Perry Goldschein - Sustainability Strategy, Communications & Marketing

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CONSCIOUS CLICKS - The Blog

News and analysis on sustainability, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder engagement, and Internet and other digital marketing and communications. You'll even get some very practical tips on these topics that you can put to immediate use!

November 4th, 2009

Questions to Benchmark Organizations’ Sustainability

I like the LinkedIn Q&A – think it’s a great tool. Makes for good blog entries, too. Here’s a question and the answer I provided just last week:

Q:  I’d like help developing survey questions to benchmark an organizations Sustainability. What are the best questions to ask?

My A: There are a lot of questions you can ask and some of the best questions may vary by not only industry sector, but size and other factors. Take a look at B Lab’s publicly available survey for a bunch of great, straightforward ones across sustainability categories, and look a the other resources listed below for more information.

Here are some more questions we ask our clients to ask themselves:

  • What does your organization consider part of sustainability (environment, community involvement, people, philanthropy)?
  • If not part, where do they fall in the organization?
  • Have I mapped out and am I fully engaging with all of my stakeholders (customers, investors, employees, suppliers, partners, NGOs, governments, communities, etc.)?
  • Do I have a sustainability issues map to help guide my efforts?
  • Do I have a sustainability or environmental management system (SMS or EMS) to organize and guide my efforts?
  • Am I engaged in life cycle analysis?
  • Do I put together timely sustainability / CSR reports?
  • Is sustainability integrated into my brand(s) and do I adequately educate consumers and other stakeholders on the issues?
  • How do I successfully measure my sustainability efforts?

Here are some more questions we ask our clients to ask themselves from a communications perspective:

  • How do you communicate with customers, employees, investors, & other stakeholders?
  • How do you communicate your sustainability efforts with these stakeholders?
  • How aligned is your sustainability messaging to your other communications & efforts?

Links:

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February 4th, 2009

Answers to: Major Issues Facing Green Marketers & CSR Pros

Here are some answers that I promised to the first of a set of LinkedIn questions I posted not long ago: What do you see as the major issues facing green marketers & CSR professionals over the next couple of years?

Ted Ning, LOHAS: I think those companies that are not communicating their green initiatives in ways that keep up with current events will faulter. (sic) With the economy as it is, there will need to be more emphasis of cost benefits such as durability and energy efficiency. CSR professionals will now need to demonstrate thier value to companies who now have the scissors out to cut jobs that don’t feed the bottom line. Unless they are positioned in companies that have sustainability in thier core and are connected to that core, thier jobs are in jeapordy. (sic) There will need to be more tactics and strategy for thier roles beyond big annual reports and PR announcements.

Randy Paynter, Care2: Revenues and Cash flow – ie the same thing that most businesses are going to face. But, on the green front, I think green companies need to continue to find ways to break through all the noise, differentiate themselves, and find unique ways to provide true value. (again, kind of what all companies need to do, but when “green” is the twist/niche I think the value proposition often gets lost.

Ian Myszenski, Hotwire: I agree the challenge is “Legitimacy” for being a Green or Socially Responsible product/company. There has been so much Greenwashing and unsubstantiated messaging that customers (B2B & B2C) are looking for ways to verify a product is truly a better choice for the environment and world.
In order to break through the noise, company’s need to either devote serious brand marketing to explain in detail how they are Socially Responsible or more likely look for certification or endorsement of their actions. Hence we’re seeing a rise in corporate marketing of 1% for the Planet, B Corporations, and Nonprofit endorsements (Sierra Club/Clorox Greenworks).

More LinkedIn questions and answers to follow.

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January 15th, 2009

"Synchronizing Social Networks" Free eBook

As mentioned in Marketing Over Coffee, this free 19 page eBook walks you through the steps needed to synchronize, backup, and expand your social networks and social media contacts. You don’t even need to provide an email address.

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