Oligopoly Let's Talk

To keep my mind from being taken over by the marketing departments of corporations, I tend to avoid advertisements as much as I can, whether it's using ad-blockers, or paying for premium versions or subscriptions to my favourite sources of media. However, avoiding advertising is a lot harder to do when you are watching live sports and in particular, NFL playoffs. Thanks to a certain company in Canada having exclusive rights to show NFL games, this company also has exclusive rights to throw crap at us during commercial breaks. Part of this crap is this company's Let's Talk marketing campaign masquerading as mental health awareness. I would like to talk about why this campaign is crap but in order to prevent giving this company more publicity, I am going to avoid writing their name and instead refer to them as Oligopoly (if you don't know who I am talking about, just Google "Let's Talk").

oligopoly (noun) - the market condition that exists when there are few sellers, as a result of which they can greatly influence price and other market factors.

I previously made my opinion of the Let's Talk marketing campaign clear in a short post from last year. This year's advertisements have been particularly dreadful, however, and I feel the need to further explain just how horrible this campaign is. In this new series of advertisements, we get a montage of people helping out what appears to be others in need. Some examples include a niece visiting their isolated aunt, a man talking to his partner about their depression, and a stranger handing some change to a person living with homelessness. These scenes may give one warm and fuzzy feelings initially, but in actuality it is all bullshit, especially the latter scenario, and I will try to explain why.

There is no doubt that talking about mental illness helps brings awareness to the topic and that showing empathy to loved ones who are suffering is an important step in validating their feelings. The problem here is that it is only a step. No one's mental illness is going to be solved by simply talking about it. What the commercials are suggesting we do is really the bare minimum of showing empathy to our fellow humans. The fact we need these reminders should be enough to show how cruel our society has become. There is nothing profound about reminding humans to do something that we are biologically wired to do, especially when it is coming from a company that benefits from the neoliberal policies that actively seek to suppress these instincts.

This is what I and others mean by suggesting such minimalistic actions results in us being a party to suffering instead of actually doing anything meaningful about it. Decades of neoliberal propaganda about personal responsibility has us all convinced that we are each responsible for own destinies, whether it leads to happiness or suffering. Never mind genetics and childhood environment that we each have little control over, but to be told that your suffering is your own fault is sure to result in a downward spiral of self-hatred, isolation, and resentment. I see it in family and friends and I've been there myself. To think that simply talking about our suffering will solve it feels like a cruel joke.

I’m sure at least some of the people behind the campaign means well. After all, they are a product of neoliberal propaganda just like any of us who have grown up in the Western world. There is a big difference between meaning well and coming up with effective, measurable objectives to actually reduce suffering, however. What the well-meaning don't realize this marketing campaign is doing, besides linking mental health with the company's brand, is that it is subtly telling us that it is the responsibility of those around people suffering to personally do something about it while giving us the clear to not concern ourselves with people we have never met. It both lets us off the hook when we start to feel bad for strangers while giving us the illusion that this will do something meaningful.

Taking Meaningful Action

Linking contributions to mental health to their brand like this campaign does has got to be one of the most disingenuous forms of corporate responsibility to communities. I should not have to explain how insane it is to link the availability of mental health supports to the profits of a corporation, especially when the total of the $85 million they donated since the campaign's inception pales in comparison to the $3.25 billion in net income Oligopoly made in 2019. Writing this moral dilemma off because at least mental health is getting something out of it, dismisses the fact that this all could be done in a more effective and democratic way, while also ignoring the suffering that Oligopoly itself causes.

If Oligopoly truly cared about mental health, first they would do something about their own workers' experiences with mental illness. And secondly, instead of lobbying the government to keep their internet rates at world-leading highs or attempting to dismantle net neutrality, they could go for a more equitable solution and lobby the government to spend more on mental health. This could be accomplished with higher corporate taxes that would see all corporations contributing at an equal rate, which could result in Oligopoly itself spending less than it volunteers with its campaign but net much more funding for mental health. This wouldn't work for Oligopoly, however, because now all of a sudden sudden they aren't getting the credit their marketing team planned for them to receive and we all know corporations by definition don't do anything unless it effects their bottom line.

Fundamentally, people need more than having their feelings and suffering validated. People need to feel part of a community. People need to have meaning and purpose in life. Most of all, people need money to afford to live a healthy life, especially in today's world where costs for essential goods and services have far exceeded inflation, which itself exceeds real median income gains. It is becoming harder and harder to accomplish these things today exactly because of companies like Oligopoly in Canada (along with national conglomerates like Loblaws or regional ones like the Irving Group of Companies in New Brunswick), who have their hands in many parts of the economy, allowing them to avoid the efficiencies that a truly competitive, free market would force, resulting in high prices for us and handsome profits for them.

A company like Oligopoly will never tell you about the importance of community supports. Corporations want to be the community. They want you to be disconnected from where you live so it is easier for you to move for your job and make that job your community. They want you to constantly be seeking greener grass, leaving smaller communities suffering from the brain drain and loss of tax revenues that results, which also has the convenient consequence of creating a cheap labour pool for the big cities. It just so happens these smaller communities are the ones being hardest hit by the opioid epidemic.

A company like Oligopoly will never tell you about the need more government regulation. More government regulation means companies like Oligopoly couldn’t take advantage of economic forces to stifle competition and capture the market with their oligopolistic partners, who's names rhyme with trellis and dodgers. It is low regulation that has allowed a company like Oligopoly to not only control content creation, but its distribution and final sale to the consumer as well. There is nothing free, competitive, or efficient about an arrangement like this. The fact this doesn’t cause more outrage is a testament to the lack of education in this country and a company like Oligopoly would like to keep it that way.

A company like Oligopoly will never tell you you deserve to be paid more and be given more protections at work. Corporations rely on exploitation of labour to support their unrealistic and unsustainable revenue growth goals. Paying their workers more means less profits for their executives and shareholders. Keeping incomes low is the stick that keeps people in a desperate hunt to find any kind of work they can in order to pay rent and feed their families, even if its unsafe and stressful. Companies like Oligopoly benefit from the competition for jobs that this pressure creates that itself puts downward pressure on wages.

A company like Oligopoly will certainly never suggest that housing is a right that if fulfilled could put a huge dent in poverty, which is a major precursor for mental illness. Companies like Oligopoly are owned by people who are more likely to own real estate than the average person. Something like public housing would put downward pressure on house prices and rent but it would mean less equity for home owners and landlords alike. Companies like Oligopoly would rather you toss change at a person living with homelessness instead of actually putting that person into one of the hundreds of thousands of empty houses in this country.

A company like Oligopoly will never actually want to end mental illness. As long as society is stable enough overall to make for a stable economy, some amount of suffering presents an opportunity for profits in the absence of more democratic and equitable interventions as mentioned above. A lot of money is made in the self-help industry, in naturopathy/pseudoscience, in crime prevention, and in the private services outsourced by our justice system, to name just a few examples. Corporations like Oligopoly position themselves to be our saviors when in reality, they are the ones killing us and making money while doing it.

So what can we do to overcome this useless marketing campaign and take mental illness beyond a basic human conversation? It’s simple: we need higher expectations of our democratically-elected government. We need programs that are not only effective but are equitable and measurable. We need programs that are focused on the materialistic needs of regular humans and not the needs of the ownership class. For those of us who already have means, we need to start voting for the candidates and parties who want to accomplish these goals instead of simply voting for whoever will enrich ourselves the most. As I often repeat, a society grows great when old men and women plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Update (Jan. 30, 2021): Edits were made to correct some spelling and grammar, and to clarify some points.