Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Every business must serve a social purpose”. These are not the words of a social campaigner or a politician; they are the words of a banker, Ashok Vaswani, the CEO of Retail and Business Banking at Barclays, one of the world’s largest banks. Barclays has been involved in at least one major trading scandal and holds the dubious honour of the most fined bank in Britain. There will be some people who will treat his words with understandable cynicism but that would be to miss the point.

The point is not whether the words are sincere or not – it is that they should have been said at all. Banks are concerned with the control of money, why should they concern themselves with any purpose beyond that? The reason is that society is demanding they do. When banks first started they fulfilled a social need in the community, to enable ordinary people to fund their ambitions. Over the years banks forgot that purpose and focused most of their efforts on funding their own ambitions through obscene profits, often at the consumer’s expense. The bubble burst in spectacular fashion with the downfall of Lehman Brothers in the US and RBS in the UK.

It isn’t just the banks that have lost their way. Now it’s critical for any business to demonstrate it has a purpose before, and beyond profit; that it seeks to improve the lives of its customers as a primary goal. Failure to have such a purpose, to be clear about it and to ensure it directs everything you do, will lose customers, employees and ultimately business value....

"Do you do good at work, or is doing good something you do outside your job?" That, to paraphrase, was the question that sat before some fellow marketers/corporate communicators and me at a gathering some time back.

...I was shocked to hear a good number of people in the room express the opinion that the field of marketing was not about doing good nor bad; instead, it was about having a skill (effective communications and persuasion) that could be employed for any cause indiscriminately....

The Nielsen Global Survey on Corporate Social Responsibility, a survey of 30,000 people in 60 countries, found that 55% of respondents are willing to shell out more money for socially responsible products--but the numbers vary depending on the region.

In Asia-Pacific, 64% of consumers are willing to pay more. The numbers are similar in Latin America and the Middle East/Africa, but in North America, the percentage drops to 42%. Just 40% of Europeans report that they would pay extra.Asia-Pacific respondents are also more likely to consider purchase decisions based on packaging (specifically, whether a brand says that's socially and environmentally responsible). Again, Europeans and North Americans are least likely to do this.

Millennials are most likely to pay extra, check product packaging, and work for companies that they perceive to be sustainable, according to the survey....