CSR Makes Sense

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained increased importance in society. Famed management guru Michael Porter recently published an article on Shared Value, stating that CSR and corporate success would be integral in the future. Decision-making process in the corporate environment are now more often directly linked to values, respect for people, community and the environment. The main and expected role played by organizations is to be supportive of society; being aware of their needs and applying its efforts to “transform the world into a better place” through actions and strategy.

However some companies still don’t see CSR as a process of changing and transformation society and environment and the only purpose for these companies on its application is merely publicity and self-advertising. BP it’s one of the companies that misused the CSR’s concept. In 2002 the company spent over $200 million in PR and advertising to greenwash its brand, it even revamped its logo.  

However the company had to deal with several environmental disasters during its communication campaign. During a speech to shareholders in 2001, BP’s Chief Executive John Browne said “When we launched the brand we used the phrase Beyond Petroleum. Some people thought that meant we were giving up oil and gas. I’m sorry to disappoint our competitors. Beyond Petroleum means that what we’re giving up the old mind set – the old thinking which assumed that oil companies had to be dirty and secretive and arrogant. I don’t believe we should be any of these things.”

However according to a study published by Greenpeace in 2009 reported that BP “allocated 93 percent ($20 billion) of its total investment fund for the development and extraction of oil, gas and other fossil fuels.  In contrast, solar power was allocated just 1.39 percent and wind a paltry 2.79 percent.” There was huge backlash against BP new slogan Beyond Petroleum to the point where it was ridiculed by everyone including industry insiders.

CSR is not about managing an image over the short term it’s about building trust with society and being seen to authentically give back to it. Porter has cited many examples where this is already happening for example with the Toyota Prius vehicle or Whole Foods the organic and fair trade groceries. How can a company like BP or other Oil and Gas companies or resource extraction companies do this? I think Porter idea of Shared Value is really propagating that everyone benefit from the profiting of companies. In the extraction business jobs are the best way to give back to society many of the societies that have extraction industries, such as Angola, Nigeria, Brazil, Iran etc… jobs are needed.

Companies should not just invest in schools and hospitals as a part of their CSR they should invest in the full value chain, provide opportunities for families to raise children all the way from childhood to adulthood to get good education and jobs. Many of these resource extraction companies are ready to make long term investments in their business, large oil and gas fields and mine are economic 15 to 30 year so long term CSR investments should fit that model.   CSR is a long term process and organizations that don’t directly and properly make efforts and create strategies to help transform society will lose credibility and big opportunities to engage their stakeholders. I keep hearing that access opportunities for resource companies are harder to come by so it’s even more important that they embrace Porter Shared Value concept and CSR.

Political Communication. It's all about strategy.

More and more we discuss new paradigms in political communication and its impact on society, particularly during public office elections. President Obama’s journey from near obscurity to the President of the United States in 2008 was an example where communication strategy played a huge role. His achievement, primarily a result of the Internet, and more specifically social networking vehicles, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, how important a tool it was in the arsenal of PR professionals. PR practitioners and communication specialists where granted a new found importance with this coup.

As always in the PR environment, it’s all about strategy and positioning.  Social media tools are definitely changing the dynamics of political communication and that’s only the beginning. The U.S. Presidential election gave us a good demonstration of what we can expect in future election campaigns. Available social media tools have been demonstrated effective and have proven to have a powerful impact in American society. The 2008 elections have proven an important case study for and a milestone in political campaign strategies. 

However it’s always important to take into consideration our audience. The group of people we aim to reach because it is a basis for the strategy we chose. The audience’s behaviour will define the campaign’s strategy. So what’s the impact of a political campaign based on social media tools if the majority of the population don’t even have access to the web? I’m talking about underdeveloped countries where most of the population do not have any access to the internet.

 In addition we also need to understand our audience and their main perspectives. For example making a comparison between North and South American online users’ behaviour we will notice North Americans use the web most for gathering information while South Americans seek entertainment on the web. So the positive and decisive impact that social media had on Obama’s campaign in U.S. probably wouldn’t have had the same impact in public office elections in South America countries. Therefore knowing the behaviour and expectations of the audience will help achieve successful results and influence the impact and final results of political campaigns based on social media tools.

Be aware of the big advantages and impact that social media tools can bring into political communication. Social media brings changes the dynamics and adds a new perspectives and innovative ways of dialogue and feedback. However social media platforms should be used as a strategic channel, and not just used because of its popularity. Knowing the audience and applying strategic communications are the best and most effective way to achieve success. 

Social Media Campaign

As a requirement to the PR and New Media class I had to come up with a Social Media Viral Campaign. My client was British Airways and the campaign I called "Learn to Fly". The target audience is people afraid of flying, problem more common than the people think. I've decided, among other actions, to make a viral video and uploaded it on YouTube. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoying doing! :) 

The illusion of control in the web

The changes and advantages that internet brought into our lives is undeniable. With the internet we have some facilities and tools that are now so embedded in our daily lives that we couldn’t imagine our lives without them. I always question how we managed to survive without them for so long. Today we have at our disposal numerous channels of information and services, and social platforms that enable us to make easier interaction with each other and everything with a low cost, right? No, the costs are high, but they aren’t totally transparent. The costs are high and the challenge is that we can’t estimate an accurate value for it. How much would you estimate the worth of your personal information? Would you put a price on it?

Well, we actually “sell” this information in a daily basis through the web platforms and believe it or not, we do it all for free! During an interview in 2010 2010 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, questioned about the privacy of users in the internet said the people are getting more open and comfortable with sharing their own information on the web. A statement I disagree with. I am not sure it’s a question of comfort but I think it’s a lack of consumer understanding.  It seems that most users aren’t completely aware that their personal information no longer remains private.

Companies are selling this information to advertising agencies and services companies that use it mainly for marketing approaches. For instance AOL in 2006 published a database with observations of browsing behaviour of 658,000 members over a three month period. The information was so detailed and extensive that a couple of journalists from New York Times where able to derive the name of “4417749” of the users published in the AOL document. 

In an interview with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt  he affirmed that "privacy is incredibly important. It's very important that Google and everyone else respect people's privacy. People have a right to privacy; it's natural; it's normal. It's the right way to do things”. Is it or isn’t?! If it is why are these companies profiteering from understanding, controlling, managing and selling vast amounts of user’s data collect on the web? I believe it’s time companies and users define their roles with transparency with respect to their virtual activities. Companies must stop with the dishonest communications about privacy and users must to stop pretending they actually believe it and take responsibility for their personal information. 

The ethical dilemmas in social marketing

When we discuss social marketing we must take into consideration differences between traditional and social marketing. Social Marketing is the application of specific tools in order to achieve social changes. Different to marketing which focuses on selling products and services, social marketing sells ideas and behaviour to promote and influence the audience to social change. It was first started being used for health issues but rapidly expanded to education, energy, philanthropy, environment, and corporate social responsibility.

In a society that increasingly prioritizes social issues, organizations that want to be competitive need to understand this change to engage publics in an effective manner. The communication between organization and publics should be based in cultural context; organizations must apply effort to understand the society it wants to reach.  It’s important to have specific dialogue which would be appealing and impactful to society, helping improve the relationship between organization and publics and building the companies social reputation.

Influencing an audience to change their behaviour, also called intelligent influence, has its challenges. Behavioural changes based on voluntary actions rather than legal, economic or coercive forms of influence are difficult to achieve because you require the audiences accept. Society needs to believe the efforts applied for the change will be beneficial in a long term. The process of change in society occurs when:

-          Accept a new behaviour,

-          Reject a potential behaviour,

-          Modify a current behaviour,

-          Abandon an old behaviour.

The main problem is that sometimes organizations slightly distort facts with the purpose of having greater impact and increasing persuasion in society. These methods of persuasion are usually “forgiven” since they are being used for a noble cause. For instance campaigns aimed the reduction of energy consumption. Usually these campaigns are directed to the consumer, making them believe that their individual’s efforts can actually make a difference, when in the reality they cannot! 

Furthermore we face ethical dilemmas dealing with services and products that are controversial and not well understood.  For instance creating a blood donation campaign in the era of AIDS could be challenging in the sense other values ​​and beliefs must be demystified for to achieve an effective campaign.

Organizations and agencies working with social marketing should be aware and constantly self-critical of their role in society and what they want to achieve, their purposes. The balance between ethics and effectiveness, being honest and at the same time powerful, is the important boundary that should be taken into consideration in any social marketing campaigns.