SOCIAL BRANDING
SOCIAL BRANDING
Tuesday, 13 July 2010 12:47
Brandscape Africa Foundation just held its 16th Brand forum. The discussions were engaging and insightful and centred on
making the best of social branding. Envisage a social problem in a community such as drought, poverty, illiteracy name them.Now, imagine a strategy that shifts the effects of these circumstances by reversing the social problem.
Imagine a culture emerging that sustains the change. Imagine the connection the organization is likely to make with the community if it is done right.
This is possible with social branding and this has been the perceived intention of many organisations in Africa investing in social causes under corporate social responsibility (CSR) platforms. CSR is a model that enables companies integrate social concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis. This has been necessitated by the increasing awareness of the fact that responsible behaviour leads to brand and image appreciation over competition which in most cases translates into sustained business success.
Social branding offers an opportunity for brand building. It blends theories and strategies from psychology, sociology, and commercial marketing to create a powerful approach to social change. In its execution, it translates the intuition-based world of commercial marketing and branding into a clear, measurable, and scientific process that changes perception.
Given consumers are the deciders of brands they purchase, a brand affiliation with social causes provides a positive and measurable brand influence and preference. CSR plays a significant part in building this social goodwill because it builds trust and credibility.
How are organizations responding to the changing phenomena towards social branding? Ideally there has been a rise in different approaches to organization’s engagements with society that given rise to corporate social responsibility and corporate social investment (CSI). It is important for brand custodians to be aware of what works for there organization before committing brands and resources to the causes.
Corporate Social Responsibility vs Corporate Social Investment
From the discussions it emerged that corporate social responsibility focuses on how the organization contributes to building human, social and natural capital through its core business activities, primarily how it manages its employees, its production processes, marketing activities, suppliers, communities, its relationship with policy makers among other concern oriented ways.
On the flipside as CSR is concerned with how an organization makes its money on a back drop of a social brand, CSI is about how it spends some of its money. Mike Omuodo of Hill and Knowlton in his contribution said CSI is primarily about an organization’s philanthropic activities and has a very small component of CSR. Unfortunately, most organizations in Kenya equate CSI with CSR, which can be misleading for an organization’s social involvement.
A case in point is an organization could be involved in selling furniture and is involved in a CSI programme aimed at looking after diabetic patients or funding endangered animal species conservation initiatives, while most of its furniture is made by underpaid children in factories using and timber unsustainably.
Oscar Kimani added at incite most organizations in Africa haven’t focused on CSI issues, but rather on building corporate resilience to bad publicity in event of a crisis. There are some valuable opportunities for companies in ensuring that CSI initiatives are more strategic and contribute meaningfully to sustainable development. But they find it difficult to do this because companies are not prepared to engage in an honest and strategic assessment of its overall contribution to sustainable development.
Is Corporate Social Responsibility the new Public Relations frontier?
The short answer is public relations (PR) can be both a blessing and a curse to CSR. It is a matter of which comes first and what the intention is. Done properly and with a company that embraces the strategic and integrated nature of CSR, PR is a vehicle of sharing with the world the progress they are making, or what the world may not know about them.
Done improperly, for example when CSR is seen by the company as a marketing problem, the latest market fad, or a PR fix – PR is tantamount to green washing the sins of a company. True CSR guides the company away from making the sins or mitigating them in the first place.
CSR should be an integrated, sustainable, and systematic approach to business. It is a core component to the strategies and structure of companies. CSR is about being good corporate citizens to all stockholders, employees, customers, community, supply chain, community and environment.
While more and more corporations have embraced the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a worthwhile endeavour when doing business, focus should be moved to creating shared value model that will seek to elevate the concept of CSR from that of doing good to society to that of doing good for both business and society.
Chris Karanja, Public Relations Manager at Kenya Airways was of the opinion that the traditional justifications for and approaches to CSR are no longer adequate in the 21st century, such that CSR must be re-thought and advanced if it is to truly benefit both business and the society at large. This will go a long way in justifying value for business and the brands ultimately.
Oscar Kimani of Transtech echoed Chris’s sentiments by saying the advancement of CSR into a business support function like finance and human resource will give it a moral obligation making it charged with the responsibility of ensuring a company does the right thing. This is being exhibited in what we are currently seeing in the creation of foundations though there mandate is not as defined.
In the spirit of creating shared value, Mike Omuodo cited Nestlé as an example of a company that has adopted creating shared value principles. Nestle has established a continuing collaboration with small farmers which has become central to its business strategy, as a positive example.
This is by making small farmers an integral part of the way it does business by entering into a symbiotic relationship with them— providing farmers with training, collection points of their milk, and technology know-how, and thus enabling them to improve their yield and assure Nestlé of a stable supply of high-quality commodities. At the end of the day Nestlé, the small farmers, and their community all get value from the partnership.
A number of companies now engage in some form of Corporate Social Responsibility, with a strategic approach involving a combination of corporate giving, philanthropic sponsorships and cause related marketing.
At the close of the forum, it was evident organizations and brand custodians in Africa are yet to discover the opportunities in social branding and how to make it work for their brands.
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