Citizen Brand

More on 100 Best Corporate Citizens

Andrea has a great follow up to my recent post on Business Ethics magazine's Top 100 Best Corporate Citizens.

One thing she talks about is the need for corporate social responsibility courses to become standard operating procedure in business schools at the university level.  What about it college and university presidents and business school deans?  Who wants to be a real leader?

For that matter, why don't journalism schools offer the same thing as part of a truly comprehensive marketing communications education.  This is the wave of the future.  Which university will be the one to recognize it and take action?

100 Best Corporate Citizens

It may not yet carry the weight of the Fortune 500, but it should.  Business Ethics magazine just released its seventh edition of its list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens.  The magazine declares this list a celebration of "companies that excel at serving a variety of stakeholders well."

It simply is not a matter of how well public companies serve their stockholders today, but whether or not they provide good jobs for employees; contribute to a cleaner environment; relate well to their communities; have good governance practices; and, produce reliable products for their customers.  All that in addition to being able to provide a return on their shareholders' investments.

The companies that live on the list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens are great examples of what we mean by Citizen Brands.  This is the list we all should be striving to be on in the future.  These are the companies that understand the new realities of being truly engaged with their stakeholders and not simply doing business as usual.

Two questions to consider.  Could your company or client make this list today?  What would have to happen to make your company or client eligible to be one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens?

Non profit IPO

What if you could invest in a non profit like you can a business?  Fast Company says it is already being done.

It only makes sense when you think about it.  Non profits beat their heads against the wall courting donors year around and every so often conduct intricate, expensive and time consuming capital campaigns.  On the other hand, donors are always looking to figure out what the return will be on their donation.

A non profit IPO would allow non profits and donors to deal with each other as business partners.  The amounts invested will likely be larger than the traditional donation and the non profit can use the money to grow the entire organization, and not be tied to using it only for specific programs. 

Non profits spend too much time trying to line up one donor at a time to fund one program at a time.  Under this IPO scenario, the non profit can invest more time in seeing their mission accomplished.  That is the way it should be.

Mowing the lawn

Today's New York Times points us to a company that has a great opportunity to become a true Citizen Brand.  Briggs & Stratton, one of America's oldest brands and the longtime leader in the manufacturing of small engines, is fighting attempts to reduce engine emissions.  And if you think a lawn mower engine is not a problem, consider this fact from the Times article:

Gallon for gallon — or, given the size of lawnmower tanks, quart for quart — the 2006 lawn mower engines contribute 93 times more smog-forming emissions than 2006 cars, according to the California Air Resources Board.

The issue started in California where you might have heard that smog can be a problem.  The EPA is now moving toward a national limit on small engine emissions.  So this train looks like it is on the track.

So how can Briggs & Stratton become a model Citizen Brand?  The company says if they have to conform to these new emission standards that they will have to move jobs overseas.  That has become a tired and worn out excuse in my opinion.  Briggs & Stratton could in one move, become the new model for American companies that want to do what is right on all fronts:  improve the environment and keep jobs in America.

So what do you say Briggs & Stratton?  Some of your smaller competitors are finding ways to produce fewer emissions.  You are the category leader.  Show us your stuff.

Or people might start buying this product.

Think time

Here is a great piece at the end of what has been a crazy and action packed week on many levels for myself and for many of my colleagues at Barkley Evergreen. 

Leave it to Fast Company to remind us that what makes great companies great are its people taking the time to think.  If you don't have time to read the whole article right now, let me share just a bit with you:

What, as individuals, we need to do is carve out our own thinking time and learn to protect it. We need to do so on the understanding that this is not not working – it is the foundation of work itself. When I see spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations flickering on planes, I feel a twinge of regret. I want to say: Stop it! Your boss isn’t watching. No one will walk in. The phone won’t ring. You have the luxury of uninterrupted time. Seize it. Cherish it. Catch up on the one task that never figures on your Action List. Sit back. Shut your eyes. And think. You won’t regret it.

Pardon me while I sit back and close my eyes.

Chevy smart or not?

I can't decide if Chevrolet is the smartest company in the world right now or the most naive?

McLir explains.

If you decide to make your own commercial, please let me know.  I want to see it.

A good story

This parable is from a blog of a very good friend of mine.  So true.

Pick Strategy or Style?

The problem with business trends is that when one gets hot, everyone moves toward it like moths to a light.  How long does it take us to learn that a good recipe for success requires lots of ingredients.  If you put too much of one item in, the short term might look fantastic but over time, the imbalance will cause failure.

Fast Company has a great piece about CEO's and the importance of being able to offer both strategy and a good management style to lead their companies to success.  Consider this excerpt:

"Boards are increasingly looking for CEOs who can demonstrate superb people skills in dealing with employees or other stakeholders while delivering consistent results. "I think leadership is more important than strategy, and I say that as a former McKinsey guy," says James Citrin, senior director at executive search firm Spencer Stuart, who has placed such high-profile CEOs as Terry Semel at Yahoo and Ed Zander at Motorola. "Strategy is important, but the same strategy executed by two different leaders will have dramatically different results."

I couldn't agree more.  Folks at our company hear me say it all the time.  Success in our business has two key ingredients:  ideas and relationships.  A great idea poorly communicated and executed is no longer a great idea.  Likewise, a mediocre idea communicated and executed perfectly can only yield mediocre results.

What do you think? 

Get in the Game

“I can’t believe there are companies out there that are not doing cause,” a former client said in a an article last fall in PRWeek.  She is right.  Why would a company choose not to be involved in cause branding?  It’s puzzling.

On the surface, it seems illogical that a company would choose not to be involved in giving back to society.  After all, it is the people who make up that society that buy a company’s products and services thus allowing it to be in business and make a profit.  It is also the people who make up that society that have various needs that cannot all be met by the public sector and would benefit by private sector help.  Some of the people in society work for that company and might feel better about a place of employment that had a cause it actively supported.

And yet so many companies stay on the sidelines.  Why?

Some choose to sit out because their executives don’t believe cause branding supports their business objectives.  Some public companies sit out because they perceive their shareholders will not think it a wise investment.  Still others are afraid that if they focus on a single cause, they risk offending all the other causes they don’t support.  Or it is a combination of all three.

Success will come down to two things:  education and perseverance.  While to me, none of the reasons listed above is good enough for a company to stay on the sidelines, I have to respect the fact that some company executives believe they are right in not engaging in cause branding programs.  Instead of just shaking our heads in disbelief, we have to keep up the fight.  There are so many great cause programs that are working and there is a growing body of data that shows that cause is working.  It is our job to make sure the reluctant executives see the examples around them and understand the mounting evidence that cause branding will make their business better.

It’s only a matter of time before companies that are not yet involved in cause branding will realize that it is getting lonely on the sidelines.

More loss of control

Here's a nice followup to my last post about how losing control of your marketing is the key to the kingdom.  Thanks to Angelo at Hoi Polloi for his take on the topic.

The fact is there is no such thing as a consumer anymore and the sooner we realize it the better off we all will be.  We are engagers, not consumers.  We don't just want to consume stuff anymore.  We want to find ways we can engage with companies, products, services, causes, charities, schools, athletic teams and so on and so forth.  If you accept the concept of engagers over consumers, then the only way to really market and communicate today is to be willing to let go.  The conversation is going to go on with or without you.  The decision to engage or not engage is not up to the marketer anymore.

What is up to us is to make sure we are participating in the conversation.  We just aren't leading it anymore.  And that's okay.