Leveraging CSR for marketing and advertising

Abstract

DTI, in their 2002 CSR report, defined CSR as an initiative of any firm which recognizes its impact on society, takes account of economic, social and human rights impacts and benefits by working in partnership with stakeholders. However, used wisely, CSR can also be a powerful marketing tool for companies. This is because CSR campaigns have the ability to strike an emotional chord with the customers and thus grab their attention. Studies have also shown that customers are more likely to patronize brands of companies that follow CSR programmes as a matter of company policy. However, most companies go overboard in their utilization of CSR to garner customer satisfaction and end up with marketing campaigns that detract from the original CSR programmes and leave the customers with a bad aftertaste. We surmised that such companies are not paying enough attention to what exactly is it that makes a CSR programme suitable or unsuitable for their purposes. All CSR programmes might be good for the society but not necessarily for the companies practicing them. We developed a framework that takes into account four basic drivers for the success of any CSR based marketing campaign. Campaign –company compatibility, customer perception, benefits accrued due to the campaign and finally, the media feedback the campaign receives. Any campaign under consideration by the company can be passed through this framework. Based on scores generated by the campaign at each stage, its success or failure can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. We analyzed five campaigns using the framework in order to test its validity, and in all of the cases, the framework was able to explain why the particular programme under consideration was a success or a failure.