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Video: A best practice example of CSR and Cause Marketing Integration

June 28, 201011:31 am

The video interview below I believe represents a very interesting best practice example of how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Cause Marketing can be successfully linked in order to improve products, increase sales, build reputation and do good for the cause that is being supported. In this case, the quality of dog food and the support of dog shelters across North America.

Here Chris Jarvis of 3blMedia interviews John J. Anton, Marketing Director at Mars Petcare about their integration of CSR and Cause Marketing.

What the Greenpeace Nestle KitKat campaign is missing

March 19, 201012:37 pm

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This week has been a very interesting week for campaigners. Many of you might have heard that Greenpeace has hit hard on Nestle and its KitKat product with allegations that Nestlé SA buys palm oil from companies destroying the Indonesian rain forests in order to plant oil palms. The video it self is very graphic but brings the point across like not many videos I have seen.

Here is the video (but if you can’t see blood do not watch this):

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

My opinion and criticism
I like the fact that Greenpeace is trying to make the world a better place and is going against the horrible palm oil practices. But there are limits how far to go. And I believe that this campaign video is going just a little bit to far and is missing a key ingredient.

I am not talking about the fact that you are seeing blood or anything similar but I am skeptical about the actual information aspect of all of this. This video in my opinion can be compared to the doom and gloom climate change ads and videos that we all hate. They are graphic but they do not really serve the purpose of being informative and promoting the most effective action by everyone to change our ways.

The same in my opinion is true for this Greenpeace campaign video. Instead of being overly graphic and shocking they should have included more context and information on which we could all act on. And not just stop buying KitKat and boycotting Nestle. We as stakeholders need to understand the overall circumstances in order to be able to make a sound judgment in my opinion. We need to know the reason why palm oil is so popular, what the situation in the producing countries is, what the Nestle point of view for not keeping control of its supply chain is, etc. This is what Greenpeace should have focused on.

So my message to Greenpeace is: Consumer activism is good but for the sake of transparency, progress and corporate accountability please also provide more information on how to solve this dilemma from a company perspective. This campaign is just like the campaigns of the past. It is time to evolve in my opinion, time to make these campaigns more effective for us as stakeholders and the involved companies.

Picture Credit: psd

Why do we trust companies to do the right thing?

February 22, 20107:16 pm

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Now here is a difficult question to answer. Having worked in this Sustainability / Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) field for a good while now I must say that this very basic question is not really easy to answer. Especially from the viewpoint of the Sustainability / CSR professional. It is our business to be trust agents and convince others to trust in the good companies are doing.

So as engaging bloggers do ( and I am hoping you will see me as one of these engaging bloggers), am I putting this question to you, my reader, and seek your opinion.

Here is what I think about this: Trusting companies to do the right thing is difficult as companies are so integral to our society and way of living. Most of us either work for one company or have companies as customers. Companies provide us with the income we need to buy the things we need to live our life, care for our family and raise our children.

So what other choice other then to hoping that they will do the right thing do we have? I think we need to look at the other side of this question. It is not a choice but rather a duty, a duty for us as stakeholders of these companies to ask and demand of them to do the right thing. We can not hope for them to do the right thing but we can and need to demand it.

And the time can not be better nowadays with such easy access finding like-minded people from across the globe using the internet and ways to publish your messages via free social media tools.

Change starts with believing that you can make a difference. And we need to start believing that we can create a better business world. We, as a Sustainability / CSR professionals or activists, need to believe that we can influence all of these negative aspects that are pulling our confidence down at the moment by using our education, experience and passion to make it a better business world for us and our own stakeholders. This is our duty as stakeholders.

This is my take on this but what is yours?

Picture Credit: s4nt1

Important for Sustainability and CSR: Keep It Simple

January 25, 20101:57 pm

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Life can be complicated sometimes. We all know that. Especially if you work in the Sustainability / CSR sector trying to convince other people of the purpose and the good of Sustainability / CSR can be very complicated and challenging at times.

Todays post has one straightforward message:

Keep It Simple.

I have found this to be so important especially when you work in the Sustainability / CSR field. In order to properly communicate your point of view or argument you need to keep it simple. This will help you to reach the other person much easier and not overwhelm them with the message you are trying to convey.

How do I mean that?
Well if you overcomplicate topics or try to tackle to many issues or tasks all at once your results will show it – in a negative way. Not only from the communications but also from a business results point of view. You might be the one in a million professional that can do that now (at least you think you do) but this is is impossible to keep up all the time. We all have our limits and keeping it simple might just help to make your business life as a Sustainability / CSR professional more effective and at the same time more enjoyable.

This is a really basic way of working. But think about it. What is the argument for making it more complicated? There is none in my opinion.

So why not use time this Monday to take a look at where you can make your work in the Sustainability / CSR field or any other field of work simpler but at the same time more organized and effective. I bet you will find at least one area of work where you are overcomplicating matters.

This is your task then: Make it simpler and therefore more manageable.

Picture Credit: Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha

CSR in Germany Part II – Future of CSR in Germany

November 27, 200912:07 pm

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In my first post about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Germany a while back now, I talked about the three key developments in CSR over the past few years.

Todays post is about the three major future developments phases I see for CSR in Germany. I have worked in the CSR field for a while now and being German I obviously always felt close to the Germany and as a consequence watched the CSR developments unfold over the past few years with interest.

One Big Challenge
There is one big hurdle for a continuous successful adoption of CSR practices for Germany in my opinion. The current financial crisis. Why? Well many reasons but I think the biggest problem with CSR practices within an organization will be the lack of funds within a business to start their CSR activities. In the wake of the restructuring of departments within businesses will the CSR budgets suffer as well. This is obviously not only a German problem.

But CSR as with every corporate change process needs sufficient initial funding to get of the ground. So lets hope, for the sake of the German CSR initiatives (and all CSR activities/budgets across the globe), that this financial crisis will not last that long anymore or that the German public will realize that CSR is a key element of the future of their business environment and demand increased CSR investment from business.

Once this crisis is behind us I am of the opinion that CSR practices in Germany will undergo three major development phases in terms of CSR practice.

The three major future development phases for CSR in Germany

More and more companies will be hearing about CSR and CSR best practice across the globe. German companies can be slow to adopt new business practices sometimes. The level of skepticism is traditionally quite high in German business. This has always been the case and can be regarded as both good and bad in my opinion. As a result the major companies in the main German share index, DAX 30, will be likely to all report on their CSR practices. This development will then also be an important driver for the adoption of CSR by more and more smaller companies.

CSR as a term will be more closely aligned with Environmentalism and move towards Sustainability, not just CSR itself. Environmentalism is traditionally very big in Germany and ingrained in the German culture. The likelihood that CSR and Environmentalism will be combined into the overall concept of Sustainability is very high. You might ask yourself why this is the second major development phase but definitions have a big importance in the German way to do business so to say. Once the terminology is agreed the German mentality is usually to move on and focus on the next phase of Sustainability.

Once there are more people/businesses involved and the political establishment will have realized that this is something they need to support, then Sustainability (CSR and Environmentalism) will be a key element in the sustainable future for German business. This is the special aspect about German business. Once they decide on doing something they usually get on with it and do not question the decision made. A really good cultural trait in my opinion.

These are the three major development phases I see in German business with regards to CSR. But this is only my point of view and judgement of course. I am more then happy to hear other points of views. Not only the German point of view of course but other cultural contexts in adopting CSR.

Picture Credit: Arenamontanus

CSR still has a lot to prove – Results of my recent online poll

August 3, 20091:23 pm

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Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) a management fashion or just a temporary movement in the business world that no one really believes in? – This is what I asked myself last week and decided to do an online poll about it to find out what the view of other people on this is.
I decided to have the poll run for a week to get enough participants for a meaningful result. And I was pleased to see lots of people participate. In the end we had 141 votes and a lot of comments.

Here are the numbers:

The majority of participants believe that CSR is not a management fad but something more then that (53% and 75 people). But I guess it is even more significant to note that 40% or 56 people believe that CSR is just a management fad and nothing more.

Here are the comments to give you more context of the reactions:

This is the direct link to the poll and the comments if you would to see the results and comments combined:
http://twtpoll.com/acq1ev

So what are the results telling us and what am I taking away as learning from this poll?
The results in my opinion show a very high degree of uncertainty and skepticism on whether CSR is something other then a management fad. This is even more remarkable as it is fair to say that the audience I engaged in this poll knows what CSR is (some even are CSR Managers in different organizations) and are as a consequence more likely to believe that it is not a management fashion.

My Learning
The majority of people participating in the poll do not think that CSR is a management fashion, however I was surprised by the number of people who are still skeptical towards the concept of CSR, even though the audience participating in this poll are most likely to be people involved in CSR in some way or another. I guess it is fair to say that even the CSR community is still unsure as to whether CSR is viewed as an intrinsic part of doing business by those who claim to be responsible.

I think the way I interpret these results is that we still might be a long way from and making it a way of doing business rather than a PR stunt, however we are on the right path and more and more people see the value CSR can bring to an organization’s long-term sustainability.

Do you agree with this assessment? Or do you think there is another interpretation of these poll results?

Key elements of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in an organisation

July 15, 20099:41 am

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This is an article I wrote for the Chartered Management Institute blog this week. I wanted to share this with everyone. Please let me know what you think or whether you have any feedback on my points raised in the article.

My post on the blog:

In the last 10 years the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) movement stood for topics such as Corporate Governance, Environmental management and community engagement only to name three. CSR is being seen as the new business models for companies that want to be seen as more responsible organizations.

So why is that? Well it is not just acceptable anymore to do a little bit of environmental management here and some community involvement there. Companies are expected to construct a sounds framework of activities that all enhance their responsible business practice.

This article will outline a broad overview of the important elements for successful CSR practice within an organization.

To give this overview more structure, these elements are all subdivided into the internal and external aspects of CSR practice. This differentiation is necessary as CSR has two sides to it: 1) The internal and 2) external perspective in order to be successful.

The following main elements are important for successful CSR practice

CSR Strategy

The CSR Strategy should be the starting point of the organizational CSR practice. This strategy needs to be defined as clear as possible with a future goal in mind.

Internal Aspects:
You will need to build solid support for the strategy before you go about defining what you want to achieve with this strategy. It is key to this strategy to get the support and participation from as many high profile executives in the organization and to identify and engage these people that are passionate about CSR within the business. Once you have this support in place it will be easier for you to define the CSR Strategy for your business.

External Aspects:
The CSR Strategy will act as the positioning document for the responsible business practice of your company. Your stakeholders and the public will expect a visionary document that shows ambition and goals.

CSR Management System

After defining the strategy your next task will be to set up the CSR Management system. The management system of CSR within your business will outline what you actually need to do to make your strategy happen and to produce results.

Internal Aspects:
This is where you need to engage even more individuals in your business. Try to gather information on how the CSR Strategy has been received and then build on that to engage the most positive people. Once you have gathered a good team that supports your cause you can pool their knowledge and build a sound management plan on how to deliver the different elements of the strategy. The CSR management system is the customized tool to successful CSR. You can go around and look at the management systems of other companies but this management system really needs to be so customized to your organizational context that you nearly need to build it from scratch.

External Aspects:
This will be the CSR tool you will be asked about a lot once you have it set up. The CSR management system is your vehicle to get more external recognition of your activities. Never give away to much information but be helpful when other organizations what to have some tips. You never know how they are doing managing their CSR aspects; you might learn something for your management system.

CSR Reporting

The next step after the successful set up of the management system is the reporting of the first results of your companies CSR activities. This is called CSR reporting. Companies usually report on an annual basis. This CSR reporting is really the first test whether you and your team have created something interesting and worth reporting for your stakeholders.

Internal Aspects:
Internally this CSR reporting is really a tough task. It will test your CSR management and coordination skills. The goal is to produce a meaning full publication that will be of interest to your stakeholders. The challenge you will face inside of the company is that it will be very hard to get all the numbers and the signed of text in time to be still up to date and relevant. Remember this qualitative and quantitative data has not been gathered before so make sure everyone understands what he or she are supposed to report.

External Aspects:
CSR Reporting is a very important tool once you start out with CSR as an organization. Externally this CSR Report together with the CSR management system will be your CSR face of the organization. So the more professional you can make it the better.

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication is the area, which keeps all of these areas together and connected. Without engaging your stakeholder on a continuous basis there is no real long term value in building a CSR Strategy, a report or communicating what you as an organization have been doing. So what do you need to take into account to practice successful stakeholder engagement?

Internal Aspects:
Key to Stakeholder Engagement is to be as transparent within your company about what you and your team do as the CSR team. This will be the first question colleagues will ask you: “But what do you actually do?” Effective stakeholder engagement starts in our own backyard first. Once you have that running your can turn to the external perspective of stakeholder engagement.

External Aspects:
Once you have the internal stakeholder engagement and communication running smoothly you can turn your focus to the external aspects. Here you should look to include interest groups such as NGO’s, the local community around your sites and other stakeholder groups that you have identified as being important to your organization.

External Stakeholder Engagement is very likely the hardest area of all of them outlined here. Why? Because you will take on the whole world and each and everyone can be your stakeholder depending what size of company you are working for. Research in stakeholder engagement is really still in its beginning and the future will see a lot of innovation is this external stakeholder engagement area. These innovations can be modern communication tools or effective ways to identify the particular stakeholder opinion. Exciting times ahead.

To sum up let me stress one last point which I feel is central to CSR within an organization.
Do not listen to the so-called CSR gurus and experts out there too much. Try to find your own way of making CSR happen within your business.

CSR is really only the sum of its individual approaches and best practice so why not start today to add your approach and best practice to it? It will be a journey you will never forget.

Video: When Sustainability Means More than ‘green’.

July 7, 200910:19 am

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Here is another very interesting video on the topic of Sustainability that I wanted to share with everyone.

When sustainability means more than ‘green’: