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.

Industry bodies are increasingly reporting that CSR is becoming a major issue. I recently visited an event industry evening and witnessed the attendees vote CSR and working with purchasing departments as their two biggest challenges in the industry.

But it’s not just the environment. CSR needs to become a part of your policy, owned and respected at every level of the organisation – including marketing. The policy should consider social engagement, economic and environmental.

Business to business customers are, or soon will be, asking questions about the factories you have; the materials you’re using – are they sustainable, damaging; what waste is produced and its disposal, how about energy usage; how people are being treated at your manufacturing sites, hygiene.

Why? Because your dealers, distributors, customers, users and owners are interested and they’re going to make you account for your actions and your approach. It’s natural that CSR becomes an embedded part of your brand, after all its part of the promises you’re making.

We are currently watching companies in India and China using an active CSR policy (a mix of social, environmental and economic) to accelerate brand building and acceptance in western and developed markets. It makes sense. Once they’ve done it they’ll become quickly embedded in global supply chains.

Oh yes and by the way, once they have this status they’re going to start making the supply chain shorter by removing distributors and making direct contracts. CSR will be the fastest way for these new players to build brands.

Should marketers champion CSR and celebrate the opportunities its creating? For those of us who can remember the emergence of ISO 9000 and quality assurance in the late 1980s, you can start to spot the signs maybe. It’s in every news bulletin, every newspaper, every board room agenda. It’s not going away. Own it, innovate, lead while you still can. Command the high ground – and possibly the moral high ground.

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.

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.

 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.”

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.

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.

The company can do their project or campaign of awareness as a group of people of employees, their supply chain, dealer and distribution network and even customer groups. Often the projects undertaken are used at company/corporate events, during training and personal development programmes, as employee engagement contributions as a worthwhile use of time and resources as icebreakers, team-building exercises, pr and marketing campaigns, rewards, employee and community goodwill and more.
 
The CSR Register will offer extended services to companies helping advise them on and choose the best projects for them and helping them to liaise with and communicate with the charities and community groups.

It’s a win-win for business and good causes. The CSR Register makes it happen.

This has real advantage for employee teams, personal development and business relationship building. The result for business is better relations with customers, the community and employees resulting in for the majority – better profits.

For the beneficiaries of the work we do it can be life changing, life enhancing and in short can make a huge difference to people who really need resource, time and energy investing in them and around them.

strangepr.com