Fenton’s Good Business Corporate Responsibility Communications

Presented By: Susan McPherson

December 2, 2010

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About Fenton

Fenton, 30 years strong, was an original founder of the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR).

Fenton, over the years, has worked with key companies such as Ben & Jerry’s, Stonyfield Farms, Patagonia, Body Shop and Seventh Generation.

Fenton supports and believes in “Good Business.”

 

Our Take

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What is Good Business Communications?

Stakeholder engagementCorporate communicationsCause marketing programsSustainability reportingContent developmentPublic-private partnerships

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CSR Communications• What is CSR Communications? Is it cause-marketing? Is it the promotion of corporate

philanthropy? Is it distributing a press release when your employees engage in a major volunteer program? Or is it the creation an annual sustainability report that showcases your firm’s environmental footprint, fair labor practices, and energy consumption, and more?

Actually, it is all and much, much more

• CSR Communications involves every key department and its practice must be ongoing with significant long-term goals and objectives. The agenda must be developed from the top down and bottom up and must continually be reviewed by internal and external stakeholders in order to be credible and reliable.

CR Communications Impacts Bottomline

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Nurtures and growsstakeholder trust

Helps attract and retain talent

Eases governmental and NGO interference

Supports and enhances the brands

Builds critical relationship capital

Softens barriers to market entry

Creates a framework for cross-brand alignment

Enhances financial valuation

Evolution of Expectations and Engagement

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DEFENSE & RESPONSE

Evolution of Expectations and Engagement

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TACTICAL OFFENSE

DEFENSE & RESPONSE

BRANDCOMMITMENT

Evolution of Expectations and Engagement

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DEFENSE & RESPONSE

TACTICAL OFFENSE

BRANDCOMMITMENT

Evolution of Expectations and Engagement

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DEFENSE & RESPONSE

TACTICAL OFFENSE

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Guiding Principles

• Working with senior management, create a list of your company’s sustainability commitments. Doing so will enable you to map your strategy going forward. These will be your guiding principles.

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Authenticity

• Strive to be authentic – do not try to be a company you are not. Be honest. You will gain much greater respect if you are candid and forthcoming.

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Employee Engagement

• Solicit support and involvement from all internal departments and consider creating an employee task-force representing many facets of the business. Employees will want to help and contribute if it’s supported and recommended from the top of the organization.

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Outside Resources

• Consider working with a reputable outside firm to help you weed through all the different processes. You will need to review environmental, labor and safety practices along with the make-up of your supply-chain. There are long-standing, well-known firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and many others including The Taiga Company

• Get certified. You’re doing so today via Centre for Sustainable Excellence (CSE)

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Determine Stakeholders

• Determine your audience. Who do you want to reach with your messages? Review and prioritize.

• Include employees, partners, customers, media, financial analysts, donors (if applicable), resellers, and shareholders.

• How will you communicate with them? Be conscious that it should be a two-way street. Consider more than news releases – think newsletters, webcasts, blogs, company meetings, contests, etc.

• In today’s world of social media, no communications plan should be “one to many,” but rather an open dialogue between all interested parties.

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Report and Measure

• Create your means for measurement and reporting. Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) you wish to track and set up a timeline so that you are consistent in your reporting.

• Create your annual Sustainability Report and strive for the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework.

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Again, Consider Outsourcing

• Consider engaging a communications firm that specializes in Corporate Responsibility Communications. There are currently many reputable agencies from which to choose.  A few that come to mind include Edelman, Fleishman Hillard, and Cone, among others.

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Fine-tune/Revamp

• Continue to fine-tune and evolve your strategy and engage employees and other stakeholders.

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Continue Learning

• Ask, poll and inquire – Engage with your peers and your stakeholders as often as you can. Attend industry events such as CERES, NetImpact, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and BSR conferences.

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Connect

• Join social networks, set up CSR RSS feeds and follow #CSR and #Sustainability on Twitter.  

• Also, connect and follow key CSR thought-leaders and blog sites such as @elainecohen @fabianpattberg @realizedworth @OKL @justmeans @csrwire @3blmedia @vaultcsr and @davidcoethica and @alicekorngold and many more

• Join the multitude of sustainability groups on LinkedIn

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Caution: Greenwashing

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• When significantly more money or time has been spent advertising being green rather than spending resources on environmentally sound practices.

FTC Guidelines

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FTC's draft guidelines inform companies to NOT make "unqualified general environmental benefit claims" -- such as calling their products "green." Under current rules, those broader claims are fine as long as the businesses can provide evidence that the product is better for the environment in specific ways.

Proposed change is part of a long-pending revision to FTC's Green Guides, which would also set out the first federal ground rules for the marketing of carbon offsets and renewable energy credits.

Thank You