What’s the value of Corporate Social Responsibility?

I’m going to start at the middle and then work from that focal point (much like Tarantino). And like Tarantino, I am going to go for a big, bloody, punch-in-the-face-of-a-statement, ready…

Corporate social responsibility statements are bullsh*t!

Yep, I am going to let that hang there on the proverbial page.

So you’re probably thinking one of two things: 1. “Well, that’s just plainly untrue” or 2. “Er, yeah!”

So let’s go back to the beginning and how that brain buster of a statement has come from my mind, to my fingertips, to your eyes.

When I was setting up Pixeldot I did the usual thing of going to lots of talks and networking breakfasts and hearing the same old same old “Hi, I’m a designer”, or “I’m an entrepreneur!”. Then one cold, dark, British December morning, I remember dragging myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to be in time for a fairly standard cup of pump-action coffee and a semi translucent slice of bacon, sitting ready for more talks about accountancy for start-up businesses… And then a lady stood up and said, “Hi everyone, I am Jane, and I am a CSR specialist”. Jane sat down as if everything was normal. Noone said a word, so I did the honourable and proper thing and reached for my iPhone 4 (it was a while ago) jumped on the EDGE, and waited for eight minutes to find out what Google told me about CSR, which was.

“Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to business practices involving initiatives that benefit society. A business’s CSR can encompass a wide variety of tactics, from giving away a portion of a company’s proceeds to charity, to implementing “greener” business operations.” 2016 statement.

My first thought was, “wow this is really great!”And then my second thought was ; “Isn’t that just what running a business is all about?”. When founding Pixeldot with my business partner, Jan, we set out three clear goals for the business:

1. Be the best branding agency we can be, always, in everything we do.
2. Make a positive impact on our clients and build lasting relationships on the foundation of creative thinking and innovation.
3. Build a business that takes care of our staff, our families and the community around us.

So as you can see, what we had considered a founding principle of our business is what Jane had revealed she encourages other businesses to do for a living. I couldn’t believe that ‘CSR’ was an entire industry in its own right.

As our projects moved from designing logos for coffee shops into delivering brand strategies for multi-national organisations, it became clear that CSR was either something which large companies felt they had to do — which resulted in depressing tokenistic efforts — or, even worse, just a title for a web page in the sub footer navigation — A tick box for large corporate brands to make them feel more ‘in-touch’ with their customers.

But does a token effort really work for anyone?

Well the answer to that, is a big, fat, NO — and here’s why…

Millennials!

Millennials get talked about A LOT.

I confess, I am one, and if you’re not sure what a millennial is, a New York Times report brackets them as anyone born between 1980 to 2000, so there are quite a few of us. By 2020 at least half the workforce will be millennials, and many of them will be senior directors and decisions makers, so their opinions matter.

What is it about millennials that brands have to consider when either promoting to this demographic or, more importantly, recruiting this demographic? In a nutshell — values. On average, 63% of millennials in the US donate to charity on a regular basis, and that expectation passes from them to their employers, and to the brands they feel they align with. As a group, they/we/I strongly believe that with the political change and unrest in the world, business, and business leaders have the ability, opportunity and responsibility to be a positive force for good.

In a recent Deloitte report they found, 76% of ‘us’ believe business should be a force for social good.

But can a company really be a force for good, with CSR as a footnote? A sub navigation page promising to be ‘greener’ in their delivery? Clearly, that doesn’t wash with audiences anymore, and it won’t be tolerated. Take the recent Pepsi advert that has been a social media and PR nightmare. Was the advert bad? Well it wasn’t great (I could write a essay on the brand issues they dumped on themselves but that’s for another time) .Up until the last 20 seconds of the ad, it would appear that Pepsi wanted to align themselves with the passionate, values-driven and vocal millennial group — by depicting creatives, artists and activists peacefully walking together in their unified cause…all good so far. then Pepsi went and showed their hand by having Kendall Jenner resolve all of our cultural woes with a can of soda, and suggesting that 1: the police were the enemy and that a can of sugary water can bridge ‘the divide’ and 2: they had used a period of social unrest to promote their commercial enterprise, which is both morally wrong and socially unacceptable. And boy, have they been told. The mouthpiece of millennials — Twitter — lit up with conversation and exasperation. American activists such as DeRay Mckesson said; “If I had carried Pepsi I guess I would’ve never gotten arrested. Who knew?”. Pepsi as a brand overstepped the invisible line between the ‘potentially plausible’ to ‘corporate exploitation’ of social responsibilities.

So we’ve seen the recent fail by Pepsi, but who has been delivering an authentic, positive, social responsibility message within their brand? Two businesses instantly spring to mind.

TOMS , the shoe brand, have the core message of One for One. It’s a simple and fundamental principle of their business ; “Improve lives. With every product you purchase, TOMS will help a person in need. One for One.” That’s it. In one sentence you understand the basic principle of not only their business, but their values. You buy a product, they give a product. A 50/50 split of responsibility between you the consumer, and them, the business. They could’ve just stopped there, but TOMS are different. They follow on to say “Through your purchases, TOMS helps provide shoes, sight, water and safer birth services to people in need.”

The TOMS values and brand beliefs are not a sentence, or a message in their sub navigation — their giving, and commitment to social causes, is the bulk of their websites focus. From promoting the fact they have given away 70 million pairs of shoes, to information on their projects in more than 70 countries globally. Their social responsibility is ingrained in their business values from the ground up, and that clarity of message and value has helped them become one of the world’s largest producers of shoes, and a mainstay of millennial footwear fashion year after year. And that isn’t just because their shoes are great products and comfortable to wear (top tip — values without value for money for the consumer will struggle to be commercially viable), but when a person hands over their hard-earned money and slips on a pair of TOMS they are telling the world; “I stand with TOMS, I align myself with their values, their beliefs and their sense of responsibility. By purchasing their footwear, glasses or coffee, I am actively making the choice to do some good with my decision. Making a difference in a small transaction that can have a lasting benefit on the global community.”

TOMS was founded in 2006, but another organisation that has been leading the corporate responsibility charge for over 25 years is American brand Patagonia. Patagonia was founded in 1988 in Boston, and the story goes that after a few days of opening their first store, their staff were getting sick. After calling in an engineer, he informed the directors that the staff were being poisoned by formaldehyde in the air due to poor ventilation. But where was the formaldehyde coming from? It turned out to be the cotton of their clothes! Understandably unhappy about this, they commissioned a study and found that cotton grown with pesticides is one of the most destructive crops in the agricultural world. This realisation drove their change to organic cotton, and then onwards further to assessing and reviewing every process, deliverable and service in the Patagonia business. They needed to be sure that their name stood for quality from top to bottom — from the first weave to the final product.

“We are in the earliest stages of learning how what we do for a living both threatens nature and fails to meet our deepest human needs. The impoverishment of our world and the devaluing of the priceless undermine our physical and economic well-being.

Yet the depth and breadth of technological innovation of the past few decades shows that we have not lost our most useful gifts; humans are ingenious, adaptive, clever. We also have moral capacity, compassion for life, and an appetite for justice. We now need to more fully engage these gifts to make economic life more socially just and environmentally responsible, and less destructive to nature and the commons that sustain us.” — Patagonia website

Patagonia’s business has grown once again through the quality of their product, which in turn is driven by their values and ambitions to not only be a better business, but better human beings. Through these values they have grown an army of followers, fighting for the same cause and willing to invest in a business they can fully believe in.

We look for the thread which connects brand values to brand proposition.

If you work in an organisation that doesn’t have a clearly defined moral compass or a sense of community that you feel you can align to, you’re not alone. Research shows that millennials will switch companies as quickly as they will switch phone provider if they believe the other company is more aligned with their values and beliefs. Brands that build a community internally and externally, that have their foundations based on communal beliefs, enhance not only employees’ pride and passion for the organisation, but also engage and align their current and potential client base to the business. My parting gift to you, and many businesses could do well to remember this fantastic quote from Gerald Amos:

“The most important right we have is the right to be responsible.”

About Pixeldot

At Pixeldot, we’re working with our clients to develop authentic connections between brands, values and the communities they impact. If you want to talk to us about creating, or discovering your brand thread, or our brand guardianship services then come and book an office hours session with us for a chat.