Cause Marketing

Been going through my voluminous electronic files of studies about cause marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and I came across again a 2008 poll of corporate communicators that found they want their companies to engage in more CSR; they just can’t come up with a good business reason for doing so or decide who should drive it. The poll, from Ragan Communications and Pollstream follows a 2008 study from IBM ( covered in this space ), that reported that corporate executives want to see more CSR, too, and were devoting resources to it. The poll was part of a series from Ragan that regularly queries some 425+ corporate communicators in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. The communicators split almost evenly over the issue of who should run a company’s CSR efforts. Just about 50 percent said it should be a standalone department that reports directly to the CEO. The other 50 percent said CSR should fall under either media relations, internal communi...

Ragan Communications and Pollstream just released a poll that finds that corporate communicators want their companies to engage in more corporate social responsibility (CSR); they just can’t come up with a good business reason why or decide who should drive it. This follows an earlier poll from IBM and covered in this space , that reported that corporate executives want to see more CSR, too, and were devoting resources to it. The poll was part of a series spearheaded by Ragan that regularly queries some 439 corporate communicators in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. The communicators split almost evenly over the issue of who should run a company’s CSR efforts. Just about 50 percent it should be a standalone department that reports directly to the CEO. The other 50 percent said CSR should fall under either media relations, internal communications or marketing. It would be a measure of the esteem that CSR holds in a company if it operated independently and r...