(How To_205 Highlight Your Good...)

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How to... highlight your good deedsAs corporate responsibility reports swell to include everything from

environmental issues to staff conditions, which aspects should you promote?

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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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-schoolclubs 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. Woodfordincludes 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 goodstaff is the keyto success, andgivingemployees achance to workon a variety ofsocially usefulprojects helps tokeep themonside

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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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. Someconsider 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 theirnature 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 acompanys 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 froma 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 forone 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. Sainsburysleaflets 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 beused 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 withrelevant charities,

pressure groups and

public-sector

organisations.


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Case study:Making responsibility payCorporate 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 toact 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

Manycompanies focuson increasingtheir positivesocial impactbut minimisingnegative socialandenvironmentaleffects has moreappeal


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