CSR And Sponsorships Should Be Source Of Innovation
Posted: 4/7/2010 2:16:16 PM by
Lesa Ukman | with 0 comments
(This blog post originally appeared as an opinion column in IEG Sponsorship Report on March 2, 2010)
Corporate Social Responsibility used to be about managing a few sensitive areas that had the potential to generate positive or negative headlines. But, as companies recognize the direct link between social justice and increased shareholder value, they are abandoning this mandated model and instead embedding sustainability and ethical values into customer loyalty-building, cost reduction, new product creation, sourcing and HR.
IEG’s recent conference, Unbound, homed in on the breaking down of barriers—between activists and business, sponsors and rightsholders, philanthropy and marketing—and the transition from campaigns to movements that is happening in sponsorship, as well as in CSR.
By making the business case—and with commitment from the top and alignment throughout the ranks—companies are moving from ad hoc and short-term initiatives to creating financial value with umbrella platforms.
British retailer Marks & Spencer epitomizes this new approach. Having identified the need to address the social and environmental issues on which it had an impact, including its supply chains (thousands of factories and farms), its own operations (hundreds of stores and trucks) and the millions of products it sells, M&S announced 100 commitments related to those issues in ’07.
Three years on, seven lessons have emerged.
Lesson 1: Brand it. M&S created a new asset, a powerful change brand around its new agenda: Plan A—because “there is no Plan B when it comes to saving the planet.”
Plan A is a broad enough umbrella to incorporate activities as disparate as removing trans fats from the food it sells to reducing its carbon footprint and only selling fair-trade coffee and tea.
Lesson 2: Make commitment unconditional. As a moniker, Plan A was an improvement on “M&S' Sustainability Plan,” but it was not enough to connect with the 90 percent of its shoppers who are not green-led consumers.
To engage these customers, M&S recently added a cutline for Plan A activities: “Doing the right thing.” The company’s support of 7,500 local nonprofits such as schools and hospitals now falls under Plan A.
Lesson 3: Engage consumers by inviting participation. Companies get more traction when consumers are engaged in change and not just told about it. Research shows that people want business to take the big actions, but want the opportunity to make some easy contributions themselves.
M&S recently launched Your Green Idea, which invites shoppers to submit ideas for environmental change and offers a £100,000 prize for the winner.
The tools of the social Web make participation between brands and their consumers possible. A visible example on this side of the pond is PepsiCo Americas Beverage’s Pepsi Refresh Project, which invites consumers to share their ideas of how to make the world better at RefreshEverything.com. Anyone can submit an idea; the site takes 1,000 per month. And the public decides who wins. Pepsi awards up to $1.3 million per month to the winning ideas.
Lesson 4: Reward participation. Plan A harnesses Marks & Spencer’s partnership with Oxfam to reward customers and raise additional funds for the nonprofit.
Customers taking their old M&S clothes to Oxfam receive a £5 M&S voucher. Oxfam has raised more than £1 million through this scheme.
Lesson 5: Use partnerships and values as a springboard for new products and services. In February, M&S launched a home energy service division. It includes bespoke energy advice, renewable energy solutions such as solar panels and heat pumps, and energy-efficient heating solutions.
Again, rather than ghettoizing its partnerships in marketing, M&S is using them as a source of innovation. For its new energy offering, M&S signed a five-year £200 million eco-plan with WWF, which includes making its U.K. and Republic of Ireland operations carbon neutral by ’12. M&S is going outside the sponsorship silo within WWF and tapping into its processes and expertise to become carbon neutral and offer solutions like the WWF Footprint Calculator to customers and staff.
Lesson 6: Make it tangible. To help people connect the dots between individual action and collective impacts, M&S is putting numbers around behavior. For example, it is hoping to increase the number of garments its customers recycle with Oxfam each year from two million to 20 million and shows the resulting landfill savings that accrues.
General Mills connects the dots with its Box Tops for Education program. In addition to participation and rewarding loyalty, the impact—U.S. schools redeemed a record $50.6 million in the ’08-‘09 year—is a motivator, according to company research.
Lesson 7: Lead. M&S is ahead of most of its consumers in its commitment to sustainability.
For example, only 10 percent of its shoppers put environmental practices at the top of their agenda, yet M&S took an unpopular route in ’08 when it began charging food customers 5p per grocery bag. Customers quickly bought in—easy to participate—and 387 million fewer plastic bags wound up in landfills.
M&S executives say Plan A was “cost neutral” within two years.
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Filed under: international, nonprofit, retail, strategic philanthropy, trends, green