Perry Goldschein - Sustainability Strategy, Communications & Marketing

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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 23rd, 2009

Sustainability Requires Continuing Dialogue

As posted this morning on Max Gladwell

It is our first guest post here at Max Gladwell and we are excited to be contributing to the thought leadership here.
conversation
So why we chose this topic is that a surprisingly small percentage of the general public knows that a corporate conversation around sustainability even exists, let alone that they can participate in it.  This is despite the fact that many of the largest companies are spending considerable resources to become socially responsible and publicize those efforts.  We discussed some aspects of this in our recent special report Social Media is Advancing the Sustainability Dialogue .

Grail Research recently released a study highlighting the fact that most consumers have no idea that companies like HP, Cisco, The Gap, Microsoft, Nike and General Mills are socially and environmentally responsible companies.  Which was exactly the point of our paper as well – companies need to be doing a better job of communicating the good works that they are doing, and getting ongoing stakeholder input, for a variety of reasons.   Silvia Springolo of Grail Research says it very simply “The low awareness of these initiatives raises huge questions because companies are spending so much money on them. And while green qualities are very important to consumers, they are not being communicated effectively.”

Recently, Deron Triff, CEO of Changents.com has been working to bring awareness of this gap by challenging people to match Fortune 100 companies with their CSR achievements via a 5-question CSR quiz.  The winner receives 100,000 consumer impressions of their Ad (benefiting a company or a favorite non-profit) on the homepage of Changents.com.  Take the CSR quiz now and see what you know – I know it was illuminating for me.

And if companies are spending so much time and money on these initiatives, it begs the question – why do we know so little about them?  If we are serious about wanting to change the world, then these stories need to be a part of the dialogue.  Companies are putting tremendous effort into compiling CSR reports, but at the end of the day who really reads those reports?  More recently, separate CSR websites are starting to emerge – who visits them?

Sustainability is such an important topic that the stories about corporate efforts need to be part of the companies’ overall communications, and companies need to start enabling dialogue with all of their stakeholders.  Conversations amongst a relative few in government, NGOs or other third parties won’t adequately address the various problems we face.  We believe social media is a catalyst for enabling these conversations as more companies try to figure out how to engage with stakeholders in this new world that demands transparency and crowd sourcing to solve our most intractable problems.

It’s important that we get more people talking – this conversation needs to move mainstream and engage with more people where they are instead of trying to get them to specific CSR communications.  Let’s face it very few people read CSR reports much less specific CSR communications.  They need to be a part of regular corporate communications and not a separate stream if we are going to truly embed this in mainstream culture, engage more people in the discussion, and inspire the change we want to see in the world.

Please help to continue this dialogue – would love to hear your thoughts!

Beth Bengtson, Partner, SDialogue

Posted by beth
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October 30th, 2009

MoveOn blasts US Chamber Facebook page

Just before noon EST, today, I received a remarkable email from MoveOn.org as one of its millions of email subscribers.

The email revealed an existing story about the  US Chamber of Commerce’s (USCC) either very misleading, or completely false, membership and representation numbers.  The USCC has apparently, for a long while, mislead the public into thinking it had 3 million members, when its actual paid membership is something in the order of 10% or less of that number.

The MoveOne email then asked recipients to post a comment on the USCC’s Facebook page, calling it out on its lies. I reviewed the post, then went to the USCC’s Facebook page to participate. It was already inundated with a phenomenal volume of negative feedback.

The Chamber became flustered as evidenced by its responses to the comments and remained defensive, rather than owning up to its deception or apologizing for any confusion. It had its page settings initially set so that visitors would see its fan’s comments; but anyone can become a fan to comment and that’s what the MoveOn crowd did — the Chamber subsequently set its page to automatically show only its own comments within two hours after the onslaught started.

This was something to watch in action and shows the power of combing email and social media to vastly increase the audience from a traditional media story. There is simply nowhere for opaque organizations to hide; those that try, and then especially those that get defensive about it, will loose oodles of brand value, not to mention stakeholders leaving for the exits.  Anyone know exactly how many of the Chamber’s actual members are still left?

Posted by perry
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October 28th, 2009

CSR is Inside Baseball – Take the Quiz

This is the first of our guest posts here at SDialogue.  We promised to continue the dialogue about how social media is advancing the sustainability dialogue after the launch of our  paper on the topic.  This post is from Deron Triff, CEO at Changents.com – a great organization which is indeed furthering the sustainability dialogue.

CSR is Inside Baseball

Take the Quiz and Prove Me Wrong

I often use the expression “inside baseball” to describe corporate social responsibility.  Too many of the best companies using business as a positive force for change talk about their incredibly cool CSR projects in gauzy details only an insider could love.  Almost all stumble in their well-intentioned efforts to really connect with mass audiences around shared values.   Is this a big deal?  You bet it is!

Like no time in history companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to do “good” in the world.  Their ethical business practices and truly innovative approaches are bringing about social and environmental change in ways that drop right to the bottom line.  But instead of connecting with consumers through pop-culture channels, the good work, the cool projects, the amazing engagement opportunities get stuffed away in a 100-page dust magnet called the CSR Report. Consumers want to purchase from responsible corporate citizens.  Why make it so hard to tell the story!

To prove that CSR is about as inside baseball as it gets, I challenge you to a 5-question CSR quiz matching Fortune 100 companies with their blockbuster CSR achievements.  To make it worth your while, I will award the winner with 100,000 consumer impressions by placing an ad of their choice (benefiting a company or a favorite non-profit) on the homepage of Changents.com.

If answering the questions felt like throwing darts, you’re not alone. Last week Grail Research rolled out a study revalidating a proven point: most consumers have no idea companies like HP, Cisco, The Gap, Microsoft, Nike and General Mills are socially and environmentally responsible companies.

For years, however, studies by Cone, Manning Selvage & Lee and AMP Agency have shown the positive relationship between CSR and consumerism.  Despite this well understood fact, companies have a hell of a time creating values marketing experiences that are exciting, interactive, easily understood and ‘connectable’ through social media.

Case in point.  Intel’s CSR achievements are among the most notable in the world.  Trust me, snuggle up with its CSR report (which I am not advocating:) and you’ll be blown away. However, the punch line is on page one where CEO Paul Otellini states “…I am proud of the many recognitions…including our number one spot on Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens list….” Don’t get me wrong, Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine is great for us inside baseball players, but c’mon Intel, you have a story to tell to the masses!

Now, there are some great examples of companies bringing their “good” to life on the Internet. For example, in 2009 the American Express Member’s Project caught lightening in a bottle with 400,000 people registered and 1.8 million unique visitors. AMEX masterfully used the Web to crowd source people with exciting projects for change under the company’s brand. They leveraged the best of our increasingly “ego-altruistic” culture and engaged the public. It worked not only because AMEX offered sizable financial support to the winners, but also because it understands Seth Godin’s paradigm that explains how agents of change are turning to the Internet and connecting one-by-one to form groups – which catalyze into movements – that take responsibility for creating change.

A company’s ability to help consumers connect the dots between commerce and values is a challenge, no doubt about it. With that said, the level of creativity, content and entertainment value in the values marketing space is beginning to rival that of product marketing.   Perhaps Fast Company said it best when describing Timberland’s CEO Jeff Swartz as a visionary business leader who is “using the hard financial metrics of profit, return on investment, and, oh yes, shareholder return, to try to prove that doing good and doing well are actually self-reinforcing notions.”

Deron Triff, CEO, Changents.com

Posted by beth
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October 22nd, 2009

Social Media for Sustainability

I attended the Social Media for Sustainability conference organized by Justmeans in San Francisco on Monday. Along with hundreds of others who attended, I was excited to see a conference so laser-like in its focus on the intersection of two topics our firm seems to be addressing on a daily basis now.

The conference was designed to help answer such questions as: How should your company using social media to engage your customers, employees, activists, and other stakeholders online?  What are the best tools and platforms? How do you develop the right incentives for building community and keeping your community engaged? What is the ROI of social media and what metrics should your company be using?

While the conference didn’t answer all of these questions, many great insights were provided by both panelists and audience members from companies like Intel, Cisco, Nike and Disney, as well as Seventh Generation, Treehugger.com and TriplePundit.com.

Some major takeaways included:

  • Empowered by social media, customers, employees, activists, and other stakeholders are demanding far more from companies than ever before — with the power to affect and even define brands (e.g., United Breaks Guitars is closing in on 6 million views)
  • Social media helps co-create great ideas (e.g., MyStarbucks Idea)
  • Your brand is being discussed, whether or not you are part of the conversation — Google it, YouTube it, Twitter it and see for yourself (we’ve tried to stress this with clients ourselves — at the least, you should be “listening” in on the conversation with basic tools)
  • Sustainable brand leaders like Seventh Generation and Timberland are moving away from annual sustainability reports and towards more real-time storytelling and data — they’re looking for meaningful conversations (we’ve been helping clients with this type of activity for a while)
  • Leading brands are starting to crowd-source their efforts around sustainability
  • “‘Open companies are already performing some 30% more profitably than closed companies” (Dwayne Spradin, Innocentive) — “we” are smarter than “me”; but this requires a different mindset and culture than traditional or closed innovation — “culture eats strategy for lunch”
  • @katbaloo A good overview of Social Media Listening and Monitoring Tools as you think about tracking ROI: http://bit.ly/VBlmY

What’s been your experience with social media and sustainability?  Let us know!  More commentary at Twitter, of course (#justmeans).

Posted by perry
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March 13th, 2009

How Social Media will Enhance Sustainability Strategy

I just answered a great question on LinkedIn: Can social media drive corporate sustainability strategy?

The inquirer, Katie Fry Hester, clarified that she’s “been testing the idea that companies can derive real business AND sustainability value through online communication and collaboration. For example, testing new eco-products in Second Life, launching a sustainability report on JustMeans, crowd sourcing customers for product improvements, monitoring blogs for stakeholder feedback, using twitter for a more direct line to journalists…”

She added: “How is your company deriving business/sustainability value from these new technologies? If you have any examples and/or evidence, I’d love to hear them…” [so would I!]

So, my enthusiastic answer:

“Yes” is the short answer. I also believe it’s potentially “game changing”, as one commenter put it recently. Social media is perhaps the biggest cause for the increasing transparency in the corporate world. It will continue to play an important role in corporate social responsibility’s (CSR) evolution.

Major themes of the way social media will benefit companies involved in CSR include: (1) greatly facilitating meaningful dialogue and collaboration with various stakeholders; (2) tracking and “officially” reporting their CSR efforts; and (3) using the information gleaned from the reporting process to communicate CSR efforts in an more accessible way to a broader audience than CSR report readers and watchdogs.

Some examples of organizations benefiting can be found in a report we did last year and a more recent article I wrote for the LOHAS journal (pdf format).

Social media is still in its infancy and the sustainable business crowd, like most others, has just begun to touch the surface. Your examples are good, and we’re in the process of looking more closely at SM’s use specifically in the development of CSR communications, with a new paper due out soon. Please do ping me if you’d like me to let you know when that’s available.

Posted by perry
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