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Linda Rogers who works in Sustainable Marketing and CSR at Coca-Cola, speaks with me at Sustainable Brands 10 about a few types of potential partnerships between brands and nonprofits; explains a joint cause program by Diet Coke and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to promote women’s health; and provides three essential tips for both brands and nonprofits in developing positive, collaborative relationships.

Why do they sometimes fail to produce expected results? Well, we could examine if what’s expected is realistic, strategically aligned with business goals, well funded, well staffed, planned right, integrated with other communications activities, is…there’s a bunch of different ways we Digital PR people can imagine. Check out this slideshow from the Brand Science Institute.

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David Mallen who works in the National Advertising Division of the U.S. Better Business Bureau, speaks with me at Sustainable Brands 10 about trends in the marketplace and what the future should hold for businesses and marketers making communications and associated claims about their products and services.

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Timberland’s Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Harrison, speaks in an interview with me on topics including: social media, brand stories and content that resonates with customers, what works and what doesn’t. Additionally, Mike explains how Earthkeepers isn’t just a shoe, but also a brand platform for authentic and credible communications with stakeholders and the public on Timberland’s corporate responsibility commitment and environmental stewardship efforts, and what they care about as a company. A human relationship with the great outdoors based on respect, love, and adventure.

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The social demands of the new marketplace are clear: be ethical and responsible. Global CEO Jez Frampton of Interbrand, discusses sustainability’s place on the business agenda, but notes that few brands are notable leaders and that only a small minority of employees feel prepared to take the issue head on. CSR and corporate responsibility for the most part haven’t resonated because marketing and basic identity communications superceded substantive change, progress, or radical product/service development. In addition to various research findings, Jez speaks on the role of brands and their strength as the key elements of value, and how they do have the power to do great things. Sometimes change the world in both small and bigger ways. Outlining principles from stories like Tom’s Shoes, Method, Aveda, Nokia, 3M, and Xerox, he goes on to give 3 steps for brands going forward.

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While it may be easy to attract the attention of a growing cross section of consumers with your social or environmental brand messaging – if you know the right language, not all consumers are so easy. Drawing from his book “Igniting Inspiration: A Persuasion Manual for Visionaries”, John Marshall Roberts outlines core principles of transformational communication, as illustrated through the groundbreaking marketing and messaging for President Obama’s historic presidential run. He illustrates how the audience can shift their thinking and apply this same framework to create breakthrough results for their own social and environmentally conscious business ventures through strategic, authentic values-based marketing and communications.

Crazy, energetic speaker with great ideas. His latest presentation from Sustainable Brands 10 (which I hope to show sometime this Fall), dives further into what I think of as radical emotional intelligence for communication design, for good

I recently stumbled upon this video produced by BusinessLink.gov.uk as a story about the CSR efforts of an English architecture firm, primarily as it relates to the benefits of having established volunteerism and employee happiness programs (among other areas). So while this wasn’t produced by Bailey Partnership, it serves as an amazing 5min introduction to a humanistic aspect of the company and its employees. Now, if I were in charge of brand identity of a company I’d do a couple things: 1) Keep any brochures very straightforward and concise with a maximum of 5 subjects; 2) Produce videos on the identified subjects along with sustainability/csr, but create each as a collection of clips, from which older clips can reused or discarded, and newer clips can be added. The entire production would be inline with an integrated brand communications platform for identity purposes, which could especially be useful for existing and potential stakeholders (equity holders, partners, and employees).

Okay, on with the show! Could such a 5min video be helpful for your firm?
Another example I provided a while back, has more of a reporting than a journalistic feel.

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From one of my new favorite marketers, Bob Gilbreath talks about the current state of marketing, having transitioned from advertising to permission marketing, to what is espoused by some (gleefully including ME!) to be a higher order level. One that fulls human needs and desires beyond function & emotion. Without wanting to dive in the subjective zone, just consider products & services that helped you achieve something meaningful and valuable, but which was either free or low-cost (perhaps “at cost”). Something you weren’t directly looking for, but stumbled upon or told about, and found valuable. The brand interaction might have been very minimal, but nonetheless there was a small or large degree of affinity or appreciation for what you received and are/were able to achieve. Concrete examples include free cookbooks (pamphlets or digital), white papers and multimedia presentations, a public restroom in Times Square NYC courtesy of Charmin quilted toiletpaper. Let your imagination soar with this one; just remember the principles of subtlety in your brand marketing - otherwise it’s just a promotional gimmick. I’ll be writing more on this topic in months to come. In the meantime, enjoy this video interview! P.S. - I have my own interview with Bob to put online soon

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From an interview I did a little over a year ago with Mona Amodeo, President and Founder of idgroup Consulting and Creative

You place a high value on branding in corporate sustainability efforts. I believe I know why. We’d like to help people understand why these programs aren’t just altruistic or even just that they make financial sense. If we identify sustainability strategies and tactics with core brand values, we’ll likely to get more people on board, while also strengthening the organizational culture. What do you think?

There are many ways to look at and define sustainability. My research defines sustainability as a core value that defines behavior (profit within the context of social and environmental responsibility). Most people want to be a part of something bigger than them. Big visions engage people and give meaning to work. Sustainability offers that type of opportunity for companies. Connect people with something they believe is making a difference and you will have a committed group of people—customers and employees.

We know that authenticity is a key factor in the ability to position a company as sustainability-focused. Authenticity is created by engaging the whole organization in living the values of sustainability. We learned from Interface that organizations can incorporate these values deep into their cultural assumptions through the incremental process of aligning organization identity (who are we), culture (how do we do things around here) and image (how do others see us).

Our experience shows the intentional alignment of these three spheres— something we now define as Branding from the Core® — creates the greatest potential for creating authentic organizational brands because when organizations “walk the talk” of sustainable values, they create a strong image with the marketplace and employees, this image then reinforces the values and behaviors associated with sustainability.

Tell us about Music as Message. I like the idea of nurturing positive holistic values in children, and progressively instilling a sense of eco-literacy beyond the mere benefits of tree planting and recycling. Rather, it’s a growing understanding of the interdependence of all phenomena and life. What are your thoughts?

Music as Message and specifically our character, Eco the Butterfly, was a direct outgrowth of my research with Interface and other companies who have incorporated sustainability as value into the core of their organizations. Actually, Ray Anderson was the inspiration for Eco.

The idea is simple: Use music and fun entertaining characters to teach children important lessons about the environment and taking care of each other and the world we live in. Music and characters are powerful vehicles to engage children, and maybe indirectly, their parents. Remember how you learned your ABC’s? Our hope is through engaging children early in life, their view of the interdependence between humans and the natural environment will be embedded into their belief systems.

Looking at your bio, I see a big background in Organizational Behavior and Culture Change. The study of motivation and the design of an employee culture that perseveres to succeed (or collectively ‘actualize’) is a massive topic within OD and management circles. Are there certain factors managers need to expand upon in light of the sustainability era upon us?

As you pointed out earlier, embrace sustainability as a value (not a strategy or a tactic) and connect with proven processes that engage employees with that value. Create a powerful vision of what sustainability means to your company. Ask big questions, but start where you are. Give employees room and support to explore what this means to themselves and the organization. Encourage new ideas from all corners of your organization, and don’t give up. This is a paradigm change; it takes time, but yields a return on investment that can be measured in innovation, engagement, pride and marketplace acceptance.

Idgroup is also involved in creative design and advertising campaigns. Push marketing will be with us for a while, although digital PR and word-of-mouth marketing are becoming ever more popular due to the humanistic approach and since personal credibility is on the line. Do you see a shift in how great ad campaigns will adapt to an increasingly value-based society?

Actually idgroup revamped our approach to branding about 5 years ago with this realization in mind. We emerged from our metamorphosis as a bit of a hybrid, combining the best of the worlds of branding, organization development & change (OD) and communications to help organizations create values-based brands. This OD-centric approach to our work is based on the belief that the strongest brands are born from a process of engaging organizational members in creating, living and telling their stories—the struggles and the victories. This is how we build authenticity into our branding campaigns. We have found engaging employees in OD-based dialogue processes helps us unearth meaningful story lines which frame our campaigns while also building high levels of engagement and pride in organizational members. This has a powerful impact on the quality and authenticity of the campaigns as well as a reinforcing effect on the employees belief systems.

What gets you excited about the future trends or direction for sustainability?

I think top-leaders are really grappling with what sustainability means to them, their organizations and their stakeholders. I know this sounds a bit weird, but I get excited because I see them willing to struggle. This means there is potential to help leaders reach beyond eco-efficiency-thinking, to engage with sustainability as a core value. Not just a strategy, or tactic. This is where the real power lies—seeing profitability within the context of social and environmental responsibility requires a real paradigm shift. I believe those willing to ask different questions, big questions will be the real winners. Challenging people to think differently, to view the world from a new window, yields new and innovative answers, high levels of employee engagement and pride and strong connections. Five years ago, no one was really listening. Today, they are asking good questions and searching for meaningful answers. These are exciting times!!

A few months ago, I was sitting in a BJ’s restaurant with my big spiral notebook, a good Hefeweizen, and a swarm of thoughts on branding for good. In the last 3 years, I’d realized through observation, experience, and enough books and articles on the subject, that branding really is what people experience in their interactions with an organization, and their subsequent perceptions. Sometimes actively, sometimes passively, sometimes directly, sometimes by association. In every touchpoint, including media and word of mouth.

Given that reality, what does this entail for values branding? Without going into the specifics of values (as every business’s personality, objectives, value proposition, culture, and industry is different), I started to look at the big picture of which functions branding performs and came up with the following meta model. Since all actions also entail a degree of communication, I then categorized the tactics and tools available for development, interaction options, distribution, and measurement. Hope you enjoy it!