Panelists: Deb Berman [JustMeans], Bonin Bough [PepsiCo & Pepsi Refresh Project], Virginia Miracle [Ogilvy PR], Chrysi Philalithes [(RED)]

As part of Social Media Week in New York City I attended a panel discussion on “Putting the Social in Corporate Social Responsibility”. The most significant take-away for me was that Corporate Social Responsibility needs to be more than a marketing tactic; rather consumers expect CSR to be fundamental in the culture of modern brands:

1) Why Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is so critical now for brands

• People voice interest in wanting to buy products from brands that align with their personal values, but often don’t due to factors such as awareness, perceived cost, and availability
• CSR is important to brands because it helps them differentiate themselves between competitors and connect people to the personality of the brand
• Stat: 70% of people believe that companies can make a bigger difference in the world than governments can
• CSR is now a standard expectation by consumers rather than a progressive opportunity; consumers require brands to give returns on the investment they’ve received in the market
• Measurement of CSR needs to move beyond the incremental advertising impact to how much social value a company is generating; this forces brands to invest not only in the funding of programs but execution of them as well
  • ex: Pepsi Refresh Project- Not only is Pepsi funding projects, but has partnered with organizations that can help bring people’s ideas to life
  • ex: Time Warner gives money to help young people get educated in science, math, & technology fields, and ROI is judged based on the “number of minds with new educational opportunities”
• New brands are entering the market that maintain CSR a their core, and legacy brands need to prove they’re truly embracing SCR to compete in the public eye
  • ex: Method & Greenworks are “CSR” brands from their origin; A legacy behemoth though like Pepsi will effect significantly more change by making improvements, such as when they reduced the plastic in their bottles and started making bio-degradable chip bags

2) Why social media plays a critical in activating in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

• Social media is an important channel to help maintain transparency & authenticity around how funds are being allocated
  • ex: (RED) needs to ensure the public that donated money is allocated responsibly
• Social media enables people to spread the word about brands that represent their ideals
• Social is also the environment where companies that are socially irresponsible are discussed, and it’s important to be part of the conversation to make sure consumers know the brand’s efforts

Pepsi’s efforts with the Refresh Project that they kicked off in replacement of their normal Super Bowl spend is getting a lot of attention as one of the most high profile CSR efforts. Pepsi stated that they are tapping into the generational undercurrent of “seeing the power of the individual’s idea”, the same way they would have tapped another cultural trend as the core of their business. They’re giving control of the program over to their consumers, and providing the resources to the public to ensure their investment doesn’t go wasted. They’re investing heavily overall in transforming their company to one that matches performance with purpose, which has lead to their green efforts along with their CSR efforts. It’s a long term shift that will be manifested throughout their company, not just the marketing side.

If there was any question before, last week’s Google announcement that content from your social graph would now be included in your search results is another big proof point that brands need to be thinking about social media as a major contributing factor in their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.   Over the last few months Google has increasingly handed coveted “first page result” spots to social content.  It started with their real-time integration of Twitter results, and now it’s with the open beta of their social search experiment.

Why is this critical for companies to recognize and incorporate in their SEO? Because your corporate website, no matter how well it’s ranked, is being quickly overshadowed by all of the social content g your brand.  Now results are filled with a slew if blog posts, tweets as they happen, and the links a person’s friend shared about the brand on Facebook.

Don’t worry, though- brands don’t have to be left in the cold.  They do need to start engaging consumers in social spaces, producing content of value, and making their content sharable.  That way the valuable information is getting shared and enforced by advocates and being included by Google in the spaces reserved for the user’s social graph.

This, by the way, is why SEO was on my list of 9 Reasons Why Social Media is important for the bottom line.

(image courtesy of Cibergaita on flickr)

Over at the DraftFCBlog I have a new post up all about how to be a savvy marketer you need stop simply reading about new products & services like Twitter and Foursquare and you need to jump in and experience them for true insights:

It’s clear to everyone that old world disruption advertising models have a smaller role in the future of marketing.  As advertisers we need to be able to know how to engage with our audiences in meaningful and valuable ways.  The only way we can do this is if we invest real time in experiencing and learning the new media landscape.  We need to stop asking what tweets are or why someone just became “mayor of the 33rd & 5th street Starbucks.” We need to sign up for these new and unusual (or possibly scary or stupid) products and services, or we’ll be left behind.

Read the post and let us know what you think.  Are you jumping in?

From k.b.skobac.com

When I jumped over to Digg this morning a new McDonalds campaign was being displayed displayed:

Check out this morning’s early risers:
Stories so fresh they’re not on the homepage yet

It’s nothing flashy, but it’s clever enough that it made me smile, and even made me consider going downstairs to get an Egg McMuffin.  And really, that’s all it needed to do.

post-script: I do seem to have an infatuation with advertising on Digg lately- they just seem to be making real progress with campaigns that fit for their audience

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Recently Mashable started running a series of “Seizing Opportunities” videos with their sponsor UPS.  The ads are done in white-board style, feature the usual UPS music, and focus on a social media topics that Mashable editors can speak to in a useful way in just a few minutes.  As an execution I was already impressed, but it turns out the Mashable program is just one piece of UPS’s overall content strategy.  The bigger picture can be seen on the UPS “Popurls brown edition:  The Dashboard for Business News” page.  Here UPS has created a valuable content hub designed to help their customers with everything they need to know about business – curated news on specific topics, “seizing opportunities” videos from a variety of content partners that can speak with expertise on specific topics, and their own commercials.

All together it seems like UPS has come up with a killer strategy.  They’re utilizing key strategic partners like Mashable to create custom content that’s tailor suited for Mashable’s audience and also manages to be synergistic with the ideal UPS customer – a business person looking for business solutions.  This same custom solution is being built out with TechDirt, VentureBeat, and other niche blogs.  Then it’s all being aggregated to provided a very valuable, well rounded solution center for their consumers- all while ingraining the catchy UPS soundtrack & logo into the customer’s head for quick reminder when their packaging & shipping needs arise.  Proving once and again that producing valuable content is the best strategy.

Yesterday I wrote a post for my company’s blog (DRAFTFCBBlog) about the evolution of older social networks that is taking place:

Early entrants into the social networking space MySpace and Hi-5 are no longer competing to be the main social-net in people’s lives, rather they’re refocusing on Entertainment content.  For MySpace that means Music, and for Hi-5 that means games; in both cases, the early returns look good.

The evolutions aren’t just about audience numbers, it’s about monetization & compatibility with advertising:

it’s easier to to develop ad-products around music consumption and sharing because advertisers prefer professional content to UGC content

with gaming advertisers have the opportunity to create more involved ad-experiences than run-of-network banners

Facebook itself is focusing on social engagement advertising, which is important when their environment is all about social interaction.  More traditional forms of display advertising are proving not to work when it’s wrapped around your friend’s profile or when you’re looking at pictures from the weekend (CTR’s on social-nets are tanking).  But multi-media content like video & gaming can still help produce content that is capable of tying with more pure-play branding efforts.

Oh and if there’s any question about where MySpace sees its future, rumors yesterday that MySpace will trade implementing Facebook Connect on their site for increased MySpace music & video share functionality on Facebook should say a lot.

[read my company blog post]

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