At some point in advertising, we decided we could fix the world’s problems by making beautiful ads that make people feel included.

To be clear: I’m not trying to dismiss the importance of ads becoming more diverse and inclusive–and the faces behind those ads slowly following that trend. But I fear that creative has become a shield to place so much importance on inclusive messages and purpose anthems and all the things that win big at Cannes Lions every year, that marketers aren’t thinking hard enough about the half-trillion-dollar elephant in the room: the economic power of media. While obviously unintentional, as a byproduct of how the media ecosystem works, advertisers have inadvertently subsidized click-bait misinformation, funded hate speech and defunded journalism from already marginalized voices.

It’s not all advertisers—there are a number of brands creating robust strategies to embrace social and business profit as one. For example, Sephora infuses intention into everything it does, whether committing to the 15% pledge for shelf space, to diversifying its influencer spend, to allowing consumers to donate their loyalty points to social justice groups—and much more.

But there is an overall lack of intentionality in our industry. It’s not a singular symptom of any one thing but it is pervasive, wrapped up in our obsession with purpose. And it’s become increasingly important today when you look at how the ad industry’s role in things such as sponsoring Pride parades while inadvertently defunding queer journalism because it isn’t brand-safe. Or tweeting that Black Lives Matter while communities of color are relegated to multicultural plans with shrinking budgets—something I’m proud GroupM is helping clients do differently with the Media Inclusion Initiative.

Brands and agencies need radical transformations to move beyond the myth that media buying is purely transactional and without consequence. For brands, that means creating an intentional media strategy. The concept is simple: Align your brand purpose and values to your investments. It’s not entirely original; impact investing has become a billion-dollar, highly profitable venture for financial investors where companies such as iShares have environmental, social and governance exchange-traded funds made up of companies that advance society for the better.

While intentional media will mean something different for every brand, there are three key principles for how brands should apply this thinking.

First, it isn’t just an expectation for brands to be contributing positively to society today; Mindshare global research shows that it’s a majority demand. Sixty-three percent of respondents say that they would rather buy from brands and companies with caring, ethical and transparent practices, and 48% recently switched to buying environmentally friendly products. The business case is clear. Research from ABX showed that gender equality in ads has a big impact on driving sales. Research from eMarketer shows that LGBTQ+ folks are more likely than other groups to be loyal to brands that represent and include them. And Papa John’s lost 16% in revenue after its founder made racist remarks. Social profit is business profit.

Second, reconcile that creative messages can truly take you only so far, and that your behavior is just as important as what you say. Media has the economic power to manifest change with the third of a trillion dollars we transact every year. While creative can tell your story, ask how your brand story is coming to life and who is benefiting, or hurting, from an economic exchange. Brands such as Seventh Generation come to mind—it makes big gestures in creative but acts intentionally by embedding clean energy goals into its business approach or buying ad spots around the State of the Union address to speak about climate change when our former president wouldn’t.  

Third, brands must resolve that today brand safety is not equal to human safety. While marketers go into brand safety with good intentions, technology and algorithms have inadvertently defunded journalism from some of the most at-risk communities. By categorizing entire identities as “unsafe” with little room for semantic nuance, some research calculates that $2.8 billion has been defunded from news outlets each year by brand safety tools. Understand what role human safety plays in the context of the impact of the content you’re supporting—or not supporting. Because as ad industry activist Nandini Jammi will tell you, there’s no evidence that hard news from reputable sources is bad for your brand, especially when those sources are aligned to your purpose.

Intentional media means being both deliberately subjective and quantifiably objective about purpose and values. I personally disagree with everything My Pillow stands for, but its Intentional Media strategy very much should align with the more extreme channels in the world. Conversely, a brand that believes that trans rights are human rights, that Black lives matter or that climate change is real, should not spend with publishers and entities that disagree with those beliefs. It’s just a bad business decision.

It would be naïve to ignore the power brands and agencies hold. Advertising is, for better or worse, an intrinsic part of a democratic society, and the role we play in shaping society when narratives are shaped by the money we spend can’t be ignored. Stop Hate For Profit and Sleeping Giants and every other consumer-led movement to call out advertisers’ role in the erosion for society are our canary in the coal mine. Intentional investment needs to be a normative practice in media.

Orwell would be keen to remind us that power means “tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in new shapes of your own choosing.” I’m not so jaded yet to believe that we can’t use the power we hold to put the pieces of humanity back together in new shapes of our collective choosing—those faces and voices who win us awards and make us cry. Said less poetically, power means putting our money (our media) where our mouth (our message) is.