Corporate Eye

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Archives for May 2008

A Quibble of Acronyms

It’s an odd existence to follow. First everyone says “Eh? What’s that then?” Then they fall in love with you and can’t get enough.

two people discussing terminologyLater there’s the inevitable falling out, typified by arguments over what it was all about to start with. Lastly, the final stage is a grudging acceptance that no matter what, this is how things are set to remain for evermore.

Yep, life as a TLA* is tough. Only the most successful reach the heights of HTTP, the JK Rowling of acronym-land, used and translated the world over.

Most of the others fall by the wayside, the discarded betamaxes of their generation.
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And The Winner Is….

Excited, hands trembling through agitation rather than caffeine, I typed the web address into my trusty browser. Up came the site… but there was nothing there about Sustainability Reporting.

Puzzled I checked out the URL and let out a small, frustrated sigh on finding I’d been automatically redirected to the UK website. So I got myself over to the company’s home site in the USA and checked that out.

But still there was nothing about Sustainability Reporting. Not even under the Investor Relations section, which is where large corporations tend to display their green credentials.

What was going on?
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Branding in the Spotlight – What is Branding?

The role of branding in business and marketing has grown significantly in terms of prioritization across the corporate and small business worlds, particularly with the advent of positions such as chief brand officer and chief imagination officer. The question remains: what is branding?

Despite branding’s move to the spotlight, the vast majority of businesspeople still don’t have a firm grasp of what branding truly is. In fact, I dare say that many businesspeople view branding as another funnel of expenditures by the marketing team that does little in terms of generating ROI.
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The Global Reporting Initiative — A Brief Overview

It’s the marketing men’s idea of a near perfect viral product. The work of a 25 person secretariat living on grants and donations has swept around the world with barely a penny spent on advertising.

Global Reporting Initiative G3 FrontpageGRI G3 Frontpage

Now hailed as the defacto standard and on its third generation of guidelines, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) dominates the world of environmental reporting.

Even those outside the CSR profession prick up their ears when they hear the acronym. It means something: it has respect and gravitas. If you comply with GRI you must be one of the Good Guys.

But what actually is it, and what makes it so popular?

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Drilling For Mud

Imagine 30,000 Amazonian tribesmen carousing along the street, waving their spears and whooping at the top of their voices in celebration.

They’d taken the petrochemical company Chevron to court and won huge and unprecedented damages.

For over twenty years Texaco, now a Chevron subsidiary, had dumped hazardous waste from its oil drilling enterprise into open lakes of effluent.

Toxins seeped into the groundwater and poisoned over 1,500 square miles used to live and farm by local indians and settlers. Now they’d got payback.
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