Best practices in communicating corporate responsibility activities.

By Mindy Gomes Casseres

In July 2006, the Social Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN) announced that more than 75 percent of the S&P 100 had special sections on their websites dedicated to corporate responsibility (CR) reporting, a 34 percent increase from 2005. While reporting has become commonplace, CR information is not reaching those who have the greatest potential for furthering a company’s CR agenda through sales, operations and financial growth—customers, employees and investors. Many companies look to their reports as the primary vehicle for CR communications, but don’t realize that these vehicles are often inaccessible to key audiences due to their length and complexity. To better engage stakeholders, companies should make CR reporting part of an integrated CR communications strategy.

The following examples showcase some innovative methods companies have utilized to communicate with key audiences:

• Driving Responsible Purchasing by Consumers: In 2006, Marks & Spencer, the British retailer also known as M&S, announced its “Look Behind the Label” campaign designed to share with consumers the ethical purchasing stories behind some of its products, such as Fair Trade coffee, non-genetically modified foods, natural cleaning products and animal cruelty-free fabrics. The campaign was prompted by a survey finding that customers in the United Kingdom wanted to know that the products they buy are made fairly and humanely. The initiative included a large-scale advertising and in-store campaign featuring CR commitments behind different product lines. In 2006, a Yougov Brand Index Poll reported an 8 percent increase in the company’s overall reputation as well as the products being viewed as “more fashionable.”

For the past few years, Starbucks has supplemented its CR report with a tri-fold summary brochure available in store kiosks. In 2005, Starbucks also sent veteran former journalists to almost a dozen coffee farms around the world to document the impact of the company’s CR practices. Television stories and magazine pieces were produced for consumers and employees, providing an informal, user-friendly way to experience this material.

• Recruiting Employees: By now, everyone is familiar with GE’s ecomagination commercials and print ads, but few know about GE’s efforts to leverage ecomagination as a recruiting tool for eco-oriented college grads. In 2006, GE announced the mtvU GE ecomagination Challenge, which promised a $25,000 grant and an Earth Day Concert to the team that submitted the most innovative proposal for “greening” its college campus. The challenge received more than 100 applications from local schools, increasing environmental awareness on campuses as well as building the GE brand as a responsible and hip employer with its future talent pool.
• Making the Business Case to Investors: It is widely believed that CR makes business sense by managing risk, improving employee morale and retention, positively impacting a company’s “license to operate” and reinforcing brand loyalty. A number of companies, such as Wal-Mart, are also looking to CR innovation as a way to directly touch the bottom line, with environmental initiatives such as more eff­­icient trucking fleets and high-efficiency lighting systems. One way to win attention for CR efforts is to identify and engage with socially responsible investing researchers that rank companies based on a variety of CR activities. Organizations such as KLD Research & Analytics, SAM Research (Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes), the Calvert Social Index, SiRi Company and Domini Social Investments provide such rankings for institutional or individual investors. While such groups often ask detailed questions, they can be important “secondary communicators” for a company’s CR actions.

As part of the process of supplementing a CR report with a broader communications strategy, here are some recommended steps:

1. Map and prioritize stakeholder audiences
The first step in expanding your CR communications is to prioritize your audiences and your objectives for reaching out to each of them. As every company faces resource constraints, this prioritization allows you to focus limited dollars on those objectives with the highest potential return. One objective for reaching out to activists may be to stem negative campaigns. For customers, it may be differentiating your brand through CR-
oriented products to drive sales.

2. Engage with stakeholders
In life, being a good listener helps make anyone a better communicator, and the same is true with communicating CR. Through meetings, surveys, e-mail and telephone feedback, find out what your stakeholders are thinking about your company’s CR activities. Build in this dialogue as an ongoing part of your communications strategy.

3. Develop a CR message guide
Different stakeholders have different degrees of CR knowledge and needs. For example, socially responsible investors will most likely have a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of human rights monitoring or climate change than the average consumer. Information provided to activists will need to be more detailed, while employee communications may be more educational. By developing a comprehensive guide with key messages tailored for each stakeholder group, companies are able to deliver consistent messages that resonate with each audience. The guide is a living document—its content should be influenced by stakeholder engagement feedback. In addition to key messages, it should include proof points that demonstrate how your company is addressing major stakeholder issues.

4. Identify communications vehicles
Based upon your determined objectives, identify how you can leverage communications vehicles to reach target audiences (see table). In most cases, existing vehicles may be the most appropriate way to communicate your CR commitments as stakeholders are already expecting to hear from you through those channels. At the same time, to get your messages to really break through, you may want to brainstorm innovative new ways to get your audience’s attention.

5. Execute
When executing your CR strategy, communicate with multiple audiences at the same time to ensure an integrated approach. During execution, keep in close contact with the operations side of your company to make sure your company is “walking the talk,” and you are apprised of any issues that arise, so you can respond accordingly. Use feedback from your efforts and from stakeholder engagement to evolve messaging and to look for new opportunities.
A CR report is a good “stake in the ground” around which a company can build its measurable CR efforts and communications. But by extending communications and stakeholder engagement beyond traditional CR reporting, companies are able to connect more effectively with audiences to drive employee morale, customer preference and additional investor confidence.

Mindy Gomes Casseres is a Director at communications agency Cone (www.coneinc.com).