Old concepts, new publics:

CSR and Millennials

Érica Rodrigues, CIES / ISCTEMafalda Eiró-Gomes , ESCS / IPLEscola Superior de Comunicação Social agomes@escs.ipl.pt

More than a paper this is a dialogue between :

1. a baby-boomer and a millennial…..

2. a conceptual perspective and a perspective of a

communications consultant

3. someone that lives in the modern era and someone that

lives in hypermodernity

4. A dialogue between CSR / Social investment/ CSV and

CSR (CSV) Communication

5. Corporate citizenship????? (is the notion compatible with

the idea of “ethics of perceived responsibility”?)

● Corporate citizenship

Un retour au sens moral et à la responsabilité citoyenne

De woot, 2013

● Ethics of duty (modernity)

Behaving well is still, in the end,

behaving in our best interest

Lord Chris Patten

Research perspective: Pragmatist approach

RESEARCH QUESTION:

How to manage CSR communication campaigns for millennials?

Methodology : Case study approach

Research design: major football clubs in Portugal CSR communication campaigns during 2016 that had as main “audiences” millennials

MILLENNIALS

• Called “Generation Me” by some academics, the Millennials generation, defined by Strauss and Howe as those born between 1982 and 1994, actually inherited this label from their antecessors, baby boomers, who were first referred as a self-centred generation by Tom Wolfe (1976).

• Sons of baby boomers, they are the largest generation who Deloitte estimate that will represent 75% of the working force by 2020.

MILLENNIALS• Due to their specific characteristic and notorious

inadaptation to current reality, they are also the most studied generation so far, and opposite to what was initially supposed, individuals who belong to Millennial generation are more aware to social diversity, are highly sensitive to social causes and available to help people in need.

• Because they want to help or due to their obsession with living new and growing experiences, recent studies have demonstrated that they are effective supporters of volunteer activities and international NGO’s missions, being increasingly common to see them taking non paid leaves to integrate volunteering jobs.

MILLENNIALS

• Millennials are proven to have a high need for purpose in the activities they are involved (Gallup, 2016), whether we are talking about their hobbies or about their jobs.

• The primary sites are added to the bookmarks bar, the primary contacts are marked on the smartphone home screen and on social networks you can reach with your thumbs (Serres, 2013)

• The digital media reflect this tendency of personalization,

in order to create a sense of belonging and respond to a

certain need ….(Hartmann, 2003).

A

The campaign “It’s always the same thing, but

it’s not the same thing”

AAASporting Clube de Portugal is one of the three main football clubs in Portugal, with an estimated number of fans of more than 3 and a half millions people.Like every well known football club all over the world, in 2016 Sporting Clube de Portugal was dealing with a huge problem of counterfeit equipment. Main problems of counterfeited equipments (beyond legal aspects) in this case: - reducing the profits of original (trade-mark) merchandising - were (are) feeding a parallel economy with great humanitarian

issues(counterfeit equipments were (are) being made by children and other underpaid workforces )

THE CAMPAIGN

On the 19 th of March 2016 took place the Sporting Clube Portugal vs. Arouca football game. As usual, every player entered the field and the game started. It was only a few minutes until the first reactions started on social media, posting about the “wrong names” in the shirts of the football players and questioning who was responsible for the mistakes.

When the first half of the game ended, #guterres was already

the second trend topic on twitter and during the break the

football club explained the campaign (broadcast and digital

media).

THE CAMPAIGN

“It’s always the same thing, but it’s not the same thing”

earned hundreds of notes, remarks, comments, both in

Portuguese and international press and brought the subject

of counterfeit articles to the spotlight.

Through this initiative, Sporting managed to bring attention not only

to the aspects of the counterfeit equipments but also to the issue of

human slavery.

From a hypermodern perspective this is a very successful CSR

project:

. business driven as well as society driven

. ethics of perceived responsibility

. as a communications campaign fulfilled its desired outputs

Discussion:

- Can we speak about communicating CSR without focus on the overall performance of an organization?

- Is it really enough to be perceived as responsible????

- What are the main objectives???? Those that can be evaluated as outputs….or those that could only be evaluated as overflows, or at least as outcomes?

On peut dire que l’histoire de la culture moderne n’a pas été autre chose que l’opposition continuelle entre

l’exigence d’un ordre et le besoin de distinguer dans le monde une forme changeante, ouverte à l’aventure,

imprégnée de possibilités.

Umberto Eco, Écrits sur la pensée au Moyen Âge, Paris, Grasset, 2016.