Too often, communications and sustainability professionals make sustainability jargon the centrepiece of their communications efforts. But in the end, who understands and relates to such language apart from communications and sustainability professionals themselves?

Take the ‘sustainability’ word alone: highly complex and generic buzzword that is seen everywhere but never understood.

We all need to be better at borrowing the language of our audiences themselves to skillfully articulate the “so-what” and “what’s in it for me” of our sustainability strategies and visions. For examples, when communicating with employees, we need to connect with their language, context, and priorities, often without ever using the S-word. If the job of our engineers and technicians is all about safety, frame ‘sustainability’ as greater safety. Greater safety for employees. But also for the environment and the communities.To get to that point, the key is to understand the audience: which values does employees relate to? what is expected from them in their day-to-day role? How is their behavior rewarded in return? How to they define the S-word? what does it mean to them?

I am so happy anytime I see a piece of communications collaterals that does not use the S-word. In the end, isn’t this the ultimate sign of a successful integration into the business? ….but then … how will I call my blog?

I love data and surveys! This one is a must read for anyone looking at corporate reputation and sustainability communications issues as it gauges the perceptions and/or expectations of the most influential thought leaders in the sustainability arena – NGOs, corporate peers, government representatives or academics.

This year, the findings are really interesting and worth sharing (click on the pictures to enlarge them):

• Confidence in NGOs to advance the sustainability agenda continues to erode and falls below the 50% line, while confidence in social entrepreneurs keeps increasing and is now reaching 57%. Is this trend due to a perception that innovative business models put forward by social entrepreneurs are more effective in creating positive change than NGO activism or NGO/corporate partnerships? Definitely something to keep an eye on…, while confidence in government is at an all time low. 

• Making long-term sustainability commitments, taking on bold goals and communicating about it through well-defined and branded engagement platforms is key to drive perceptions of leadership….and thus corporate reputation. The spike in Unilever’s perceived leadership since the launch of its Sustainable Living Plan is a clear exemple of this.

• Commitment to sustainability values is considered as the most important factor in determining leadership. It confirms again that sustainability has to be core to what a company stands for and needs to be deeply embedded into a company’s DNA and internal culture first and foremost. Deploying a sustainability strategy into the core business model and across the supply chain can only come after solid foundations have been established internally, starting from the top.

For the second year in a row, I am very excited to be media partner of Communitelligence’s Communicating Sustainability conference, which will be held on September 22 and 23 in Santa Clara, California.

Very excited, why?

• Because it touches on a critical aspect of (genuine) corporate sustainability: bringing it at the core of what businesses stand for, at the core of their culture, mission and values….their DNA!
• Because it brings together a global audience of experts and professionals from a wide range of organizations – businesses, non-profits, media, etc. – to discuss latest trends of sustainability communications
• Because it is also accessible to people like me who do not live in the US: the second day of the conference will be a virtual conference!

For more information, please check Communitelligence’s website here. Enjoy!

The results of the study showed that, across every sector (i.e. 10 of the largest consumer-facing sectors in North America), a brand’s actual sustainability record does not correlate with consumers’ perceptions and awareness. This means that, down the road, all of a company’s investments in sustainability may not pay off in terms consumer behavior or even brand equity/corporate reputation, which is directly undermining the ROI of sustainability itself.

This disconnect, or perceptions gap, often results from the brand’s failure to “talk to walk” in a credible and meaningful way. Therefore, Change developed what it calls the 5C’s of sustainability branding – a series of principles to follow when creating sustainability branding strategies:

• Consumer Facing: Looking at what the consumer is looking at.
• Competitive: To compete, brands must innovate.
• Core: Tying sustainability to a brand’s core business
• Conversational: Leveraging two-way conversations, rather than one-way announcements
• Credible: Sequence and objective credibility are key to sustainable brand success.

I would also add a sixth “C”: CONSISTENCY.

Consistency means a brand, a company undertakes sustainability initiatives that match the reality of its business and the image it conveys. This is critical for building trust, and durably affecting consumer’s perceptions and awareness. And ultimately consumer behavior. How?

• First, sustainability has to be more than just an one-off campaign. Sustainability must be incorporated into the brand’s DNA. It must reflect the core values of the brand and contribute to delivering the brand promise over the long-term. This means that a brand cannot change its sustainability focus or ‘cause’ too often, or engage in too many non-related areas. Every brand effort has to be mutually supportive in order to achieve the broader sustainability brand promise.

• Second, consistency is important in the sense that messages must resonate with the brand’s existing voice in the market place. More importantly, sustainability branding must be communicated at every possible customer touchpoint in a consistent way. The 2009 edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer indeed reported that people need to hear a message 3-5 times, from different channels or voices, in order to believe in it.

• Finally, as brand and corporate reputation are increasingly converging, with consumers not only looking at a product’s sustainability impact but also the overall environmental and social performance of the operating companies behind the brands (see the GoodGuide for instance), sustainability branding needs to be aligned with corporate communications.  Such communications efforts have to be mutually reinforcing, not only with consumers, but also with a broader range of stakeholders such as employees, the media, etc.

And you, what do you think? Do you see any seventh ‘C’?

This is the question Nathan Schock of the Greenway Communiqué tried to answer in an article published in the first PRSA Tactics issue of 2010: Communicate your environmental achievements in the New Year, by reaching out to the most prominent sustainability commentators, journalists and bloggers in the US.

All these interesting inputs and answers revolve around five key principles that I attempt to summarize below:

• Be transparent. This is THE golden in sustainability communications. Greenwashing has resulted in increased skepticism and green fatigue. So, be honest. “Tell us the progress, but tell us the trade-offs, too. The cliché about this being a journey, not a destination, is true here,” says Martin LaMonica, senior writer at CNET News and CBS Interactive, blogger at Green Tech. This will help make your story human…and much more credible.

• Think about the audience. “It’s a truism, but you have to craft your pitch to the journalist and his or her publication,” explains Todd Woody, contributing editor at Fortune and blogger at Green Wombat. Understand what matters to your audience, what are the top of mind issues, what the audience wants to know and read about. This often means focusing less on green features and more on benefits such as cost savings from energy efficiency, etc. depending on what means the most to your target audience, be it customer or investor. Marc Gunter, contributing editor at Fortune and blogger at Marc Gunther adds, “I’m looking for stories and blog posts that will not only attract readers but leave them feeling that they learned something new, different or provocative, maybe even something they would pass along to a colleague or friend.”

• Prove what you say with data but still keep it clear. Facts and figures are indispensible key proof points. But don’t overwhelme the audience with it. As William Brent, senior vice president at Weber Shandwick, blogger at The Search for Cleantech advises, stay specific (don’t speak in often meaningless ‘green’ generalities) while making sure you speak in simple terms (frame your story in terms that people understand).

• Provide a bigger picture as well. It is critical to put your client’s story into context, i.e. the bigger sustainability issues around it, how this fits into your client’s overall business strategy and sustainability goals, etc. “Too many PR folks spew facts without context, leaving their audience with more questions than answers and setting themselves up for charges of greenwash, or worse,” says Joel Makower, blogger at Two Steps Forward.

• Don’t “pitch” bloggers—participate! As traditional media models are struggling with fewer reporters covering sustainability and green stories (and not only) and readers are getting most of their news via online channels, it is critical to determine how social media can best meet your needs. However, be reminded about the specificities of blogger outreach! Build relationships with individuals and communicate with one-on-one, personal messages. As Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, founder and editor of Sustainablog insists, “Don’t play the numbers game with green bloggers — blasting out press releases just doesn’t work very well in this space. Find a few you’d really like to connect with, and then do just that: try to build a relationship. Offer opportunities to talk with clients and have your client prepare for a genuine conversation, rather than a presentation of a scripted message.” This is also true for traditional media relations. Be a helpful resource to reporters or bloggers.

• If you do participate, be ready to go a step further. Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation says it all: ‘The leaders will be companies willing to talk about the things their competitors are afraid to talk about.” This is probably the only way to truly cut through the clutter, isn’t it?

Image Credit: Getty Images

I have written about this topic some time ago already, but I found the diagram below very interesting as it shows the three core groups of knowledge areas that CSR pros need to nurture and expand today.

• Stakeholder Dialogue and Comns: Stakeholder engagement is the bedrock of CSR/Sustainability. Especially today as social media and digital platforms are pushing organizations to consider two-way dialogue and active relationships with their stakeholders (i.e. collaboration, co-creation) From internal comns and reporting to community engagement or consumer engagement…listening, conversation and influence skills are key! In the diagram below, they represent up to 47% of all knowledge/skills areas.

• Strategy and Business Management: ‘We can only manage what we can measure’ as the saying goes. I would also add that ‘we can only manage what we understand first’! CSR and Sustainability are first and foremost about business and strategy. It is about understanding/setting business goals and strategies, balancing risks and opportunities, measuring performance and progress, etc. It is also mostly about critical thinking and finding solutions to any types of issues any organization might face within the larger context of the ’stakeholder society’.
  

• CSR Trends and Core Issues: As I said earlier, CSR/Sustainability is an ever-changing field – in a perpetual state of beta. Keeping up with the core CSR and Sustainability issues (i.e. energy/climate, water, compliance/governance, labor relations/diversity, etc.), both in your market and globally is crucial. Staying up to date with regards to best practices, new standards and regulations, latest developments and trends is a must, not only for consultant jobs, but also for in-house positions.

This definitely reflects what I have seen lately in terms of jobs offers and requirements.

Well, this is also a golden rule for consumer engagement too.

When interviewed by marketers, consumers tend to reply that they want to buy green & eco-friendly. But as we know, the main bias of market research is that ‘intent’ rarely translates into ‘action’. Because a product will save the planet does not mean that consumers will love it.

Successful green marketing practices follow an ‘eco-frugal approach’. The rising prices of energy and the current recession have been an unprecedented opportunity to switch the marketing focus from ’spending green’ to ’saving green’. As John Grant, author of The Green Marketing Manifesto, says: ‘There are very few instances where saving money and saving energy are not compatible, and, in that sense, reducing the impact on the environment is the only silver lining in the recessionary clouds”.

Rather than promoting green credentials as an end in themselves and trying to bolster green brand image as a result, the strategy for brands to effectively and durably engage consumers (while not being suspected of ‘greenwashing’) is to help them make the life-style choices that will make a difference to both their pockets AND the environment, such as using washing power that can be used at low-temperature (30°C) or switching to eco-efficient light bulbs, which in turn help lower electricity bills as well as carbon emissions emitted in the atmosphere.

This is the approached for example used by EDF, France’s main energy company, which developed an online platform to advise customers on how to save energy (and therefore money) by managing and rationalizing energy consumption in their homes (i.e. electric appliances, etc…). The website called “Ma Maison Bleu Ciel” offers a full set of news, forums, blogs, Q&As, personalized support & follow-up, and more to be developed soon.

You may think it is not that groundbreaking (compared with what other companies may have already done in the past). But it is something simple, helpful, efficient and which matches consumer’s key concerns and needs.

This is green marketing 101, isn’t it?

• On one hand, Cone’s new media study in the US underlined that new media users overwhelmingly believe companies or brands should not only have a presence in new media (95%) but also interact with their consumers and other stakeholders in this space (89%), with 40% of them believing their searching, sharing and discussing of information about corporate social responsibility efforts can have a significant effect on company business practices.

• On the other hand, a report by financial communications consultancy Lundquist spotted out the failure of major companies around the world to engage with stakeholders online, via their corporate websites, online CSR reports or social media.

What companies are afraid of totally makes the case for social media involvement!

Many CSR pioneers and leaders have very early understood the value of engaging consumers and broader stakeholders via digital channels in order to enhance reputation, build loyalty and even crowd source business innovation. My Starbucks Idea or Timberland’s CSR reporting are striking examples of successful online stakeholder engagement through continuous CSR improvement and two-way dialogue.

However, overall, digital communications are (unfortunately) not leveraged to their full potential, why so? While it is true that not everyone should engage in social media, there are still many reasons why companies are reluctant (not to say scared) to engage in social media, especially when it comes to CSR & sustainability. These same reasons that are making a stronger case for online engagement.

• Getting into social media is like “opening the Pandora box”

“What if people say very bad things about our CSR initiatives? Criticise us with bad spill over effect on our brand image?” This is probably the first answer that comes up anytime social media is discussed. Actually, before getting out there, in the (intimidating) openness and transparency of the online, companies should listen first. Listen to what is said about their brand, about the issues they face, and about the programs they have put in place. Only by knowing what the issues and stakeholders’ expectations are a company can change and develop meaningful CSR or Sustainability strategies with true benefits, for the business and the society as a whole.

• Getting into social media means “loosing control of the brand”

Message control is an illusion. Your stakeholders (employees, consumers, activities) are already talking about you and what you are doing, whenever you are talking to them or not. So you might as well join the conversations where they are (Facebook, Twitter, blogs…wherever) and participate as equals, inform the debate with credibility.

So yes, stakeholder engagement is the next frontier in CSR and Sustainability. But as for any topic that raises doubts, fear … it all comes down to educating people about what social media and CSR really are, that a company can get on the social engagement bandwagon at its own pace, etc. Have you ever tried to suggest social engagement strategies to your clients? Was it successful? How did you educate them about the rationale and benefits of such engagement? Did you overcome resistance?

To be followed then…!

Image credit: Martin Barraud, Getty Images

]]> http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/2009/11/01/social-media-the-next-frontier-in-csr-stakeholder-engagement/feed/ 2 http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/2009/10/27/exploring-new-models-of-social-responsibility-communications-live/ http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/2009/10/27/exploring-new-models-of-social-responsibility-communications-live/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:53:23 +0000 admin http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/?p=759 As the name of this blog says it all, I am a true believer of the role and power of conversations to move the Sustainability and CSR agendas forward, whether with businesses, governments, consumers, or just citizens like you and me.

At a very personal level (and I am sure the entire CSR and Sustainability community will agree with me), I can’t but realize how much digital / social media (i.e. starting blogging for instance) has become such a great, and essential, professional tool for me to, among other things:

• Stay active and expand my knowledge of sustainability and CSR issues as well as communications best practices. In such an ever-changing disciplinary field, social media helps me stay abreast of changes and new trends.

• Connect with like-minded professionals and peers from all across the world, learn from their experience in other markets, or in other communications sectors such as marketing, advertising, social media or CSR reporting, etc.

And today, I am very excited to bring this to life once again as Media Partner of the New Models of Social Responsibility Summit – probably the first global virtual conference on social responsibility communication and strategy ever to bring together a global audience of experts and professionals from a wide range of organizations – multinationals, non-profits, government agencies, educational organizations, etc. – via online (and therefore environmentally-friendly) conferencing.

Sponsored by Communitelligence and Cisco, the live summit will explore best practices and dynamics shaping the new models of social responsibility communications emerging from the recession era and the new media age, during two half-days (on Nov. 5 and Nov.9).

The different round-tables will cover various topics such as:

• Employee engagement
• Brand building and consumer empowerment
• The challenges of communicating social responsibility
• The future of CSR reporting
• The evolution of corporate engagement in an inter-connected world

You know my interest for these topics, so stay tuned for some live-blogging here in the days to come

And if you are interested in joining the live summit, click here.

]]> http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/2009/10/27/exploring-new-models-of-social-responsibility-communications-live/feed/ 2 http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/2009/10/20/when-brands-are-not-succesfully-talking-the-walk/ http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/2009/10/20/when-brands-are-not-succesfully-talking-the-walk/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:06:02 +0000 admin http://www.sustainabilityconversations.com/?p=748 Grail Research, a global strategic research and decision support firm, has published a new report late last month, Green Revolution, showing (among other things) that the majority of (U.S.) consumers are unaware of major brands’ sustainability initiatives.

Probably as a result of a ‘sustainability noise overload’, greenwashing-induced skepticism, eco-fatigue … or simply ineffective communications, it appears that the great majority of consumers (in this case 85%) have no idea about what pioneering companies such as Estee Lauder, Hewlett Packard, Unilever, Nestle and Intel  are doing in terms of sustainability and CSR.

Surprising? Not really. While corporate reputation and brand image are converging, the gap between a company’s responsible initiatives and consumers’ perceptions and … ultimately decisions still remains important. And not properly addressed.

While companies have been pressured to practice what they preach, i.e. ‘walking the talk’, it is also critical to be effectively able to ‘talk the walk’ as well:

• By being transparent and authentic: 63% of consumers rely on product labels as their primary sources of information about green companies and their products, only if product labeling does not lead to confusion.

• By leveraging the right communications channels (as well as the right messages), that engage consumers, leverage their experiences and interactions with brands and encourage peer-to-peer evangelism, through word of mouth conversations (both online and offline), which are considered as more trusted sources of information (45%)  than advertising (38%) or company websites (18%).

So in the end, isn’t it more a question of ‘are we allocating marketing & communications budgets properly?‘ What are you thoughts?