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The Responsible Supply Chain Show is a must-hear podcast for insights and strategies on building ethics and sustainability into global supply chains. Each episode delves into the challenges and opportunities businesses face as they strive to create more responsible, transparent, and environmentally friendly supply chains. From innovative sourcing and trade disruptions to reducing carbon footprints and combating modern slavery, we explore the critical issues that define the future of global commerce.
Welcome to the Responsible Supply Chain Show where we explore the world of responsible sourcing and resilient supply chains. I'm your host, Justin Dillon. And in each episode, we'll dive into real stories from some of the world's best business, government, and thought leaders protecting people, planet, and profits. Let's get it. Alright.
Speaker 1:This is episode 24 of the Responsible Supply Chain Show. No one thought we could get this far. I certainly didn't. But, we have been, so I don't know. I don't wanna say thrilled.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna, like, hyper put, like, toxic positivity in into it, but people are getting value out of this. I get emails all the time or be on calls and we'll hear that people are listening, to the show and getting some value out of it. We love getting, your responses and guidance and suggestions, but more than anything, we love getting your recommendations and sharing this with others. So please subscribe to the show from whatever platform you are listening to it on. We'd really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:And of course, we'd love it if you'd share with your network. Today, we are talking about the eras tour of Conscious Consumerism. That's right. The reason for this show is a couple weeks ago, there was a new story about the, apparel brand, ethical apparel brand called Everlane selling to Shein which is a fast fashion, brand. And it a lot of the news around this was kind of a dunking on the end of millennial conscious consumerism that was big in the 2010s and created all kinds of brands, many of whom you've never heard of because they're gone, and some of whom we use today.
Speaker 1:Like I wear Warby Parker glasses. That was a big part of that movement, and they're a company that lived up to their hype. But we are gonna be talking about not only the Everlane story of a company built on radical transparency in their supply chain to a fast fashion company that's got few challenges to their own brand, and really just kind of talking about where are we today when it comes to responsible supply chains, conscious consumerism. This is this is a topic that I've been focused on for the last fifteen years. And I thought it would be great to bring in a guest today who really was there at the very beginning, someone I partnered with a long time ago, a guy by the name of John Mutejic, a creative genius, an Emmy award winning, that's Emmy award winning, founder of the creative agency Mutejic Hoffer, who was named advertising ad small Advertising Age Small Agency of the Year.
Speaker 1:That's hard for me to get out. Creative innovators stand out. Inc 25, fastest growing companies in San Francisco, awarded with just about every advertising award you can get, including South by Southwest, CanLyon. We actually won those together. I guess that's a flex.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I get to look at it as really that and it's the only trophy I have. I do have a trophy for first limit caught of fish in Hume Lake back when I was 12. So the fish and the canned lion, the fish and the lion kinda go next to each other. That's all I got.
Speaker 1:But, look, Muteza Koffer went on to, after us, we were one of their, I was one of their first clients. And, they went on to some companies you've probably never heard of, Netflix, Google, Audi. When I went to John in early two thousands, I had just been granted a project from the State Department to build an application called Slavery Footprint, and I'd spent a year building all of this data that was designed to help you understand how your consumer habits are connected directly to forced labor. And I needed a way of being able to tell that story in a very creative and cutting way. And I went to John and we finished up Slavery Footprint together, he and his agency, who were very generous to take it on.
Speaker 1:Slavery footprint, not only went on to win a lot of awards, but, it went on to, really become a watershed moment in the movement around responsible supply chains. Got the support of United Nations and, the White House, and, there were, people in parliament and people in congress to push human trafficking bills forward in their speech saying how many slaves worked for them that they learned on slavery footprint. So it was a moment. Over 50,000,000 people know the answer to that question, and people go to it every day. It's in textbooks and museums you name it.
Speaker 1:But I just thought it would be a great conversation to talk about where conscious consumerism has morphed over the last sixteen years, and what does it look like today? I think it's very easy to take a cynical view. I think you're gonna be surprised to hear where we are today and where we started, on this journey. So please enjoy my conversation with John Muthasic. John, thank you so much, for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. Glad to
Speaker 1:be here. This is a new this is new. I I it's it's rare that I talk to someone outside that is, being, you know, being flanked by a picture of John Adams on a porch. This is
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. We put our indoor pictures outdoors because it's kinda funny. I like it.
Speaker 1:It it's that's perfect. I think you're that's possibly a trend for the 12 people who listen to this podcast. So, you know, keep an eye out. Keep an eye out for what you've started. I have wanted to I've wanted to talk to you for a a very long time.
Speaker 1:We've got a long history. Go back. People already know what you do and what you've accomplished. But when I saw this article that came up, I think it was last week or the week before, about Everlane, the millennial darling clothing company selling to Sheehan, the, you know, supposed dark overlord who can't get an IPO happening because of forced labor issues. Like, it kinda felt like, you know, the sky was falling on an era.
Speaker 1:And I was hoping that we could go back, talk about some of our work, and maybe go on our own little eras tour, you know? I have some perspective around how marketing has been talking about virtue and goodness connected to brands and all the rest of it. I can't think of anyone better to talk to about it than you.
Speaker 2:Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Very exciting. So I've I've got too many opinions.
Speaker 2:That's what podcasts are for. Another thing.
Speaker 1:Let's start with your first opinion because let's go back to the February, early two thousand tens when I met you. We can name these eras whatever we want, but it kind of felt like the February were a a virtue era, maybe led to virtue signals. We can talk about that. But I met you at the beginning of that era. I came in with a grant from the state department that wanted me to help people understand their slavery footprint similar to carbon footprint.
Speaker 1:And you were just starting your agency, you're just getting going. And you said yes, which was just insane for you to say yes to such a project with pretty much no budget. Why don't you tell me a little bit about why you said yes to a project like that at that time?
Speaker 2:Oh, great question. Well, it comes after saying no to a lot of projects because my issue with the do good or marketing stuff was it always seemed to be so cause celeb. And at that time, forced labor was absolutely not on the horizon. And if it was, you heard the term sweatshop, but the misconceptions around it were significant. You know, it's always people believing that like very high end brands were making stuff in sweatshops.
Speaker 2:To some degree that might have happened, but you I think came after more of the other 99% of much more extreme cases of actual forced labor slavery. So I was attracted to that. And having come from the advertising industry is quite political and, and tends to go mainly with wherever the winds are blowing politically. And, it always just, I just always found it kind of shallow. I hope people would jump on the latest do good thing.
Speaker 2:And I wanted to not force our agency to do things they may or may not agree with, you know, as far as political alignments, and this just felt apolitical to me.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:when it came to slavery, it just seemed like there was no room for people to think differently about it. And you shared my view that this was not an anti free market thing, but in fact a very pro free market thing. And you and I had really good conversations about action. If you wanna see a lot of forced labor, look at where markets don't exist and you'll see a lot more of it. So I think you and I were aligned about how to make the free market more free through this process because people wanna know what goes into the stuff they get.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe you could it's interesting because it was basically you're bringing marketing acumen to an idea because Slavery Footprint wasn't a cause, it wasn't an organization, it was just can we put something out into the world and see how the world reacts to it. It was almost we don't know what's gonna happen and this is funded by the US government, that makes it even weirder.
Speaker 2:That But, yeah, people ask me why I'm out of my mind, and I have to tell them the process of being in a creatively driven environment is a process of stretching your brain into places where you're not supposed to go and then kind of bringing it back to what's acceptable. So we would say the most ridiculous things. I have no idea how we never got sued because the process of, you know, stretching out physically and emotionally, you just stretch your brain to do and say things that it's not supposed to do.
Speaker 1:But isn't that some of the greatest satirical humor? I mean, this is like Yeah. This isn't uncommon for human beings. Like, we we pay to be stretched by comedians and great artists. And in your case, you were using using this as a as an opportunity to stretch people with a quest.
Speaker 1:The I think you called it the question no one wants to answer, but can't help themselves to want to
Speaker 2:I I I think I think that's it too. I think it's coming face to face with the reality, you know, of we can feel good about slavery being way back in history. But when you come to the reality of slavery, you know, as we know, there are more slaves now than there were then numerically speaking anyway. And so, okay, well, what's my involvement? There's a lot of moral preening in our society, obviously at many levels.
Speaker 2:More.
Speaker 1:And moral preening? Preening. Oral preening. Moral preening. That's oh, okay.
Speaker 2:So everyone does it. So everyone wants to feel righteous, whatever it's commonly now known as virtue signaling, but very little dealing with the reality of what your impact is. And I just wanted to make sure we wanted to make sure together that this was a real thing. There were a lot of politicalsocial movements that a lot of advertisers and advertising agencies have jumped on. And I recoil from many of them because it seems more like the moral preening stuff than the actual kind of boots on the ground doing really, really good work.
Speaker 2:So this just felt like one of those things where you couldn't argue with what we're trying to achieve as objectives.
Speaker 1:Well, and arguably it achieved more than you or I, the state department ever thought it would. Yeah. And that's kind of what I wanna I don't wanna pat ourselves on, but because I think it could have just as easy, I think you and I both were realists and standpoint like, this can blow up in our faces in front of the State Like, Department's it had just as much of a chance for that. So that's not the interesting part to me. The interesting part is, and I feel this way about art, I feel this way about ideas, things get thrown into the world all the time that could be good, good for, well done, well executed, well thought out, but just sink, because it just wasn't something there to catch it.
Speaker 1:And this was an idea, we obviously were talking about it, that was thrown out into an environment that caught it and ran with it. I'm really interested in your perspective of that time that we were living in, birth companies like Warby Parker give glasses away or talk to Yeah. Or like, there was just seems like there was a lot of that, like, we're gonna And I'm not cynical. I'm just saying, they just seem like there's of a like, we're gonna change the world in the 2010s.
Speaker 2:That's right, yes. Part of what led into the specificity of how many slides work for you was out of the idea of, what does your footprint mean? You know, if I told you your footprint is 700, is that good? Is that bad? What does it mean exactly?
Speaker 2:And so we're trying to create a specificity there. So to answer your question into that kind of environment of Warby Parker and Tom's and all that kind of thing, I guess I didn't really look into a lot of them because I was so skeptical about everything going on as far as the virtue signaling, which was not a term at that time. But the idea of, I guess it used to be called cause celeb. That was the term, it's probably an old term that a lot of your listeners might not be aware of, but that's been around for a long time, jump on the Right. The latest hot cause.
Speaker 2:And you know I haven't followed the Tom's thing or the Warby Parker thing very well. Mean wasn't there some fallout of like when the shoes went to the villages and other you know, the actual shoemakers were like, what am I supposed to do now? Yeah. I I hear bits and pieces. I'm totally unstudied on the issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you can you can pick apart any you know, the reality is a shoe company was started, it was sold to private equity, and a bunch of kids got shoes all around the world. That's a headline. How it was distributed and all the rest, sure. There was always gonna be issues.
Speaker 1:Warby Parker started a company, used buy one, give one away as its wedge into the marketplace.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The reality is, great glasses at a great, they did a bunch of other things that worked really, really well. They made buying glasses a great experience. And so, these wedges were just kind of, in some cases, and this is why I don't think that stuff would work today, those kind of marketing wedges of we're doing something good, but you had to have a good product. There were a lot of companies that were trying to jump on that bandwagon of doing good, and their products sucked, right? These products worked.
Speaker 1:One and went you know, another one sold to private equity, and it was a gaggle of others. But it still feels like they wouldn't work today if it for whatever reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I think there was probably an exhaustion point that came around 2020, 2021 of every advertiser doing their big proclamation commercial. And it actually happened before COVID. It was not driven by COVID.
Speaker 2:I was on the jury for the one show, the one club for creativity. And we were all sitting around the jury room watching commercial after commercial. And we're just looking at each other. It's like, what is this? The year of this advertising?
Speaker 2:There was a term that was came out at the time. It was called SADvertising. And I looked back at that the other day and I think it was 2017. It was well before COVID.
Speaker 1:What did an advertising campaign look like?
Speaker 2:Oh, SADvertising would be, you know, Nike doing their their Colin Kaepernick thing or and that was they did they did it so well. They executed it so well that that became sort of more inspirational.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Because maybe that's moving into what I think is that era around that time. Advertising is clearly my new favorite. The way I described that era around the late '10s, early '20s was more of a grievance. It felt like if you had a grievance, you had an edge, just like if you had an aspiration before where you would, Hey, we're trying to change these things in the world you never really think about, that's one thing.
Speaker 1:It felt like the late '10s, and by the way, this is not a commentary on anyone's grievances. This is more about looking at patterns and pattern recognition for me. Yeah. And understanding how things work and they don't. And it felt like this advertising grievance marketing era that if you were against, where one era felt like you were for something, and then this next era felt like you had to be against something Right.
Speaker 1:In order to be heard. Is Yeah. That resonate?
Speaker 2:Well, I so I I think what happened to the era is kind of ate its own tail, guess. I mean there was in the what do they call it? The Grievance Olympics or something like that. And again, I don't want to be dismissive of people with real grievances, know. So it's really tough to tread in these areas.
Speaker 2:But whoever has the most intersectional grievances, you know, wins. And so it just kind of ran out of steam from its own kind of absurdities at some level. And as mass marketers were playing in that area, it became really difficult to sustain. To the extent that I'm trying to think of the most authentic for mass marketers who got picked up a cause and ran with it consistently. Can you think of one?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think. You ran
Speaker 1:with grievances like the
Speaker 2:No, I don't mean grievance, but like picked up a cause they actually believed in and said, this is our thing long term, you know, regardless of whether or not it's cause celeb, you know, whether whether or not it's the it's the issue of the day.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting because marketing isn't always tied to substance, know, John. And it's an interesting, you know, at heart I'm a storyteller, or at least I aspire to be one and I love stories. And the ones I really, really love are the ones that let me discover what the true story is and that is somewhat authentic or maybe even exceeds my expectations, doesn't hype me out into something that isn't true. When I feel hyped out on something, and I think you're talking about authenticity, that's when I feel like, okay, you're manipulating me. You can market to me, but don't take it too far.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where, that's the conversation we're having here is like, it's great to stand for something. It's actually wonderful. When you're doing it you just saw someone else doing it, and this is where you got the greenwashing. It's like, oh, they're doing that? They're talk what's the word sustainability?
Speaker 1:Okay, we're gonna say that. Make sure you say that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I see so many headlines fly past my thumb on my stupid mobile device, but one of them is the end of authenticity because authenticity was a marketing claim for a while, so now it's gone. I don't think it's gone. I think that to me is the ever present reality of a brand or marketing, whatever. And okay, so like, I don't want to hear, I don't want to be here to shill for any brand at all, but it's like, hopefully the goodness comes out of what you're doing instead of it becoming the marketing layer, you know?
Speaker 2:So to bring it back to Everlane, the do gooder ism was the marketing layer, you know? They're still sourcing their stuff from Southeast Asia and you know, that kind of stuff. And the brand was built on look how good we are, look how good we are, and you can be good by buying our stuff. And I'll compare that to another brand. Okay.
Speaker 2:So I was really late to the game on Buck Mason. You know, I saw this brand all over the place. I'm like, well, that's too popular. I'm not going to do that. I don't do popular things.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I was in New York whenever I strolled in and I bought a Bug Mason t shirt. Look, I'm wearing it. And was like, damn it. It fits well. It's like really good materials.
Speaker 2:Like I I felt like an idiot for being a a lead comer. But then I'm like, oh, where do they make it? Oh, they make it in a mill in Pennsylvania. So it's like, all right, so they have like laws in this country about how to make things and how to, you know, manufacture and all this kind of stuff. So there's like this kind of built in sustainability.
Speaker 2:I don't want to call it sustainability, but I'll call it a built in ethical sourcing, built into the brand, but they don't run around with that as their marketing layer. Their marketing layer is like, hey, we're going to make stuff out of natural materials, it's gonna fit really well. And so as they proclaim that authentically, the ethical sourcing is built in because they're not trying to make it a marketing layer. It's just not there really.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I come from a faith tradition that says, do your good works in private. I don't I think that's a feature, not a bug of Yeah. And
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that it plays out over time. Isn't a lot of our consumption needs just based on something that's going on deep inside of us that marketers like to exploit to sell more things. I
Speaker 2:mean, like Yes.
Speaker 1:I mean, this really isn't something you manage in the marketplace. Probably need to go lay down on a couch and have someone ask you about your childhood if you want to figure out how to do conscious consumerism. Because to me, it's about fixing problems that have nothing to do with the marketplace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but when you're talking to your therapist, they're probably scrolling their latest fast fashion website. It
Speaker 1:is interesting to me that, and I think it's consistent, that we all want to be part of a story that sometimes isn't ours, whether that's the middle aged guy buying the luxury car that tells him he's something he's obviously, arguably not, but makes him feel like he's part of that story. And I think conscious consumerism was an aspiration where people feel like, I do want to feel like I'm part of something bigger for reasons inside I probably can't explain. And whether it was grievance marketing, it does feel like people like, yeah, I wanna stand up for something. I feel that kind of control. I've been locked in my house with a mask.
Speaker 1:We're now moving into another area that has another story. We're on the eve of three of the largest IPOs ever that have valuations that are eye watering and make no sense and are built 100% on story. Okay. And we're now being told that these three companies from Anthropic to OpenAI to SpaceX are somehow going to move humanity forward and everyone is here for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But are they built on story? I think one of those stories feels so okay. Back to your whole thing about what we're talking about in 2011 of, okay, which of these are real? Much of these are not real?
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's signaling. Sometimes it's real. Slavery footprint was like, this feels really, really real. There are people who are literally being forced to do labor they do not want to do. Let's make this real.
Speaker 2:You know, so taking the, is it real? Look at things, in your, in your example of the three biggest IPOs, one of them took what it used to cost a $100 to put something in space. I can now do it for a dollar and like, that's wild. That's a real problem. What they've been able to do is just crazy.
Speaker 2:The other two, I mean, will fully, fully, fully admire what AI is doing in many ways as real, but I don't know how they, I don't know how they emotes around their business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's very, very real stuff. And the next generation is totally down as far as I can see. Well, I know Jonathan Hite got booed at his commencement address when he mentioned AI. So that indicates to me, there's a lot of hatred for AI, but what I'm seeing right now is some 20 kids are, they're all in on it. And they're walking around talking and vibe coding while they're walking down the sidewalk.
Speaker 2:So I'm not sure. That's a interesting question.
Speaker 1:Well, it it seems like it's a different story, but but it's still the same mechanics. We're talking about products or companies that are gonna point towards some level of flourishing, whether it's getting things to space or getting you to Mars or being able to do jobs that you haven't been done before, or if you take the negative view, you know, take away jobs. That's a that's a
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it they still require they still require some level of of storytelling. And I just kinda wanna call out the idea that, you know, you can you can rip on the the virtue signaling of the 2,000 and the, you know, grievance signaling of the early 2020s, but we're just kind of wrapping up our need to attach to a story just in a different wrapper, wrapped around something different today. And it just seems to be the era that we're living in. I did want to share with you one thing that I thought was super interesting from this week, kind of close this out with another news event. I'm not sure if you saw this or not, but yesterday, the Trump administration has found a way to, or is looking to find a way to be able to bring back tariffs by applying forced labor bans on countries and increasing tariff rates on countries by 10% based on Wow, the forced labor and supply
Speaker 2:I had not seen that.
Speaker 1:So by the way, a lot of that was possible, get this, because back in the early 2010s, the Obama administration was so impressed with how many consumers showed up to slavery footprint that they took some tactical measures on tariffs and trade and went back to the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act and removed a legal loophole that allowed for the importation of slave made goods,
Speaker 2:was there
Speaker 1:for a hundred years. And when they told me they were doing that, I'm like, that sounds like a nothing burger, who cares about a loophole and something I heard about on Paris Bueller, that is ridiculous. How is this a moment, this seems so nothing? And the irony that some of that creates the legal mandate to be able to insert this into trade. Yeah.
Speaker 1:To me, I look at this as someone who's been working on this for over eighteen years and going, I don't care how the job gets done. Right. Like, I don't want to get so precious about making the world flourish, whether it's a spaceship, or whether it's a pair of glasses, or whether it's a, you know, a trade restriction, if the world improves through whatever means to me, I'm good. Yeah. And it makes me feel like the idea was bigger than the articulation or whatever was created, slavery footprint or a supply chain company.
Speaker 1:It's like, to me, that's the greatest joy of tying into a zeitgeist or tying into something that has a super long arc that isn't just about, you know,
Speaker 2:something like that. Wow. Well done. That's that's really cool. No.
Speaker 2:Not that. I love that. That's that's that's unbelievable. So the Obama administration removed a loophole from Sputane Holly. Is that what happened?
Speaker 2:Wow. Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. You consider the Trump administration can use it to justify some tariffs, at least on countries where there's forced labor.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you consider Australia, it's we'll we'll see how this we'll see how this works out.
Speaker 2:Maybe so back to the reality and authenticity thing, it's like, I think the reason we have so much cynicism and carelessness about things like forced labor is because it's hard to weed out the, whatever you want to call it, greenwashing, bulk washing, whatever, it develops a cynicism. And then these things that are super real and where people's lives are super, super, super highly impacted by them get thrown out as well. And then maybe that's why I recoil so much when I see greenwashing, woke washing, whatever you want to call it. Because there's too many super real things that we can have super high impact on if we're just careful about making sure that it's real.
Speaker 1:Speaking of, to close this out, why don't you talk a little bit about your involvement with the organization locally that you and your wife got involved with?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of real, yeah, the, so it's called Finding Kids. And what they do is they hire, private investigators to recover missing kids. And the missing kids are typically, lured away sex trafficked, kids, not always.
Speaker 2:And, but usually it's, it's, it's often the Romeo pimp. I don't know if you've heard of this, this, this concept, but an older dude starts hanging out. It used to be a shopping mall. Hey, you're super cute. Let's hang out and things go downhill from there.
Speaker 2:But now it happens more online, you know, the grooming and let's hang out and I know I need you to do this one thing for me. And then there's something someone gets beat up and, and then there's, there's trafficking. It's super psychologically damaging because a lot of these, kids who have been trafficked end up really believing their pimps love them. And so that's just this extra level of, you know, weirdness that happens with sexualization and that kind of stuff. So it's super complicated, but what finding kids does is it's got three pillars, you know, one recover missing kids, two provide care for their healing and three target predators.
Speaker 2:And so they're doing all three and it's a total boots on the ground. So back to our theme of, is it real? Is it authentic? These are boots on the ground, private investigators who are, literally chasing down, everything they can. So I think we're, I've lost count, but the recent stat I saw that, you know, since founding about six or seven years ago, we've recovered two eighty four kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah. All basically Bay Area and Northern California and Nevada somewhat. And we've coordinated with the FBI and probably over 50 or 60 police departments. It's not just a lone wolf thing. You know, one girl was taken to Miami and they're immediately coordinate coordinated with the the police in Miami and broke into, this hotel room and got this girl back before she was, you know put on on the market.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Incredible about this organization? Where would they find it?
Speaker 2:Findingkids.org.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Well that's a good place to end it. John thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:Alright. Thank you. I'm sorry for saying everything offensive.