Make Your Brand Matter

CHAPTER 9Connecting Your Customer with Your Cause

One of the most significant shifts in modern brand management has been the adoption and emphasis of corporate social responsibility. As Tim Stobierski defines it in a Harvard Business School post, “Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the concept that a business is not only responsible for creating value for shareholders, but should also seek to benefit the broader community within which it exists.”¹ I couldn't have said it better.

Brands today recognize that the modern consumer demands to know what the company stands for and how they articulate those values. Over the last decade, that has expanded to become an expectation that the brand is contributing to the betterment of society in some way, and customers look for transparency in action. This is particularly the case with the younger generations – namely, Millennials and Generation Z – who are rapidly emerging as the spending force in the marketplace across B2C and B2B industries. This book is certainly not a forum for wading into the various pools of societal and geopolitical issues, so I won't name any specific causes or initiatives in particular, but suffice to say that brands have been embracing a range of causes, some timeless and some quite specific to the moment, over the past few years.

EMBRACING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

That said, the idea of corporate social responsibility and, more broadly, institutional social responsibility, is not new. The ...