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Corporate social responsibility

The Future of Sustainability Reports

You know when you’re in awards season in the film industry. Everyone seems to be handing out trophies, statuettes and gongs. Paparazzi snap away at gleaming white teeth while fashionistas obsess over the width of stars’ shoulder straps.

After a while the endless cycle of red carpets and acceptance speeches starts to get a little draining and you can end up wishing that Hollywood would crawl back under its habitual rock on the other side of the pond.

Sustainability Reporting is starting to establish a similar annual love in.
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Coca-Cola, polar bears and social responsibility

What unexpected partnership could you develop to support your brand?

Expecting to see a link to the heralded new Coca-Cola Lets Get Together site, I went to their corporate site again today, and was intrigued to see a link to a sub-site about polar bears. This has been live for about a month, according to their press releases.

I don’t immediately see the connection, though apparently polar bears have been part of the Coca-Cola brand for years. I guess I’m not their target market; for me, polar bears mean Fox’s Glacier Mints.

But the idea – and the mini-site itself – is a good one. It’s a collaborative effort, linking together the CSR section of Coca-Cola’s corporate site and the World Wildlife Fund’s site, and is clearly designed to demonstrate that Coca-Cola are concerned about global warming, and are doing their bit to help protect the environment. I particularly enjoyed the wind-noise – it made me check my windows …

Polar bears are very popular with children (is this the link for Coca-Cola? I suppose the connection with ice/ice-cubes helps too), and are a high-profile high-status animal in danger of extinction, so pull at the public heart-strings. The mini-site contains some educational material and e-cards, but is chiefly a vehicle for confirming polar bears as part of the Coca-Cola advertising and of their corporate social responsibility commitments – and is a very clever association with WWF, whose brand has involved polar bears for years. (Also, of course, it plays well with The Golden Compass ice-bears which are currently popular).

Coca-Cola are donating part of their profits from sales of toy polar bears during December 07 to WWF, and ask that visitors to the site also donate to WWF.

This seems to me to be relatively small-scale donation on the part of Coca-Cola (donating a tiny percentage of the profit from each can of coke would result in a far larger sum), but – according to the WWF site – Coca-Cola and WWF are working together to 1) reduce the water used to produce its beverages, 2) recycle water used in manufacturing processes, and 3) replenish water in communities and nature. This will of course have a far larger impact, and is part of a multi-year partnership announced last June.

So: a clever way of bringing together two organisations to the benefit of both. (And, one hopes, to the benefit of polar bears). Question is, which organisation could you work with in this way?

Bringing CSR To The Banking Sector

and-the-question-isConnections. The world revolves around connections.

Businessmen love connections because it brings them business by word of mouth. Not only is this a pleasant ego boost, but also because it saves on that month’s advertising budget.

Consumers love connections because you will always trust an acquaintance’s opinions more than a total stranger’s. For instance, we just changed our gas & electricity supplier to one professionally sold to us by the grandmother of our daughter’s classmate.

And journalists, like me, hoard connections. Maybe one day you’ll need that person’s insight, or maybe one day they’ll feed you a good story. I’ve probably just written yours down while you were reading this.

Really great journalists end up working for major news outlets where their highly informed commentary will influence millions of people. At this pinnacle your storytelling ability will be excellent and further promotion can rest more upon the contacts you have to give that story the extra colour.

One such major news outlet is the BBC. [Read more…] about Bringing CSR To The Banking Sector

Raising the Retail Sector’s Sustainability Bar

“Oh, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia,” said Slartibartfast breezily. “Everyone in the universe suffers from that.”

It’s always good to know that the architects of the Earth, as depicted in Douglas Adams’ “The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy”, were aware of the fundamentals of life.

Nevertheless, it can be disconcerting to find these theories being borne out in real life.

For instance: I always had a sneaking suspicion that some smaller country was quietly getting on with sustainability without getting hung up over principle, cost or advantage.

That country, I’m starting to conclude, is Portugal. It appears to be a hotbed of Social Entrepreneurship, a centre for positive news reporting and, now, the home of the sustainable shopping centre.
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Spin, Fads and Taxes: CSR in the 21st Century

Is corporate social responsibility really just spin, an expensive corporate fad and a tax on shareholders’ profits?

Sonia at Remarkable Communication recently wrote a helpful article about corporate social responsibility (CSR) for small business – how small businesses should set up and use a CSR programme. As she says, what works for giant companies will work for small lean businesses too.

But she raises some interesting questions:

1. Sonia refers to CSR as 90% spin, and as a corporate fad.

CSR has been around for a long time, just under a different name. Probably ‘philanthropy’ would have covered it back in the 18th/19th centuries …
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Even Gladiators Need Presentation Skills

With the roll of drums and the crash of cymbals, the gladiators for next year enter the arena. These are the global warriors of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI).

They don’t bow or mumble strange sentences in Latin; instead they simply give themselves a hearty clap on the back and get on with the job in hand, bestriding the world as champions of business sustainability.

Every year companies from all over the world seek to qualify for membership of the DJSI. Each is measured against 12 criteria covering economic, social and environmental issues and those who score over a certain threshold are allowed in.

Which is all very well, but what about their websites? Well I have to admit I haven’t been through every single one with a tooth comb, but one caught my eye as worth highlighting. [Read more…] about Even Gladiators Need Presentation Skills