Marketing and CSR

Why they need to start talking to each other

A few weeks ago I met Mark Cridge from digital advertising agency, Glue. We were chatting about the relationship between marketing and climate change, and he quoted Ed Mayo, Chief Executive of the National Consumer Council (NCC): “While marketing got us into this mess, it may be that marketing can get us out.”

That struck me as a very valuable insight; a recognition that sustainability is as much about branding and marketing as it is about supply chains and manufacturing processes. It’s such a shame to see companies doing great CSR work then failing to use it to boost brand reputation and sales. In today’s world mainstream consumers look out for ethical/sustainable/responsible brands yet many of them don’t even bother to read labels, let alone CSR reports! It is here that marketing can play a crucial role.

The fact is that in today’s society all business functions must understand social and environmental impacts and work towards reducing or improving them. Unfortunately, marketing (unlike sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, legal and many other functions) has been very slow on the uptake.

Companies such as Marks & Spencer have already started to improve the links between marketing and CSR, with impressive results. According to M&S’s CSR chief, Mike Barry, “Look Behind the Label” has been their most successful consumer communications campaign ever. It was the result of close collaboration between CSR and marketing of the type that all companies should be seeking to implement.

Aubrey-Cound, group head of marketing campaigns for M&S, agrees that the ads have ‘had a significant effect for a small investment’. She says ethics and social responsibility have ‘always been part of our brand values and how we trade.’ However, it is interesting that M&S only decided to run ‘Look behind the label’ after it had achieved its first marketing goal of repositioning and modernizing its food and clothing offer.

This suggests that ethics plays second fiddle to traditional marketing objectives. ‘We knew our first job was to reposition our products. Customers were not going to believe us on other issues ahead of that. But once we were happy with how that advertising was going, we felt we had another story to tell,’ says Aubrey-Cound. ‘You can’t just put a campaign like that out without a very long-term strategy behind it. Anyone can come up with messages, but it is harder to deliver on them.’ (Marketing Magazine – Sept 13th 2006)

So the answer to this problem is what CSR people sometimes call interdependency, or what is more commonly known as teamwork. But for teams to work, they have to understand each others’ jargon - that often presents the first challenge. Many companies have begun to bring together marketing and CSR people in workshops to examine the issues and reach a common understanding of how sustainability and brand value are related.

None of this is necessarily easy, but it can pay huge dividends for staff, customers, shareholders and society as a whole.

Marketing is a powerful tool, and, in the immortal words of Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Marketing can, and should, be the catalyst of sustainable consumption.

Contributed by Diana Verde Nieto – Clownfish Marketing