CSR: Be responsible without bragging

Today even more voices have been raised and loudly demand from companies to pay greater attention to CSR and to behave as good corporate citizens. Corporate social responsibility is about sustainability and corporate integrity and for that reason it should be a core component of the corporate strategy. Gaining people’s trust protects corporate reputation and trusted companies are more likely to survive a potential crisis. However CSR shouldn’t be used as a public relations or marketing tool, because in that case it might backfire. Quite a few companies have been accused of ‘green-washing’ after promoting their CSR activities to enhance and exaggerate their ethical virtues. If companies want CSR to be effective in the long-term, then they shouldn’t brag about being decent.

Some might wonder then what is the point of being a good corporate citizen if no one knows about it? PR practitioners are at this point the key to help companies communicate the changes in an organisation’s policies concerning ethical issues that surround the business, in an effective way. Making people aware of a company’s CSR policies and implemented activities is necessary and completely acceptable; however it should be done without exaggerations and bragging, otherwise being responsible will be critisised and perceived as being driven by self-serving motives. It is true that CSR activities most of the times take time to show actual results, but letting these actions talk for themselves can be more appealing to peoples’ minds. The public will think positively about you and they will be the unbiased messengers of your business. Besides ‘word of mouth’ publicity is even more valuable in these situations.

Political Branding

Branding in politics is not a completely new phenomenon; by contrast in its wider sense branding has been present for a long time in this field. Some branding techniques such as slogans and visuals played an important role already in the past in establishing strong branded identities for politicians and their political parties. More recently some other tools like celebrity endorsement, merchandising and internet were used to contribute to this kind of  brand building.

In the last elections in the US, in 2008, Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign changed the landscape concerning the use of internet in politics as well as the fund raising. The public’s support to the ‘Obama’ brand was not translated only in votes but also in dollars. In total, $650m of funds were raised to cover the expenses of his campaign, which is considered to have been the most successful political campaign in recent times. Obama relied not only on big donations but also on thousands of small contributions by people that were engaged to this purpose primarily through social media. Obama just as many big brands do nowadays embraced new technology. He was present in social media and engaged a lot of people there especially young Americans. In depth research, constant monitoring and feedback evaluation were useful in order to give the target audience back what they desired and needed, meaning hope and a vision towards change. Losing a bit of control was not a big issue because his messages were strong and clearly articulated and eventually were spread by his online supporters quite effectively. He was consistent and repeated those messages in every occasion online and offline. He was there to defend what was good about his ‘product’. Obviously media training was also part of his campaign preparation. Each time he was speaking in public he looked confident and relaxed, something that added to his image a much more trustworthy aspect than that of his opponents.

Obama did not just happen to be the right person in the right place. What helped him stand out was the effective use of political communications and branding techniques. However when the ‘product’-in that case the candidate-promoted has quite a few strong points, then success is more likely to come.