It’s a Shame: The Missing Link of Being Socially Responsible.

A recent blog post by Forbes CSR raised a very compelling issue, expressed in the following paragraph:

“For example, recent research involving Procter & Gamble , General Mills and Timberland revealed that many of their stakeholders had no idea of the companies’ corporate responsibility initiatives, or had a very limited understanding and didn’t find them personally relevant. Because of that, they often questioned the companies’ motivations for engaging in corporate responsibility activities.”

Obviously, it’s not enough to put a stake in the ground regarding corporate social responsibility and expect the world with embrace – or trust – your brand because of it. Yet, we found many large corporations doing just that.

CSR-powered organizations must embrace social partnerships and social media tools to authentically engage the marketplace in discussion about the value of their stance and their products for several reasons. First, you can look at this through the cold calculation of return on investment – and you should. In a prior post we cited a WSJ study showing that consumers greatly preferred brands that have CSR values. The level of preference was directly proportional to the level of ethics embraced by the consumer. Several other studies support and expand on the WSJ’s findings. Second, there’s a larger issue of not evangelizing your values for the purpose of inspiring others to embrace those values. Doing so helps improve our world and our lives, in many ways and on many levels.

At no other point in human history have there been more tools to create buzz. If your organization is authentically following CSR values, shouldn’t you be using these tools to gain greater awareness and support of the causes you stand behind? Consumers and clients alike need to easily understand your legitimacy – through your strategic partners, employees, customers, executive leadership and other stakeholder activities.

Not creating greater groundswell of interest in your CSR initiatives is a shame.  And so, because our mission is “To Be a Catalyzing Force for Corporate Social Responsibility and the Positive Impacts it Creates”, we decided to measure which companies are the most effective at garnering awareness and support for their CSR initiatives.

We’re calling it the 4goodmedia CSR Marketing Index and it will show which companies’ CSR initiatives are gaining the most traction among their target consumers – and how they did it. And, since it’s summer, we decided an obvious area of focus should be the beverage industry.  In the fall, we’ll be looking at the paper products industry.

Collecting and analyzing this information has been a massive undertaking, but worth it. In subsequent posts, we’ll share updates and early findings with you. (Right now, all we can say that there are some interesting surprises.)