CSR value for B2B brands

Mon, Oct 19, 2009

By Sasha Strauss, as part of the Guest Blogger Series

Is there value in developing a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program for a business to business organization? Absolutely.

It is clear that CSR activities can have a tremendous impact on brand image. Yet, when poorly executed, they can give clients the impression that a company’s efforts aren’t only inauthentic, but a brand promotion ploy. Without understanding and addressing the elements needed to create a natural connection between CSR actions and their host brand, activities could actually backfire and cause identity damage.

So what is required to prevent a CSR initiative from being a “me too”? In contrast to business to consumer organizations, where eliciting a strong emotional connection from the consumer will result in greater brand loyalty, a business to business organization cannot expect emotional appeal alone to be a primary driver for commercial interest.

There are two major considerations that must be addressed for a business to business organization’s brand to truly benefit from a CSR program. CSR initiatives must be:

Aligned with core products and services.
Designed to create shared value for B2B customers.

First, CSR activities that are simply philanthropic contributions are regularly considered PR tactics—not reflections of a corporate social responsibility charter. On the other hand, CSR activities that leverage category specialization, product expertise or a unique understanding of a market not only appear as natural extensions of a company’s commercial actions, but physically align their employees around the cause as well. A company-wide CSR engagement builds the employer brand and certifies the organization’s sincere commitment to the CSR beneficiaries.

Second, CSR brand equity doesn’t stop at the organization executing the program. The nature of B2B markets is that the value created by the first organization melds into the offerings of the second, and so forth. Simply, ingredients in the first “B’s” products are innately part of the second “B’s”. B2B CSR activities not only must align with the host organization, but must be constructed with regard for how those activities can trickle through to their partners. As with any brand, a supplemental story, idea, cause or ingredient that drives additional interest on the part of the customer almost always results in preferential buys. CSR programs designed to add value to a partner’s partner’s partner means a chain of shared equity that can almost guarantee an uptake in customer retention.

About Sasha Strauss

Brand Strategist by passion and by trade. Fueled by new ideas, old hats and differentiated dogmas - he enjoys the rigorous, analytical digestion of the ways that others think. As Managing Director of Innovation Protocol, Sasha assimilates his 15 years of agency practice with firms like Siegel + Gale and TBWAChiatDay to constantly stir the pot of Brand Strategy. Careful though… he believes brand can be a dirty word when oversold… and the most beautiful concept ever told, when handled with love and care.

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