BNP Paribas (its Polish branch) has been running lately a campaign entitled “Bank of the changing world”, trying to build its “green” image. It has better and worse moments – here I wanted to focus on what is the problem of most cultural campaigns on the market – that is – formulating new value propositions directly and without shortcuts.

As we know from the cultural branding model (Holt 2004; Holt, Cameron 2010), ideology, if supposed to satisfy the identity needs of consumers, should never be presented as an direct expression of a social or political movement or in the form of slogans made by CSR specialists.

However, translating complex social constructs into communication, finding credible subcultures, convincing identity myths etc., is not easy. That is why we can so often watch attempts that are glaring with their directness. Probably the best example is the spot from the aforementioned campaign, in which two bikers sing the name of the bank (sic!) on the note of the legendary song “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf. When we wonder what else could make the film less allegorical, our heroes are joining the street protest of ecological activists (it’s worth watching , unless, of course, you didn’t come across it on TV yet – link below).

Other spots from the campaign are slightly better, at times they come closer to everyday cultural experiences, but in the end, their authors encourage us to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and each of the films ends the list – it’s not a joke – of the UN 2030 Agenda. The only plus is that we are not held accountable by our CSR managers ?

It seemed that the painful lesson Pepsi had learned by casting the brand (with God, guilty of Kendall Jenner) as a participant in a staged Black Lives Matter protest, seemed to be enough for the industry to learn. As you can see, it seemed wrongly.