclusive statement to say businesses shouldn’t get involved in everything that would be considered high stakes or political unrest? No.

“I’m not saying it’s everything that pops up in our space or the marketing machine… but it is difficult from a consumer and employee perspective to figure out where is that compassion.”

For Rhodes, the problem lies in trying to draw a moat around brands engaging in politics. “To some extent, it’s all political,” he argued. “There is ‘politics’ involved in attaching oneself to someone else’s social causes. Did Bud Light positively contribute in any way [by creating a commemorative beer can for transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney]?

“Remember a few years ago when Gillette released the campaign ‘The Best a Man Can be’: Did that help the movement or did that just make it more controversial and polarising?

“Anything economic is going to be connected to the political in some way. In marketing, the debates we hear are all about corporations supporting LGBTQIA+ rights, sexual or domestic violence, or climate – these are really important social causes.

“But what the corporate economy is driving more than anything else and what’s getting worse is economic inequality. I don’t see any corporations calling out for stronger trade unions. Or calling out to control ridiculous CEO or exec pay. These are off the cards because it’s not in the self-interest of elites in the corporate world.

“Yet it’s driving economic inequality, the vast expansion of billionaire class globally, ridiculous levels of tax avoidance and evasion, gender pay gap – these are the realities of what the system is producing.”

Broadcasting versus impacting

Where panellists were more aligned was the distinction between brands broadcasting ‘good’ versus getting behind a cause and driving positive impact.

“Brands have a great platform and a bigger voice than most – adding shareholder value has to be real,” said Ballesty. “But it doesn’t prevent them having impact. When I started at Domino’s, one of the values is we do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. If you look at the workforce, a large percentage of the workforce is under 17, and youth depression and suicide is a pandemic of its own in this country. They have a foundation and fund in the background coming out of sales on a certain day. It raises awareness around the fund and foundation. But it has great impact with verticals it works with, such as Lifeline... They can have people on phones for longer at high-risk times from that.

“That’s when a brand goes into a different gear – it’s about impact. It’s not necessarily saying we’re in partnership with Lifeline, get 10 per cent off a pizza.”

Antoinette described this as “lived advocacy versus performance ally-ship”.

“What we are seeing today – if you do it now, put in this code, we’ll send you this thing. It’s all revenue based. That kind of interest from a larger constituency, when they say they know this is going on, we stay purposed to know this is going on and we’re going to keep on doing this whether it’s popular, broadcasted or not,” she said.

Polarisation and economic outlook

Against this context are other macro forces at work. Leo Burnett’s report shows two-thirds believe Australia as a nation is polarised, a state of play largely attributed to either Federal Government (60 per cent), media (55 per cent) and state governments (49 per cent). The report also shows it’s Federal Government (84 per cent) followed by state Governments (82 per cent) most often in the hot seat when it comes to responsibility for doing more good in the world today – above companies (72 per cent).

In response, Leo Burnett’s respondents exhibited a marked increase in support for activities that could help with eradicating polarisation. These include creating ‘social togetherness’ (73 per cent, up 39 per cent on the 2022 study); actively stopping the poor treatment of marginalised communities (77 per cent, up 34 per cent); supporting First Nations Australians (60 per cent, up 31 per cent); and investing in the local community (83 per cent, up 29 per cent).

Against this, 41 per cent of Australians were pessimistic about the economic outlook for the next 12 months and more than half see Australia’s economic situation declining over the next 12 months.

And it was clear the very immediate human and economic woes are influencing the overt financial lens being put across purchase decisions. These outstripped the ‘good’ factors and were led by price, which increased by 6 per cent to 66 per cent – a consistent across all generations. This was followed by product / service quality (58 per cent) and suiting my needs (43 per cent).