What a very timely talk he has given there as the Twitterized protests were just starting up in Iran. (Actually, he later gave a short interview to the TED team about it, that is now posted on TED’s blog).

Beyond these political implications, I immediately thought about how social media has changed ‘CSR‘, and how it has changed it for the better (even if there is still a long way to go).

With the rise of new social media technologies, power has clearly passed to the people forcing the emergence of a new approach to CSR: CSR 2.0 (or now 4.0).  Especially with citizens-consumers that are now extremely informed and aware, talking to eachother on online communities almost instantaneously about what you do whenever you decide to talk about it or not, and with an audience of millions on the web.

The 2.0 has really put the ’social’ back into CSR, by this I mean the stakeholders. And this is a great thing. Now CSR is finally about stakeholder engagement and about meaningful conversations and change. Because if done otherwise, huge reputational risks are at stake.

Rather than being a big scary thing, CSR 2.0 has to be seen as a great opportunity to join forces with the new empowered stakeholders and rebuild the ’social contract’, especially now that the recession has resulted in a dramatic decline of trust in business worldwide.

A very good paper written by Mikkel H. Sørensen & Nicolai Peitersen from Antics.com lists the 10 changes to the CSR landscape that we are and that we will be seeing because of social media. Here are the eight ones I clearly agree with:

1. Inclusiveness – Involving stakeholders directly from beginning to end

2. Innovation – Winners turn market pressure into stakeholder led innovation

3. Sincerity – Be real

4. Co-ownership – A truly embedded value-based culture happens through involvement

5. Dynamics – Standards being replaced by 24/7 engagement

6. Quality – CSR as immersive business strategy

7. Trust your values – Move first, move alone

8. Proximity – Local impact is global

And to conclude on why Shirky and CSR 2.0, I would highly recommend this book: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky, which makes sense of the way people are using internet, how it creates new group dynamics, and how it puts the people back at the center stage.

It is basic, but so useful to understand why locally-relevant and stakeholder-inclusive CSR strategies are so important today.

And quite frankly, among the general public the WED has not generated much ‘noise’ and traction, and thus probably failed to significantly meet its main goal: enhancing awareness and encouraging people to take action. (Except perhaps in France where the movie Home made quite a substantial impact, supposedly on the outcome of the EU elections in France!)

Indeed WED has quite a low profile, especially compared to WWF’s Earth Hour (March 28th, 2009), which has succeeded in actively engaging more than 1 billion people in1000 cities all over the world as people turned off their lights.

However, I still see some very encouraging stuff with this year’s WED as the UNEP has engaged for the very first time in social media with a pretty cool Twitter campaign. For every follower @UNEPandYou got by midnight on June 5 – World Environment Day – the UNEP will plant a tree, with a cap of 100,000 trees. In the end, they got about 10, 000 followers, including me.

It is a very positive sign:

• The Twitter campaign aimed at raising awareness of the WED initiative by not only getting followers, but also rewarding them with an actionable result = planting trees.

• The UN embraces social media and sees as a way to advance their agenda and engage citizens. It’s a very encouraging PR move, especially for such a low profile (again) UN programme, which is not famous for being well-funded, powerful and influential.

• Such campaign builds on the long term, and offers promising perspectives with the United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen this December. Social media can powerfully be leveraged voice, channel the concerns of the world citizens on various social platforms so that they can altogether put pressure on national delegates to adopt a new Kyoto protocol and come up with actionable results if the concerns of the world citizens can be voiced, channeled online through various platforms.

However, to get there, @UNEPandYou will have to sustain engagement on Twitter and other platforms, have a long term social media strategy and build its profile. Because in the end, what is the point of having a WED if the rest of the year no ones cares…

To be followed…

Well, I have just read the list of the top marketing buzzwords we can expect to hear a lot more of in 2009, as reported here.

The only sustainability-related buzzword is ‘Greenlining’ which comes down to the 83rd position. It is pretty sad, especially when we get to know what this buzzword is all about: the process of going green in the office as a method of improving the working environment!

Is that all? Yes, and no…there is a great number of other (better-ranking) buzzwords that are ‘CSR-relevant’ and that should guide our approach to CSR and Sustainability in 2009:

• No. 1: Value Justification – Does CSR and Sustainability create sufficient value that would justify spending on it? Of course, this has been a very hot topic in 2008 and 2009 as the recession hit and budgets got cut. It has also been the best test for CSR / Sustainability ever:

As Daniel Franklin in The Guardian wrote, “harder economic times may help to sort out CSR. Some pet projects with no obvious benefit for the business will be dropped. But thoughtful companies will keep at it, with a keener understanding that CSR efforts needed to be sharply focused – and require hard work and careful implementation”.

No one has the choice but to demonstrate the ROI of CSR, which implies abandoning superficial apporaches to rather focus on value-added approaches, aligned with business objectives and strategy over the long and medium term. CSR is an investment after all.

• No. 2: Business Objectives – When developing a CSR strategy, it is important to determine the top three business objectives of the company and develop CSR goals that will contribute to the achievement of these business objectives
• No.5: Benchmarking – In recession, companies that can stand above the average and keep up with their strategic CSR approaches will develop a strong leadership and competitive advantage. No wonder then why rounding out the top 5 is benchmarking as companies will be focusing on their competitors to try and measure their own performance.

And others:

• No. 24: Social Networking – No one is indifferent to the role of social media channels for CSR communications and reporting, as well as powerful stakeholder engagement around ‘good causes’ (i.e. consumers)
• No. 59: Corporate DNA – CSR must form an integral part of companies’ core values and mission, corporate culture.
• No. 79: Win-Win – CSR is not a zero-sum game – it is not about winners and losers. When done properly, it is a win-win situation that hits the triple bottom line.

And another one…Recession Proof (No.70) as consumer demand for green products remains strong despite a declining economy.