Anticonsumerist marketers: Cultural intermediaries in an era of consumer activism

Cultural intermediaries and workplace identification

Although much research focuses on creatives, agency managers and executives are important cultural intermediaries because they control organizational operations that shape the agency’s creative output, and as such, their modes of identification warrant ongoing examination as industry practices, technologies, and trends rapidly change. The following analysis of such cultural intermediaries builds on three important theoretical developments. First, although early historical accounts framed advertisers as purveyors of capitalist ideology creating the symbolic worlds essential to consumer cultures (Ewen, 1976; Marchand, 1985), cultural economic scholars in the early 2000’s theorized advertisers as cultural producers who mediated symbolic, material, and affective relations of cultural economic life. Importantly for the cultural economists, these cultural intermediaries were not a homogeneous group, but a complex of individuals performing work that is central to the function of contemporary global capitalism (McFall, 2004). Conventionally, identity is examined within consumer culture theory as a constitutive element of the relationship between consumers, commodities, and companies (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Baudrillard, 1998; Gabriel and Lang, 2006; Lury, 2011). Marketers take center stage in the process through representing aspirational identities in promotional messages, which become raw materials through which consumers craft their sense of self via the consumption of associated products and services (du Gay et al., 1997). There has been scholarly interest in cultural intermediaries’ identities as both consumers and producers of commercial culture. Within the emerging field of cultural economy, the study of cultural intermediaries then prioritized issues of agency, negotiation, and power, as well as the contested everyday practices of market agents (Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2012).

Second, cultural intermediary analysis was not limited to brand designers, media figures, and fashionista tastemakers creating aesthetic norms and desires, but also included managers, accountants, and a host of other jobs that enable and constrain the processes of cultural mediation. Negus (2002) argues that executives, managers, and administrative workers such as accountants, in these industries, are also cultural intermediaries because they greatly shape the forms and processes of mediation. Following Negus, marketing executives and managers, such as an agency president, are cultural intermediaries whose decisions over their agency’s branding strategies, clientele, employee composition, and organizational governance structure their cultural mediation.

Finally, a key theoretical turn for cultural economic analysis is the perspective that these marketing practices are not merely the creation of promotional messages in the service of organizational goals, but rather a constitutional component of the conditions of market-based exchange. As du Gay and Pryke (2002) explain,

Instead of viewing a market or firm as existing prior to and hence independently of descriptions of it, the turn to culture instigates a reversal of this perception, by indicating the ways in which objects are constituted through the discourses used to describe them and act upon them. (p. 2)

In short, marketing is essential to ‘market-making’ (Cronin, 2004; du Gay and Pryke, 2002; Slater, 2011).

One aim here is to draw attention to the friction, rather than fluidity, between sources of identification for individuals and the process of cultural mediation. A decade ago, Smith Maguire and Matthews argued that we need ‘greater empirical attention to the stratification and differentiation of cultural intermediaries with regard to their devices, dispositions, locations within regimes of mediation and impacts’ (Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2012: 522). One place where their call remains undertheorized is in the friction of cultural intermediaries’ workplace identities. The prevailing position is that identity is a resource for mediating market relationships, such as trendsetters, tastemakers, and designers who draw on their own subjectivities to communicate with target audiences with few conflicts and contradictions (Negus, 2002; Ruiz and Kjellberg, 2020; Smith Maguire, 2008). For example, research has focused on their expertise, education, and modes of expressing their unique contributions to creative work (Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2010). Identity here is treated as a frictionless resource in which their personal identities are a tool qualifying their expertise as a cultural mediator.

Instead, workplace identification for cultural intermediaries can be seen as a site of struggle and negotiation between the various forms of identity one ascribes to and which are ascribed to them through managerial power, as well as the differential levels of time, energy, and value invested into those potentially conflicting sources of identification. Professional identities, like most identities, are never complete, whole, or unified and are just as often sources of struggle and contestation (Collins and Bilge, 2020; Crenshaw, 2017; Knights and Clarke, 2017). In fact, the rapid decline of the workplace as a source of identification over the latter half of the 20th century is the central premise of what has been called ‘the problem with work’ (Heelas, 2002). More concretely, job satisfaction in 2020 in the United States was 56.9%, a 20-year high. Not only are nearly half of US workers dissatisfied with their jobs, but only 20% reported being passionate about them (Levanon et al., 2021). While passion and satisfaction are not direct indications that one’s employment is or is not a stable source of personal identification, it does suggest that jobs are unlikely to be so for the vast majority of American workers.

One of the major sources of identity conflicts for the agency president stems from the rising importance of ethical consumption and consumer activism. While consumer activism has roots as old as consumer culture itself (Cohen, 2003; Jacobs, 2004), the specific configuration of environmental, ethical, and other forms of socially conscious consumer politics has ascended to a mainstream aspect of day-to-day consumerism (Littler, 2008). Currently in the US, 68% of consumers expect brands to be clear about their values and 54% expect them to take an active stance in movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter (Christie, 2020). The result of such mainstreaming has been that anticonsumerist ideas saturate the work/life habitus of affluent consumers and many cultural intermediaries. Anticonsumerist politics can best be described as interventions into capitalist markets that leverage consumer purchasing behaviors to change the operations of global capitalism on behalf of social, ethical, and environmental causes, among many others. Binkley and Littler (2008: 524) write,

anticonsumerism is an ethical standpoint which results from a highly contextual and variable hybridization of any number of thoughts and sentiments, rhetorics, postures, discourses, modes of expertise and institutional mobilizations, which combine at various historical junctures to posit some larger meaning or value outside of or beyond the world of mass produced goods and services.

Put differently, anticonsumerism is a wide range of consumer practices that moves beyond the fetishized commodity to articulate goods to value systems beyond exchange or use value. When marketers enact anticonsumerist politics in their workplaces, not simply as part of a campaign for a client, but enshrined in the organizational governance of an agency, that action reshapes relations between the agency and its clients, employees, and vendors. Doing so reorganizes market-making relationships, not through trends among retail consumers, but through the business-to-business practices between an organization and those with whom they partner.

The competing or conflicting identities that cultural intermediaries navigate should be of great interest in an era of consumer activism. Some scholars have focused on spaces of negotiation, conflict, and struggle for cultural intermediaries but tend to focus on the producer/consumer binary rather than multiple regimes of mediation (Banks, 2006; Surma and Daymon, 2013). For example, Banks’s (2006) treatment of the tension between personal and professional dimensions within a ‘demoralized economy’ reveals that it still relies on the social and political values of cultural entrepreneurs for biographical clout. Surma and Daymon provide a pointed account of how gender differentially creates tensions between home and work life among public relations professionals (Surma and Daymon, 2013). As productive as these examples are in terms of workplace identification as a site of conflict whose resolutions impact the practices of market-making, they focus on the binary between the personal and professional identities, rather than multiple regimes of mediation. One starting point to explore such contradictions is the critical literature on organizational and management studies.

The dominant position with critical organizational and management studies is that workplace identification occurs as workers negotiate the tensions between managerial power and worker autonomy (Alvesson et al., 2008; Braverman, 1974; Burawoy, 1979). Here, identification centers on the degree to which workers invest their sense of self in their position within the labor process. Yet, Alvesson et al. (2008) point out that identities within organizations are ‘multiple, shifting, and competing’ no matter how ‘orderly and integrated’ they appear (p. 6). Critical management scholars have picked up this theme, questioning where the forces of consumer culture intersect with work cultures and often found ideological phenomena in the form of worker resistance – for example, symbolic resistance to managerial power through subversive clothing, or conceptualizing employment as consumer choice (du Gay and Salaman, 1992; Fleming and Spicer, 2003, 2008). These ideological explanations rely on a dialectic between acquiescence/resistance to form workplace identity with/against managerial power. Yet, the subject in what follows is the president of the agency – they are managerial power. The majority of organizational studies that examine managers take an instrumental approach to identity, looking for technical and functional ways that workplace identification can improve organizational efficiency (Alvesson et al., 2008). The following case is unique because the focus on the agency president’s identity tensions is through a critical, rather than functional, lens. For the agency president, the power struggle is between their anticonsumerist, environmental politics and their proconsumerist work as the president of a branding agency, which is to say the struggle is between personal and professional identities, obligations to clients, and organizational operations.

Identity conflict resolution

Sam is the president of AgencyX, a brand experience agency that specializes in working with companies that make a positive social impact. ¹ Because Sam is a marketing manager leading strategic decision making for their agency, they are atypical of the characterization of cultural intermediaries who directly shape the symbolic and affective associations with goods and services. Yet their position as the agency president affords them wide latitude and power over the organizational practices and governance which directly shape the symbolic, material, and affective process of cultural mediation that their agency performs in their creative work. Sam’s desire to ‘be a force for good’ oscillates between their identity as a consumer with anticonsumerist, environmental politics, and their identity as the president of an inherently proconsumerist branding agency.

In 2007, they led AgencyX in a change of strategic direction away from primarily serving biotech and life science companies to working with companies that focus on having a positive social impact. Sam lamented that they were unable to affect the type of change they wish as an individual, middle-class consumer on a large scale. Instead, they leverage their work as a marketer to further their individual anticonsumerist and environmental politics by fostering alternative business models, reconfiguring company governance, and working to eliminate the agency’s ecological footprint. In doing so, Sam attempted to realize desires for anticonsumerist politics such as environmentally sustainable business practices, locally and community-focused initiatives, and employee welfare. They explained the contradiction:

I absolutely believe that I am not now, nor will I be tomorrow, be making so much money that I can buy the chain of islands in the Galapagos [for preservation]. Not gonna happen. As much as I love the Patagonia guy – he’s amazing – I won’t be the Patagonia guy. What impact can I have if I can’t be the Patagonia guy? How am I helping a business of people to contribute, and encouraging them to contribute, in every way they can, to be a force for good?

Sam’s solution to the problem was B Corp certification. They led the effort to certify AgencyX as a B Corp to enshrine the agency’s commitment to sustainability, quality labor practices, and responsible partnerships with other businesses in the organizational governance. Sam’s push to certify AgencyX as a B Corp articulates their environmental and anticonsumerist sentiments to their work habits by moving their company toward what they see as more ethical business practices. Sam admits that they will never be able to enact their environmental activism as a consumer in any way that could mark a substantive change in the world. Instead, Sam uses the company they manage as a platform for change. They refer to ‘The Patagonia guy’ with a reverence that indicates the importance of such a figure to Sam’s self-image. More than just an admired business leader, ‘The Patagonia guy’ represents a more unified version of a self that abides by the neoliberal structure of life under contemporary global capitalism but aspires to more authentic alternatives which are better for people and planet. In that way, certifying their company as a B Corp performs a crucial function of bridging the gap between their experiences as an environmentally conscious consumer and their professional identity as a marketing executive.

Patagonia provides a model for Sam to resolve the identity contradictions. ‘The Patagonia guy’ is Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, an outdoor equipment and apparel manufacturer known for its emphasis on environmental consciousness. Chouinard’s life narrative, through a powerful piece of corporate marketing, is told as the company history (Patagonia, 2015). Referencing naturalists and transcendentalist writers, such as John Muir, Henry Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, it reads as a combination of consumer and entrepreneurial fantasy in which the passionate pursuit of creating a life worth living for oneself should also make the world a better place for the environment and those around you. Chouinard’s dedication and passion are invested in the intersection of his respect for nature, his identity as a climber, his ethics as a consumer, his skill as a craftsman, and his talent as a businessman. The company of Patagonia ostensibly emerges from Chouinard’s identity investment in which properly oriented passion and hard work allow one to escape the alienation of modern life. Today, Patagonia is a B Corp and has become known for environmentally friendly practices, such as ‘1% for the Planet’ – donating 1% of sales to environmentally-focused non-profits – as well as leading programs for upcycling and recycling used products (Planet, 2022).

For Sam, certifying AgencyX as a B Corp provides a similar outlet through which they escape feeling alienated by the very world of overconsumption that they help facilitate as a marketer. Sam lamented,

I think we have become a world of overconsumers. We need to be more conscious of how we are consuming, and what we’re consuming, and the way in which we are utilizing the resources of this planet on which we live.

They clarified their own consumer habits in terms of a renegotiation of the time and energy investment that privileges the experience of nature and reinforces their appreciation for Chouinard’s unified identity as an entrepreneurial environmentalist:

I’m definitely not an overconsumer. I live well within my means. I often ask, ‘Do I need that? Do I want that pair of shoes? These shoes are fine, man. They’ll last forever. I don’t need that’. What I need is more time at the overlook looking at the beauty of nature. That’s what I need more of.

However, consuming less or differently wasn’t enough to resolve the identification conflict. Considering multiple regimes of mediation instead of the producer-consumer binary, Sam asked, what could they do as a marketing executive to fix the environmental problems they identified? They concluded that they could help other businesses make a positive social impact through their market-making services. They said, ‘we need to be a lot more conscious of how we are governing our businesses – how we are managing our people and encouraging our people to be engaged with the communities in which they are operating and living’.

Such statements indicate a frustration with the current arrangements of global capitalism and a desire to articulate divergent practices to its dominant form today while also pointing to Sam’s attempt at mimetically driven institutional isomorphism. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) describe institutional isomorphism as a process that shapes how organizations respond to the practices of and pressures from other organizations with whom they compete for resources, customers, institutional legitimacy and political power, as well as social and economic success (p. 150). Mimetically driven change occurs when different organizations within an institutional setting react similarly to an uncertain situation and adopt the practices of other organizations whose responses have proved successful (p. 151). One of the main uncertainties facing Sam and other marketers is how to respond to increasing demands from consumers for social, ethical, and more environmentally conscious options in the marketplace when corporate social responsibility often fails to produce the desired results of elevating people and plant over profits. Sam wanted to show other businesses a better way.

B Corps provide an outlet for Sam to both live the brand of positive social impact they had developed for AgencyX and enact their personal anticonsumerist, environmental politics in ways that create a more unified sense of self. Sam affirmed the relationship between B Corps and themselves, ‘I do think that it has been a critical component to the way we operate as a business. I think it [being a B Corp] is very representative of the way I try to live as a person’. Yet transforming their agency’s operations to fit their personal politics creates forms of cultural mediation infused with the exercise of managerial power, which seeks to change the kinds of clients, creative output, and social impact of the agency. Sam’s comment about ‘changing how we govern our businesses’ signals the political aim of their identity resolution – wielding the agency’s cultural economic power to stimulate institutional isomorphism toward divergent practices.

To understand why B Corp certification was a successful identity resolution technique for Sam that can also set trends in the business-to-business context, it is important to describe what makes B Corps a unique legal and cultural form of organizational governance. There are two dimensions to B Corps that are interrelated but often colloquially confused – certified B Corp and benefit corporation tax status. B Corp is often used as shorthand for both or either category because there is considerable overlap in their aims and objectives. This is because the non-profit B Lab oversees both B Corp certification and lobbies to US state governments for the adoption of benefit corporation as a tax-filing status. B Corp certification is primarily an audit of internal company habits, refuse chain of custody, employee treatment, and community engagement. Benefit corporations are a legal alternative to ‘C’ or ‘S’ corporations. In lobbying states to adopt benefit corporations as a legal tax filing status, B Lab seeks to create alternatives to the fiduciary obligations, which dictate that traditional corporate managers must prioritize shareholder profit above all other company goals.

Both benefit corporations and B Corps advance a stakeholder model of organizational governance in opposition to a shareholder primacy model. The certification and/or tax status allows corporations to make long-term, environmental, or employee-centric decisions even if they are less profitable. Both certified B Corps and tax-registered benefit corporations have legal protections in place that shape organizational practice at the level of governance documentation. B Lab explains,

The failure of shareholder primacy is increasingly acknowledged by business and finance leaders around the world. Many are now calling for a shift to corporate governance that prioritizes all stakeholders, commonly known as stakeholder governance or benefit governance. This kind of corporate governance ensures that companies are required to consider the interest of all of their stakeholders – customers, workers, suppliers, communities, investors, and the environment – in their decision making. Put simply: stakeholder governance ensures we have better businesses that are accountable to people and planet. (B Lab, 2021)

B Corp proponents see themselves as taking up the mantle of the triple bottom line – people, profit, and planet – with one major difference, B Lab has developed the legal protection necessary for companies to emphasize people and planet over profits. Sam explained,

There are many things that need to be taken into consideration with the health of our world besides fiscal responsibility. B Corps are raising their hands and claiming independence from fiscal responsibility. We as the leadership of the company can make a decision that may not be the fiscally smartest decision. I’m going to use this supplier, even though they may be more expensive, but the way in which that supplier is managing the chain of custody around materials they’re taking out of our office is true to a healthier world. It’s true to a healthier environment. It’s true to better recycling. It’s true to all of the things that make this a better place to live.

For small and large businesses, the pathway to B Corp certification is basically the same. First, incorporate stakeholder governance in the legal frameworks of the organization. Second, complete an ‘Impact Assessment’ that contains some 200 questions and impact areas to consider. Third, pay a certification fee that is tiered based on annual revenue. Sam outlined some of the ways B Corp certification has changed AgencyX’s operations:

. . . we have implemented governance, policies, and procedures for the way in which we are governing the business to allow us to make decisions beyond just fiscal decisions. We have passed for employee management, in terms of the amount of time we allow them to go free and do good things for the community, their involvement, and investment within the business. Our suppliers, we have processes and procedures where our suppliers have to go through questionnaires and pass certain levels of operating activities in order for us to utilize them as suppliers. That includes things like women and minority-owned businesses. Making sure we’re paying attention and asking: are we working with minority and women-owned businesses? Are we trying to use suppliers within a 200-mile radius of where we are, so people aren’t shipping stuff to us at crazy rates? I may use a printer that is five miles away that’s a little more expensive rather than one that’s way up in [redacted city]. I can get the products and from a fossil fuel consumption perspective, five miles away is a lot cheaper in terms of the cost to the environment.

After five years as a B Corp, Sam said the effects on their company were threefold: helped them be more authentic to their own agency brand, create tangibly positive environmental impacts, and recruit clients and employees. They reiterated, ‘the reasons that we did it were to be better for our community, to be better for our people, to be better for the world. Those are the environment, the Earth, right? Those are the fundamental reasons’. Among other items, AgencyX’s 2020 impact report claims their team invested hundreds of hours into diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; donated significant time and money to community investment; and are 100% carbon neutral.

Certifying as a B Corp seemed to make AgencyX more attractive as an employer and as an agency. Sam said, ‘I would say ancillary benefits are it has helped us with recruiting the team members. I think people who find out that we’re a B Corp are intrigued by us’. B Corps are building their own cache within the business community and can signal to potential employees that, not only is the company committed to certain standards which prioritize people and planet, it has standards for how it treats its employees. It suggests such attempts are attractive to the labor market in ways that are desirable for both organizations and employees. In short, B Corps are trending within the business community.

Trend setters in the business community

Given the large body of research about the importance of cultural intermediaries in establishing tastes and trends for retail consumers, it is easy to miss how they have potential to do the same with clients and vendors. This is crucial because roughly half of all economic activity in the USA occurs between businesses (LaPlaca and Katrichis, 2009). In fact, the industry estimates suggest that roughly equal amounts are spent on retail and B2B marketing every year (Miller, 2020). Cultural intermediaries not only participate in the production of the cultural and economic conditions of value generation for the retail consumer commodity, but they also contribute to the formation of unique patterns and processes that animate the B2B relationships within the supply chain, which are often obscured from the retail consumer. While consumers might be familiar with B2B brands like Intel, who make semiconductor microprocessor chips and have spent over $36 billion over the last three decades building retail consumer brand awareness, the vast majority of B2B brands stay hidden from retail consumers within the depths of the supply chain (Rottinghaus, 2022). Nonetheless, B2B products and services are branded in order to create cultural economic value in the same way as retail brands. AgencyX is a B2B service provider and while they create marketing materials and messages for many B2B brands, they – like all agencies – are in the business of providing services to other businesses.

Agency X’s B Corp certification is an example of a cultural intermediary trendsetting within the business community by changing organizational governance and brand perception at the intersection of authenticity. Specifically, B Corps are an example of institutional isomorphism diverging from expected business norms and models because it attempts to normalize new legal, cultural, and economic terms that businesses operate upon. It is an important distinction from trendsetting in the retail consumer space. Businesses have mission statements, laws, and governance documents that organizational managers must abide by, where retail consumers are free to jump in and out of trends at their whim. Trends among businesses are in some ways more difficult and durable than shifting tastes in fashion or fonts. Sam commented that

From a new business perspective, I think it has helped us to introduce ourselves as a very genuine company who is interested in the well-being of the world and of our community and of our people, and that can be disarming to clients. When we first got certified, we picked up almost immediately within that first year, three other certified B Corporations [as clients].

There are two dimensions here. First, AgencyX being a certified B Corp means that their governance documents help them enforce their claims of authenticity. They publicly list some of these tenets in their ‘Impact Statement’ which is available on their website. Among other items the report includes transparent financial governance with employees; monitoring and reporting employee diversity composition, public support for Black Lives Matter, and other inclusive projects; and environmental impact tracking of carbon usage and energy consumption. The Founder and CEO of AgencyX reiterated the impact of Sam’s B Corp certification on their agency:

. . . if you’re a company that believes in not just building a company to be profitable, but a company that will do it in a certain way, B Corp could be of interest to you. They want to know your business practices. They want to know how you treat your employees. They want to know how you make your environmental and sustainability decisions all the way down to who takes out your garbage and what’s done with that garbage. . . We decided that when we sit down every year and look at our corporate objectives, we need to not only look at the ones that will help us grow the agency but emphasize the ones that help us also hold us accountable to do it right. The people at B Corp have established criteria that help you benchmark yourself.

As part of the recurring certification process, B Lab provides companies with checkpoints to ensure they are abiding by the standards required in certification. The matrix of governance, brand, and authenticity is enshrined in their governance documents which sets AgencyX’s mission toward positive social impact. Sam explains how important authenticity is for them to be able to live their company brand:

B Corp is merely a way for us to demonstrate that we mean it [positive social impact]. This isn’t just talk. When we sat down and talked to the folks at B Lab and told them who our list of clients were, they couldn’t believe it. They were like, ‘holy crap you guys are living it’. Every client we work with qualifies within B Corp as a company that is out to improve social good.

B Corps are trending, and branding agencies like AgencyX create interest in the alternative business model through promotion, employee investment, and client relationships. When Sam’s company was getting certified there were only about 2,200 B Corps and only 30 states allowed companies to register as a benefit corporation. Today, there are over 4,700 B Corps in 78 countries and 155 industries, and 35 US States allow benefit corporation tax designation (B Lab, 2022). Some of the more well-known certified B corps are Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and New Belgium Brewery. Sam said,

What I’m learning is that B corporations look out for each other. It was not the precipice for why we went down this road, [but] it’s becoming an interesting advantage. For example, with ClientY, there’s no RFP process, there’s no going up against other agencies. We started a conversation with them, started talking about B corporations and before we knew it, they were wanting to give us business.

As much as businesses seem attracted to this stakeholder driven model, the rapid growth of B Corps suggests the widespread existence of such identification conflicts among individuals who see the intersection of governance, brands, and authenticity as a path for conflict resolution. The trend of authenticity has value for the clients AgencyX works with, and it suggests that other companies and individuals share the kind of anticonsumerist dispositions that made B Corp attractive to Sam at the start. More importantly, the growing interest in B Corp at both organizational leadership and individual workers’ levels suggests that divergent institutional isomorphism can occur to elevate people and planet over profit.

Conclusion

In this article, I described how a branding agency president certified their company as a B Corp to resolve the identity contradiction between their personal anticonsumerist politics and their proconsumerist work as a marketing professional. By certifying their agency as a B Corp, they placed their personal environmental sustainability politics at the forefront of their agency’s practices. As cultural intermediaries, marketing workers are at the symbolic, material, and affective nexus linking cultural and economic flows between supply and demand, and increasingly, consumer activism. Therefore, the way they negotiate competing sources of identification is an important site mediating cultural economic life. While Sam and AgencyX raise important caveats regarding managerial power in organizations, affluence and consumer-based politics, capitalist appropriation of critique, and the larger problematic of markets as mechanisms for social change, it nonetheless indicates that marketing worker identity is a site of struggle over anticonsumerist politics that can, through its resolution, impact the processes of cultural mediation.

One way to view this case is that cultural intermediaries are a middle-ground between consumer demand and corporate social responsibility where anticonsumerist politics are emerging as a market force. On one hand, cultural intermediaries are accustomed to monitoring, absorbing, and reframing consumers’ life worlds through the gathering, analysis, and application of market research data. The shift among affluent consumer groups in recent decades, to being concerned with issues of where, how, and by whom goods are made, alters the habitus of marketers, which creates identification conflicts in need of resolution. Yet, when consumer choice is the primary mode of anticonsumerist practices, it problematically reinforces the demand-side market mechanism of consumer choice as the dominant mode of political engagement and relies on the ethical-political frameworks of individuals to link consumption and identity. Littler warns that, ‘a potential threat of anticonsumerist identity politics is that it might degenerate into the quasi-pathology of consumer heroism’ (Littler, 2008: 77). To combat this potential, Littler argues that relational reflexivity – a focus on the relationships that construct consumers’ positions within the larger cultural and economic context – can lead to new forms of intervention and coalition building beyond consumer boycotts and demands for more ethical and sustainable commodities. The suggestion is that at least in the single case presented here, Sam was reflecting on their limitations as a consumer and thinking more holistically about where their consumer politics might be applicable in other relationalities. Sam made AgencyX operate in a way that suited how they wanted to live their life. While it might not quite be the quasi-pathology of consumer heroism, it is an extension of a similar individual heroism.

On the other hand, such individual heroism needs due consideration for its implication for managerial power and labor politics. Sam’s employees are subject to their decision to pursue B Corp certification and that raises serious issues regarding the ways in which personal politics of business managers become corporate culture. It should not be taken lightly when key figures in organizations engineer work culture based on their own identity or politics – these dangers are equally true of agendas from the left and the right. While this instance does appear to generally favor employees, Sam did admit that they must remind employees to stay on top of the steps that qualify them as a B Corp, such as making sure the recycling is put in the right container and that all vendors pass the qualifications.

However, both of these dimensions need to be understood within the recent changing forms of global capitalism. Decades ago, Baudrillard (1988) outlined the reformulation of consumer capitalism and its emphasis on symbolic power. The development was amplified by the emergence of the post-Fordist information economy (Amin, 2011). Consumer data soon became ‘the new oil’ catalyzing the Internet and social media companies’ development of surveillance advertising and platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017). The convergence of such changes in the technocultural, labor, affective, and symbolic conditions of global capitalism leave cultural intermediaries, especially reflective individuals concerned about their impact on the world, looking for harmonious ways to live and work through the contradictions of their privileged socioeconomic positions within global capitalism.

The emergence of anticonsumerist politics in marketing work cultures warrants additional research for its potential to foster institutional isomorphism through cultural intermediaries’ attempts to build more harmonious ways of being in the world. More empirical studies are necessary in the vein of Cronin and Edwards (2022), which look for conflicts and negotiations in the work of cultural intermediaries, especially as they seek resolutions to conflicting sources of identification. Furthermore, better understanding the business-to-business dynamics of cultural mediation between agencies and clients could reveal insights into the processes of institutional isomorphism within an industry. One of the hallmarks of a good agency is a willingness to ‘push back’ on the client and provide them with expertise and perspective they cannot get from internal marketing teams alone. Given that organizations already take advice from agencies, mimetically driven change might be possible in the form of creating business trends.