Marketers need to find the balance between creative ambition and accountability. While we need to be willing to challenge convention, take creative risks and enter conversations that matter, we need to understand the consequences of the ideas we put into the world.
Vaughan Croeser, VP: Marketing at South African Breweries, says responsibility is not a constraint; it is a creative catalyst (Image supplied)
Responsible marketing is often framed as a question of restraint: what brands should not say, who they should not speak to and where they should not go.
But that framing misses the bigger opportunity.
Responsibility should not sit outside creativity as a set of rules that restricts what marketers can do; it should challenge us to think differently about how far creativity can go and what it can achieve.
That is what I mean by being a responsible rebel. It is not about rebelling against the rules for the sake of it.
It is about having the confidence to push boundaries, with the discipline to understand where those boundaries come from and why they matter.
The alcohol category
In a category such as alcohol, that balance is particularly important because our marketing can influence behaviours, choices and cultural norms well beyond the product itself.
At SAB, our Responsible Marketing Committee, The Collective, brings diverse perspectives into the creative process and challenges our communication before it reaches consumers.
This is important because responsibility cannot be something we check at the end of the process.
It needs to be part of how we develop ideas from the outset, creating the space for our teams to be ambitious while making sure that ambition is grounded in accountability.
When brands enter the conversation
This becomes particularly important when brands enter conversations that matter.
Carling Black Label’s #NoExcuse platform is a good example. Now in its10th year, the campaign has continued to challenge the excuses that enable gender-based violence, while evolving its role as the conversation around GBV has changed.
More recently, our partnership with the PSL and SABC has taken that commitment into one of the spaces where football fans are most engaged.
The #NoExcuse WhatsApp line is promoted during injury time, a moment when tensions can be high and when conversations around GBV can become particularly relevant.
The fact that men have reached out through the platform shows the value of creating a channel for engagement rather than simply putting another message into the world, while the campaign's longer-term work has contributed to shifting perceptions around whether GBV can be excused.
Covid-19 ban: another perspective
The Covid-19 alcohol bans offered another perspective.
When conventional product marketing was no longer possible, brands had to reconsider their role, with Carling Black Label and Castle Lager using their platforms to encourage responsible public-health behaviour and maintain constructive relationships with consumers.
It raised a question that remains relevant today: if your brand could not sell anything tomorrow, would it still have something useful to say?
For me, that is one of the tests of responsible marketing.
Beyond communications
But responsibility should go beyond communication because marketing does not only influence what people think and buy; it can also influence the choices they have.
SAB Sharp’s road-safety message, “None for the road”, is a simple example.
Rather than asking consumers to navigate complicated calculations around drinking and driving, it establishes a clear behavioural norm: if you are driving, you do not drink.
innovation
Innovation is another way responsibility and growth can intersect.
As consumer needs and occasions evolve, brands have an opportunity to create more choices that allow people to participate on their own terms.
Castle Free, Corona Cero and Brutal Fruit Non-Alcoholic are examples of how we are expanding the choices available to consumers, allowing them to enjoy the social rituals and experiences associated with these brands while choosing not to consume alcohol on a particular occasion, whether they are driving, pacing themselves, taking a break from alcohol or simply not wanting to drink.
The opportunity for marketers is not simply to communicate that these choices exist, but to make moderation feel like participation rather than exclusion.
By responding to emerging consumer needs through innovation, responsible marketing can create new occasions, new choices and new opportunities for growth.
Opportunities to develop products
Responsibility can also reveal needs that marketers may not have considered before, creating opportunities to develop products, experiences and communications around the way people actually live.
Flying Fish’s Eat With It platform demonstrates how this can work creatively.
The campaign encourages consumers to eat when they drink, but does so through humour and culturally relevant storytelling, making the responsible behaviour part of the idea itself rather than an instruction added to it.
The opportunity extends beyond advertising. SAB’s partnership with the Moletele Community and Komati Fruit Group to establish a local lime-farming operation for Corona started with a product ritual, but created an opportunity to connect consumer demand with local agricultural capability, community participation and economic value. It is another example of how the role of marketing can extend into the wider ecosystem around a brand.
Broaden the definition
This is why I believe we need to broaden the definition of responsible marketing.
It should influence the way we think about our products, the choices we make available, the behaviours we encourage and the value we create around our brands.
For marketers, the challenge is to hold creative ambition and accountability together, rather than treating them as competing forces.
The most interesting work happens when those two things meet.
It allows brands to do more than communicate responsibly; it allows them to use creativity to influence culture, respond to changing consumer needs and create meaningful new choices.
The question we should be asking
So perhaps the question we should be asking is not, “How far can we push creativity while remaining responsible?”
It is: “What could we create if responsibility was part of the inspiration for our creativity?”
That, to me, is what being a responsible rebel means: having the courage to challenge convention, the discipline to understand the consequences and the creativity to find a better way forward.
