Corporate social advocacy is not a new entry in the dictionary of business buzzwords. It is new, yes – but it is not a buzzword. CSA is a researched area of corporate action where brands become more tangible and socially-relevant. Research shows that millennials are giving weight to social activity when making choices about their brands or work places.
We are entering an age of confluence of brand value and community development that will place businesses in a more prominent position to influence domains outside the conventional commercial ones. Corporate social advocacy is the strategic navigation of these waters, and Corporate Identities has already embarked on an ambitious initiative to prepare the business community in Malta for the approaching horizon.
Towards the end of the century, companies slowly started shifting attention from the attributes of their products to the values of their brands. In doing so, organisations naturally sought to follow social narratives more closely, ensuring the values they expound reflect the market they’re in. This phenomenon did not miss Malta and local companies too moved to curate their corporate brands.
This transformation has been gathering momentum for the best part of 30 years, and in the 1980s organisational theorists even drew up models to help companies pick up and understand trends in society they could then take advantage of or brace themselves for.
Strategic issues management, as the specialised arm within public relations came to be formally known, is the identification of emerging trends and social policies that may potentially impact the business. A company will want to be able to influence policy and social directions as much as possible and prepare itself for the changes hitting the context it operates within.
Although trends monitored by strategic issues management are central to the organisation, they may not be important enough or noteworthy to customers. Ever seeking to earn legitimacy from the market, especially after a new wariness of business processes started to seep into the collective mind, public relations professionals proposed a new function: corporate social responsibility.
CSR dwells on the maxim that ‘brands that do good will do well’, and actively seeks to show the more conscientious side of business. Over the years, social responsibility has matured from simple philanthropy into a strategic exercise that builds a reputational reservoir. No longer are companies content with the random tree-planting effort by its employees; they now select relevance and continuity in the causes they support.
Social responsibility is thus an investment in the conditions that make the business sustainable and allows a company to give something back to the community.
Social corporate advocacy goes beyond the established PR efforts in that it contributes to areas that are, in the traditional sense, none of its business. Social advocacy seeks to align the brand to one side of an often binary debate emerging out of a complex collection of ideas, issues and conditions.
By lending brand muscle to a cause out of pure interest, business relationships suddenly become much more intricate, whether B2C, B2B, or B2G. Corporate social advocacy forces companies to take a place in the history of a community and to contribute more than just economically to society.
Corporate social advocacy roots a brand deeper into the social fabric and inserts it more intimately with the story of a community. Bearing the dangers in mind, particularly to brand equity, it nonetheless makes organisations more real, more legitimate members of society.
In the tightly-knit society in Malta, where discussion themes often cross over social, political, ethical and economic borders in one breath, corporate social advocacy is anopportunity for brands to engage more meaningfully with communities and take corporate social responsibility to a new level.
While companies may initially fear the sectarian mentality in a tiny nation State like ours, CSA can be a catalyst to overcome this same peculiarity. At the same time, however, neither is advocacy meant to be divisive, brusque politicking. Quite the contrary, companies can lead the way into serious and concrete issues that are frequently ignored by the traditional social actors.
Corporate Identities understands that for businesses to go further, they need to go deeper. In tomorrow’s hyper-connected societies, brands with shallow roots can only expect a short life, no matter how many kittens they help down trees. Companies cannot wall up their brands away from the realities around them; if anything they are uniquely positioned to bring foresight, expertise and concrete action into the equation.
In view of this, Corporate Identities will be teaming up with specialists in the sector to transform corporate social responsibility into perhaps a more engaging role which will deliver on engagement with employees and society, transforming CSR into corporate social advocacy with the ultimate aim of creating a legacy that lasts where it is needed for the collective wellbeing.
Jesmond Saliba is managing director of Corporate Identities.