Anyone interested in the Apple iPad has no doubt been to the Apple homepage lately and discovered this nice surprise bottom-center:
That’s right. At a time when Apple could be cross-selling any number of their new offerings, they are using one of the four sandboxes on their homepage to share their supplier responsibility practices. You know, the info that’s typically buried in the “about us” section of a company website—if it exists at all.
Strategic posturing? Maybe.
But consider the timing: Apple is on the cusp of their biggest product launch since the iPhone.
And consider the real estate: Whatever the company puts on their homepage sells.
Apple realizes at a time when their fortunes are good and the stock price is up, maybe putting social responsibility up front just might the most responsible thing they can do.
Want to know what Responsible Marketing is about but don’t have the time to read our white paper on the topic?
Well, here’s “The 7 Keys to Responsible Marketing in 2 Minutes,” featuring the characters you’ve grown to love (or hate) in our Responsible Marketing web shorts.
I offered a bounty for ideas and examples: for everyone that contributed at least one idea or example that made the Top 10, Outsource Marketing would donate $20 to a food bank of each respondent’s choosing.
I received so many good ideas, I expanded the list from 10 to 25.
Without further ado and in no particular order, here are—
25 ways your business can help fight poverty
Cook and distribute meals
St. Clouds restaurant in Leschi (Seattle, WA) holds a monthly cooking project for the homeless. Each month, the restaurant invites the community to come to its kitchen bringing whatever food they can spare…St. Clouds provides the proteins. Together they cook custom gourmet meals for the homeless, who could never afford such a meal. These are delivered to 200 people at five shelters and a tent city around town each month.
Promotion of the event has been strictly via word-of-mouth.
This is a unique, very cool local outreach that is, in my opinion, truly an act of kindness.
Eric Weaver
Partner with a charity, publish a picture book documenting their lives
This year GE in Italy supported “Pane Quotidiano” (means “daily bread”), a charitable association founded in 1898 in Milano to help feed the poor. In 1908 the association was “formally” established and, on June 4th, celebrated a 100 years of feeding the less fortunate.
The contributions donated on this occasion were used to publish a picture book documenting the lives of the association’s guests. The book was sold in libraries for donations. Additionally the association was also able to buy a new truck need to collect the food that everyday businesses and/or distributors give away because in excess or approaching the expiration date. It was touching and great to be part of this initiative!
Beatrice Sarni
Promote trade and partnership in underdeveloped countries
Check out Connect Ethiopia. An organization started by business in Ireland. It’s goal is to create business links between companies in Ireland and Ethiopia and use business and trade to develop poor countries.
Michael O’Sullivan
Get your hands dirty
Hands on — I’d offer.
I’ve found that the best reality of working authentically, to contribute in a reflectively meaningful way — meaning fully — is to do it your self; hands on, live, being in the space, contributing eye to eye. Rather than dropping some capital — what can you do, in the telling of your story that is live to them, live for you. It’s a life, it’s a live, it’s alive.
You’re in that circle, you’re doing the work, making the contribution — and it’s real. No financial smoke that distances you from the reality.
You’re there.
Do something and you’ve got the passion to spread the word. Write a check and the instant of giving dissipates in an instance, as well. Do both and deliver it by hand and do some work at the same time! The ring is reflective, the song is sung true and the circle of giving and heart fullness is unbroken.
Beauty full.
Tim Girvin
Encourage employee involvement with a charity
You can help the poor by telling everyone in your company to donate some time and volunteer at the local food bank.
Margaret
Provide opportunity and access
In most low income areas, there is little opportunity or access to jobs that pay a decent wage, provide health care, or allow for flexible schedules.
Poor people don’t need a one time handout – they need access to jobs, personal and professional education, and proper diet, to ensure they can sustain the responsibility of providing for themselves.
If businesses truly want to help they should start:
Paying decent wages, offset by the cost of company provided health insurance
Provide training – through partnerships with their state employment agencies and local colleges to keep the cost low
Move away from the 9-5 in the cubicle mentality and provide flex scheduling especially for people with children and those not in customer service positions.
Create a local coalition. ex. Local businesses could partner with a local grocers to provide discounts to employees and nutritional training. Grocers partner with local farmers who partner with local transport companies, and so forth.
Rochelle Robinson
Create a contest and use video and social media to create an actively engaged audience
Any firm could have a blog on their webpage. This activity will also be of commercial interest of the firm as people will talk about what is happening on the webpage and return to look what happens next. The firm choose a project. The project of the month: Like in the television programme, “The secret millionaire” they go to a poor area and find a project, where some good people dedicate their lives to help other people.
On the blog they present those people and open an account to wich people can make donations and write comments, ideas or even offer to join to give a helping hand. It is after this possible to follow this place and the people, who work there by clicking on the link. But each month a new project is presented with a picture on the webpage. But still it is possible to follow links to former projects of the month.
Pia Hede
Create a matching program for employees
Boeing is holding a special employee drive for the month of September. They are matching triple for each e-giving dollar. Funds go to local organizations who provide supplies to local food banks and meal programs in the Puget Sound. This is a great incentive for employees to give to the program.
Arden B.
Give discounts to clients for donating needed goods
Numbers 9, 10 and 11 were contributed by Jovan Pollard
Allow staff to donate money or goods to wear jeans or “dress down” on a specified day
Volunteer your own professional services
Vancity’s Change Everything initiative
Caleb Chang contributed an impressive list on his own, and contributed numbers 12-24
The Responsible Marketing Blog will be participating in Blog Action Day on Wednesday, October 15th.
Here’s what it’s about:
First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.
By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue.
The video that was produced to encourage bloggers to participate does a nice job explaining what this is all about:
I use the word “our” because we’re going to write it together.
To me, useful would be a solid list of real world examples of businesses, large and small, doing things to help the poor.
And instead of doing a search, I’d like the examples to come from you, the readers of The Responsible Marketing Blog.
Here’s a little incentive to make it interesting:
No, it’s not for you!
Outsource Marketing will donate $20 to the food bank of your choice on your behalf if your example or examples makes the top 10 list in the Blog Action Day post.
It doesn’t have to be your company, it can be any business you’ve seen that’s doing some good for the poor. The more detail, the better.
Even if your example doesn’t make the top 10, I will also link to the comments from this post so all ideas will be shared.
Let’s build this together!
Where have you seen business helping the poor?
Comment below to participate.
. . .
Please forward this post to a friend, post it on your social networks and circulate it around your office. The more examples the better!
There’s something new at Starbucks, but it’s not on the menu and it doesn’t cost a dime.
The GOOD Sheet, a weekly “graphical exploration of some of the major issues facing us in this election season and beyond,” appeared in all Starbucks nationwide yesterday.
The goal of the GOOD Sheet is to stimulate conversation during this all-so-important election season regarding real issues that really matter.
It’s being produced by the folks at GOOD, “a collaboration of individuals, businesses and nonprofits pushing the world forward.” Their website, videos and magazine are at once visually and intellectually stimulating. I’ve subscribed to GOOD magazine for over a year now and have enjoyed some fascinating articles regarding the environment, health care, China, education and more.
Issue No. 001 focuses on Carbon Emissions. Here’s the inside spread:
Here’s the speech that made Pangea Day a reality, the TED prize-winning speech given by Jehane Noujaim’ to an audience of “the world’s leading thinkers and doers” at the annual 2006 TED Conference.
If you don’t have twenty minutes to view her speech, here’s a synopsis from Pangea Day:
Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future.
In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.
On May 10, 2008 – Pangea Day – sites in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro will be linked live to produce a program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music.
The program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.
Of course, movies alone can’t change the world. But the people who watch them can. So following May 10, 2008, Pangea Day organizers will facilitate community-building activities around the world by connecting inspired viewers with numerous organizations which are already doing groundbreaking work.
With the title “Share the Good,” Heineken’s new campaign sounds promising. But it’s not about Katrina relief, reducing the company’s carbon footprint or feeding hungry children.
Nope.
It’s all about the beer, and sharing your Heineken with a stranger.
While the ad is visually interesting and the art direction is quite good, something isn’t quite right. It actually feels more Pepsi or Coke than it does Heineken. Maybe they should have called it, “Share a Heineken and a smile.”
You can interact with the brand at sharethegood.com, and there are tools to drive word of mouth. The tag cloud representing happy Heineken drinkers just like you is intriguing, but is so stylized it feels fake.
The biggest problem with this campaign is that it implies there’s more to it than there is. To most people, “Share the Good,” doesn’t mean “share the beer.”
Any socially conscious consumer that pays attention to the ad, then invests the time to visit the website to learn more will be let down, or even worse—they’ll leave feeling duped when they are left to ask “where’s the good?”
What do you think? Do you love it or hate it?
Comment below to weigh in.
. . .
Inspiration for this post came from adrants on twitter
That’s what some major advertisers want you to think, according to a recent article in Ad Age.
In Advertisers: Men are Not Idiots, Glenn Sacks and Richard Smaglick argure that advertisers often default to men as “irresponsible fathers and lazy, foolish husbands,” and that’s a bad decision.
They cite a number of sources including a 2005 Leo Burnett “Man Study” that found that 4/5 of men surveyed felt they were portrayed incorrectly (where’s the ‘authenticity we keep hearing about?) and an incredible response to a host of articles and campaigns on the topic.
Sound like a Responsible Marketing backlash?
Smaglick is an advertising critic and the founder of the media-watchdog organization Fathers and Husbands. His advocacy group was founded in 2003 “in response to the increasing prevalence of negative representations of fathers, husbands and men in the mass media.”
Last year, it turned its attention to Arnold Worldwide claiming their ads for Fidelity bashed men. You’ve probably seen the Fidelity ads, as well as advertising for Radio Shack, Royal Caribbean, Nicoderm CQ, Truth and Jack Daniel’s. I know, interesting client mix.
For the most part, I haven’t had a problem with Fidelity’s advertising over the years. They are usually humorous, but not over the top.
Then I watched this video that combines a number of Fidelity’s ads:
I admit, seeing these ads end-to-end reveals a theme that isn’t flattering if you are father or a husband.
The last ad in the series features a woman in the lead role. It’s empowering on a number of levels, and taken on it’s own is worthy of real praise.
The contrast is palpable, isn’t it?
I know, we men are easy targets, but has Fidelity (and many other advertisers) taken it too far? Considering some of the challenges you men face today, is portraying fathers in this way socially responsible?
