How social are your CSR initiatives?

Corporations often invest significant amount of resources towards fulfilling their commitment towards the society through socially responsible activities.

Most CSR Initiatives draw little attention as they are either perceived to be an act of gaining free publicity or because they hold little relevance to the community itself. Which brings us to an important question – though significant efforts and resources are being invested, can CSR initiatives move towards gaining recognition as a positive brand act? Now, here’s how your CSR initiatives can contribute to the society, lead to a favorable brand image, and earn consumer loyalty.

• Create a platform for community members to be part of your CSR initiatives
• Encourage community members to identify and recommend causes to be supported
• Make meaningful contributions to the society
• Send out positive signals and display your dedication to causes and society
• Be transparent

Eventually, adherence to the above factors can go a long way in converting your CSR efforts into a positive brand act.

Now, why will adhering to these factors make your CSR initiative work? Today, consumers want to be involved in most things that concern them, including causes they strongly feel about. This has led to a greater need of fulfillment. And today’s consumers will feel fulfilled by being part of a brand’s development as opposed to maintaining a passive relationship. A relationship that’s so far been one of merely consuming the products or services on offer. So, it pays to involve your consumer. More so if you want to spread your brand’s word.

Online Advertising

Banners flash around. eMails pour in – solicited and unsolicited. Google’s made Adwords a very powerful online advertising tool. Online Advertising – the big buzz with most marketers and agencies worldwide has gained a significant level of importance from the time it surfaced as a medium. The emphasis is full on CTRs, CPMs and Unique Visitors. However, the end result in most cases is just a mirror of offline campaigns. i.e.: visual themes from television commercials or print advertising are often translated as animated banners on various properties inanely. Sure, one could argue about consistent branding or visual themes pursued across media. On the contrary, isn’t it time for one to think and ask if this is all online advertising is about. Well, no. The online medium itself has evolved in terms of technology and connectivity. In the current form of practice, the dynamics and interactivity of the medium as such is lost or under utilized. Let’s relook at the medium – it is dynamic and hence the possibilities are mind blowing. Hence,  the time has arrived to relook at online advertising for what the medium has to offer.

Internet Marketing

Marketing is all about identifying opportunities. More so when it comes to Internet marketing. With rapid advance in technology and interaction concepts, people’s behavior is equally changing. Millions of sites – junk and otherwise; people are active and are interacting, contributing, and accepting. It is essential for any internet marketer, to be part of it, active and identifying actions and behaviors. The beauty of internet unlike the offline world, allows for direct participation. By being part of it, one must experience the myriad possibilities and then opportunities show up on their own. Of course one must be able to recognize it. Analyze, understand and take advantage of it. Exploitation of the medium is truly required for any form of media. This can be made easier by being able to evaluate from different perspectives – viewing with a different thought structure from what we already are used to. And, importantly being able to apply to different situations and needs. Here’s an example to begin with:

Objective: Recruitment

Solution: We at i-Vista, engaged various soical communication media to address our recruitment needs. All it took for us was to update status messages on Google Talk, Facebook and LinkedIn. Our status message called out various positions we were looking at filling in. The insight came from the simple fact that people do interact and respond to our status messages. My colleagues were part of this campaign by updating their messages across the platforms they were active. Our friends came in as a bonus – when they saw our status messages, lot of them voluntarily updated their status messages by saying they were helping so and so in recruiting.

Result: The campaign ran for a week and generated fifty odd enquiries, eight interviews and four resulted in being our colleagues. The most tangible benefit of it all was the cost saving in the fees payable to recruitment agencies.