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Rewind the business environment back a couple of decades and it wasnt unusual for a companys community involvement to be most influenced by the whims of the chairmans wife. These days it is impossible to separate a companys operations from the wider community and a vast industry has sprung up around managing organisations corporate social responsibility, or corporate responsibility (CR) programmes, as theyre now known. Consumers growing interest in the values that underpin the companies they buy from has been well documented. The Co-operative Banks annual Ethical Consumerism report, published in December 2007, found a 9 per cent rise in spending on products and services deemed to have been produced in an ethical manner. Keeping customers and potential customers happy isnt the only motivation for investing in this area. The government has become much more interested in getting companies to take responsibility for the social and environmental effects of people using their products, and companies are working hard to prove they are doing this in order to stave off regulation. Hence the recent announcement of a consortium of food and drink firms and retailers that, in conjunction with the advertising industry, will be spending 200m on promoting healthy lifestyles over the next four years. Identify your target You may be hoping to impress consumers with your CR record or you may be aiming at a different audience. Drinks firms such as Diageo have spent the past few years working hard to communicate the fact that they encourage customers to consume their alcoholic drinks responsibly and much of this effort is directed at proving to the government that self-regulation is possible. Most of the UKs FTSE 100 companies now have a dedicated CR team, often reporting up through the corporate affairs director, and companies concentrate on issues that have the greatest relevance to their own business. The maturity of the discipline has also led to some changes in terminology the popularity of the phrase corporate responsibility (rather than corporate social responsibility) reflects the concentration of recent activity around minimising companies environmental effects. In deciding which community projects to engage with, most companies see the wisdom of a strategy that focuses on a few core areas, often those that neatly complement the nature of their business.

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How to highlight your good deeds - The Marketer magazine

http://www.themarketer.co.uk/articles/how-to/how-to-highlight-your-g...

BT has three main strands to its CR programme Childline (which it has supported since the charitys launch in 1986), education, and digital inclusion (encouraging more people to use the internet). Digital inclusion is an issue because one third of the population, according to the Office of National Statistics, still has no access to the internet. BT carried out research showing that, of older people who have recently discovered the internet, it was often children or grandchildren who acted as the catalyst. So BT set up Internet Rangers in 2004, a programme that supports these young mentors. It is centred around a website Btinternetrangers.co.uk and after-school clubs run by children, who then invite their older friends and relatives to join and benefit from their internet skills. Emma Williams, a communications manager in the companys corporate responsibility team, says: Focus groups of customers like the idea that we support projects that are linked to our business. We can contribute so much more than just cash. Alongside its three main strands of work, BT also gets involved in emergency appeals (its employees manned the phones for the tsunami appeal in 2004) and regular telethons. Tout what counts Working out what kind of CR activity will appeal to your customer base can reap dividends. Vodafones CR strategy has been designed to get the company involved in protecting young people from inappropriate online content, according to Caroline Dewing, a manager in the CR team. Last year the company teamed up with charity Beat Bullying to launch a project educating children about the implications of bullying. Children were encouraged to send in ideas for short films on the subject, three of which were picked to be made and then shown at Vue cinemas. However positive these projects are, communicating CR programmes needs care. As Williams observes: Being British is about not being too pleased with yourself. The answer, according to those involved in CR programmes, as with any other piece of marketing communication, is to consider what audiences will be interested in. Internet Rangers is promoted to teachers, pupils, parents and school communities taking part in afterschool clubs. Its good for BT and good for the kids, says Williams. Within a small business like AI Digital (see case study, p35), projects are much more targeted, says founder Jason Woodford. He has avoided trying to gain any publicity in local papers for his companys charity links. It would seem a bit shallow, he says. But AIs community projects have proved an excellent draw for clients. Woodford includes details of the companys work in pitches and says that several clients have told him that this has been a major reason behind AI winning those deals. It definitely helps attract interest from other companies that have woven corporate responsibility into their business, says Woodford. They want to work with like-minded organisations. Market internally Employees are another major audience for a companys CR work. When he started his business, Woodford was aware that retaining good staff would be the key to success, and giving people the chance to work on a variety of socially useful projects has helped him to keep staff onside. For BT, staff are also a crucial corporate responsibility audience. The companys most recent staff survey found that 66 per cent say they are proud to work for BT. Williams believes that being able to see that the company has a set of values that are reflected in its CR work is a major factor in this rating.

Retaining good staff is the key to success, and giving employees a chance to work on a variety of socially useful projects helps to keep them onside

Dos and donts

Do find out what your CR department is planning and how your brand fits in. Do consider how product design can tie in with your CR agenda. BSkyB is redesigning its set-top

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How to highlight your good deeds - The Marketer magazine

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Given that staff are an important link in the relationship between a company and its customers, keeping staff well motivated in this way is vital. In a large company, the default belief among staff is that the company is probably doing something wrong, says Peter Gilheany, director at ethical marketing agency Forster. CR projects can ward off that kind of negative perception. One size fits all Shareholders are perhaps the most important audience for CR work. Some consider the production of CR reports to be equally as important as traditional financial reporting. So are shareholders likely to be more cynical than other stakeholders about spending on CR activities? John Drummond, chief executive of social marketing agency Corporate Culture, which counts Kellogg and Coca-Cola among its clients, says he believes customers and shareholders interests are largely attuned: If shareholders can see that a companys CR programme is valued by customers, they should be happy with that. The biggest pitfall companies can stumble into when considering CR, says Drummond, is to compartmentalise it. The most successful companies of the past few years have woven CR right into their DNA it affects everything they do. Drummond sees the old-style CSR projects largely philanthropic in their nature as serving the purpose of forcing companies to reconsider their role in society and to come up with a whole new corporate strategy as a result. But more recently, changes in corporate strategies have been focused on the environment, reflecting wider social concerns. Avoid harm Although many companies focus on increasing their positive social impact with community involvement projects, Gilheany feels that minimising negative social and environmental effects has more appeal for stakeholders. This can be harder to communicate, as you must first acknowledge a companys negative impact before you can go about reducing it, he says. But it is possible to do this without appearing too apologetic principally by playing up the benefits to society of a companys products. Marks & Spencer has demonstrated how effective the integration of changes at corporate level combined with the honest articulation to stakeholders of a new approach can be, according to Drummond. M&Ss Plan A programme for reducing environmental damage caused by the company is seen by many as the best of its kind. The plan published defined targets and explained how they would be achieved. M&S has made five pledges, including a company aim to become carbon neutral by 2012. So where are the marketers in all of this? Staff on the CR team often come from a corporate communications background. Marketers tend to be involved when the strategy work reaches individual brand level and more tactical communications work is created. But both Drummond and Woodford believe that there is a big opportunity for marketers to own the CR issue. Marketers should be the true owners of the CR agenda, says Drummond. Its core to any brands future. Its bizarre to me that this should exist separately to the marketing department. Corporate responsibility strategies appeal to consumers emotions its a way that companies can demonstrate that they understand what matters to them. Woodford believes marketers should have more involvement in CR strategy for one simple reason: In markets where companies struggle to differentiate themselves, having a CR strategy offers a real competitive edge. Marketers can extract the value from this.

boxes to include an automatic shutoff switch, reflecting the companys environmental commitment. Do think about how you can help consumers make behavioural changes. Sainsburys leaflets offer shoppers ideas for making use of leftover food, for example. Do work out all the ways that your product could help save energy or money. Vodafone, for example, is looking at how GPRS systems on mobile phones could be used to show people the fastest routes between two points. Don't make the mistake of thinking todays thrifty consumers dont care about companies social and environmental values theyre just not prepared to pay extra for them. Don't write off the possibility that a project that starts as an entirely charitable venture can end up as a viable brand. Vodafones M-PESA phone was created five years ago with funding from the Department for International Development to help people in Kenya, Tanzania and Afghanistan to transfer money. It is now a profitable revenue stream. Don't ignore the need to gain as much third-party endorsement as possible for your CR projects. Establish mutually beneficial links with relevant charities, pressure groups and public-sector organisations.

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How to highlight your good deeds - The Marketer magazine

http://www.themarketer.co.uk/articles/how-to/how-to-highlight-your-g...

Case study: Making responsibility pay

Corporate responsibility threatened profits at AI Digital when staff devoted too much time to pro bono work, but a new approach made time for both CR and the bottom line AI Digital, a search engine marketing specialist based in Brighton, won Business in the Communitys Small Business of the Year award in 2007. But before the company concentrated its efforts on the proper planning of its corporate responsibility (CR) projects, pro bono work threatened to eat into the companys profits. Founder Jason Woodford says he has always been conscious of how heartening CR projects can be for employees and customers. So he encouraged staff to do pro bono work for local charities and set up links with the local university and other public and third-sector bodies. But four years ago when Woodford carried out an audit of the time staff were spending on CR activities, he realised the value of the time spent was equal to 50 per cent of his net profit. It was unsustainable, he says. That was the trigger for sitting down and creating a strategy. Woodford decided to focus the companys CR efforts on four areas people, (sponsoring students at Brighton University); the environment (marketing and publishing for Sussex Wildlife Trust); youth (helping a local schools Young Enterprise group); and alcohol (the company creates online educational materials for a local charity that supports people with alcohol problems). Having this plan makes it easier to communicate the companys values, both to staff and potential employees, Woodford says. It has also limited the random projects that were tying up too much of AI employees time. Now charitable work is integrated with paid work wherever possible at AI. For example, the company invited children from its local Young Enterprise group to act in an online course produced for Expat, a Home Office-funded charity campaigning against the sex-trafficking of children. It reduced our costs of production and gave the kids experience of a working environment, says Woodford.

Claire Murphy is a freelance journalist and consultant editor of PR Week

Many companies focus on increasing their positive social impact but minimising negative social and environmental effects has more appeal

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