CSR impacts on B2B marketing

If you’ve recently tried to get on the tender list any of Europe’s top 1000 companies you’ll be familiar with the question: ‘Does your company have a CSR policy? If yes, please provide evidence and a copy of the policy.’

Now tell me or your board of directors you’re not interested in CSR. This one issue could help you or prevent you getting onto tender lists, preferred supplier status, RFIs and RFPs.  It’s not a fad or ‘pc’ fashion, its business in the 21^st century. As marketers we all know that we have to watch for the trends and act appropriately.

Olympic sponsors say CSR is a key part of Beijing 08

We’ve reported before that brands are leveraging CSR to build brands and emotional engagement in new markets. China Daily is reporting: “Worldwide Olympic partner Samsung Electronics said CSR is one of the top reasons for its expansion in the Chinese market.” Read the article in full.

Samsung, Coca Cola and other brands have been building schools, offering vocational training to rural communities in a social engagement programme. The paper suggests that companies are using the Olympic exposure to build their CSR profiles.

Social programmes offer the chance to give brands greater depth and all important emotional engagement between consumers and brands. Projects of all sizes contribute and consumers aren’t stupid. They log every instant and are becoming more and more aware on how to find out what companies are doing.

Is CSR relevant? Do you have to ask

If your company is going to supply building materials for a new Bank head office (for example), they want to know where it’s come from, who produced it, what labour was used, was it sustainable, how much waste was produced, is it environmentally sound. If you can’t answer this, or can’t give the ‘Responsible’ answer? The bank nor the architect will touch your product.

Now who wants to say that CSR is a whim, too PC and not something to take on board? B2B marketers need to get to grips fast before losing an opportunity – or worse get too far behind (by the way it will happen fast), and lose market share, customers, and leave holes in the market open for others to fill.

Pick ‘n’ Mix approach to CSR

Whether its consumers in a supermarket or companies executives crafting strategy, it seems we are still content to pick ‘n’ mix the parts of CSR and being green that suits us.

 The Economic Times reports a recent McKinsey survey as showing that 60% of executives regard climate change as strategically important but one third said their companies “seldom or never considered climate change when developing overall strategy”. 

Then there is the report from The Daily Reckoning in a great article by Glynn Davis about how consumers are picky about what they choose. He reports that “The Henley Centre found that while 34% claim to be eco-friendly shoppers, a puny 6% actually deliver on this when out shopping. And while an impressive 53% of consumers claim they buy Fairtrade products, the reality is that only 30% actually do so.”

CSR is a dimension of brand – because it’s a promise you make

CSR’s time has come. Consumers care about you being responsible in business – it’s now a vocal, deep down part of consumer engagement with brands. More than ever consumers are fully aware that choosing a brand reflects on them. 

Suggesting that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is too ‘pc’ as some marketers still imagine, just reflects the lack of understanding in the basic premise of CSR. Take a lesson from the Web 2.0 movement and its reflection of the rise in consumer power and consumer voice.

CSR is a concept which can offer easy to access brand differentiators and more importantly deep down connections with customers at a beliefs and values level. The challenge to a brand is how it is going to leverage actions to reflect beliefs, CSR policy and brand values.

Just as brand is a ‘promise’ to the consumer, so CSR must just be a dimension of the brand. CSR is your promise to consumers about social engagement, economic behaviour including supply chain policies and attitudes to labour and of course the environment.

What won’t work of course is just paying lip service and saying things. With CSR its act first and say second. What we did learn with the Internet was not only the connection you have with a personal relationship with customers but also the power of first mover advantage.

CSR is a very visual and demonstrable part of your brand and its personality and part of the learning, behaviour and culture of your business – at every stakeholder level – just the same as brand.

What better way of creating deep brand engagement than through the intentions, actions and policies of CSR.

We are currently watching companies in India and China using an active CSR policy to effectively buy brand status and positioning. It makes sense. For these emerging markets what vehicles are available to convince a western and global audience that they have western style values and qualities. Answer? Being able to demonstrate being responsible.

CSR Register launches to help businesses find charity projects

A new service for companies has been launched by the CSR Register to offer access to charity and community projects across the UK. 

The CSR Register is a brokerage offering companies, PR, marketing and event agencies, training and development firms and others access to hundreds of pre-qualified and readily available, ‘live’ community engagement projects and current worthwhile activities at over 10,000 active charities and community groups.
 
Charities load their projects and needs into an online Project Bank free of charge. Companies who register can email or call the CSR Register hotline, where will take their brief and establish their time, budget and ‘good cause’ criteria – before returning a list of Projects to the company.