Large companies have long gained significant benefits by successfully promoting civic virtues such as sustainability, community, sponsorship, charity, and the environment. Benefits like improved brand integrity are intangible but they can have significant impact on a company’s long-term success. Increase your brand value by developing a communication plan that reflects your organization’s social values. It’s called Social Value Messaging.
Social Value Messaging demonstrates alignment of your corporate goals with the values of your customers, employees, and other partners. Social Value Messaging should be viewed as investments in corporate health.
Following are categories of Social Value Programs:
- Sustainability
- Community
- Sponsorship
- Charity
- Environment
Examples of Social Value Messaging programs are abundant.
- A food producer that partnered with a breast cancer organization to sponsor national Race for the Cure events to raise money for breast cancer research. The campaign developed is an integrated, multi-channel campaign comprised of event marketing, promotions, online, and affiliate & channel marketing.
- A California recycling co-operative that added a fleet of industrial tricycles to its existing community recycling cooperative, helping local residents keep their neighborhood trash-free and green.
- A snack food producer that announced plans to introduce the first fully compostable snack chip bag of its kind made from plant-based renewable materials.
- A Washington, DC organization that helped 20 low-income families from a city block green their homes and save on their energy bills.
- A Colorado group that organized a tree planting day to plant 20,000 lodge pole saplings around their mountain resort town to replace those killed by the Mountain Bark Beetle.
Benefits of Social Value Messaging:
• Recruitment & Retention – employees prefer to work for socially conscious organizations that effect positive social change.
• Increased Revenues – in competitive markets, social values can mean the difference between a customer choosing you or the other guy.
• Growth of Brand Equity – this includes brand awareness and increased brand integrity as customers can identify with what your brand stands for.
• Positioning as Industry Leader – social values were initially competitive advantages before these programs became mainstream. Be a leader.
Summary Action Plan:
1. Align Company Values with the Communication Plan – review your organization’s Mission, Vision, Values, Goals and Objectives. If no there is no internal document containing this information, hold informal interview sessions with key executives and create one. Determine which values will resonate and make a list of projects that will best promote them.
2. Obtain Senior Management Approval – communicate with key members of your management team those values you want to promote using social value messaging. Do not forget to identify & leverage areas where your company is already being a good corporate citizen.
3. Prioritize & Develop a Strategy – many social value campaigns fail because the communication plan is too ambitious. Start with category (Sustainability, for example) and build upon your success over a longer term period.
4. Communicate Values Internally & Externally – work with the company Webmaster to put your values on the corporate website. Add these programs to general marketing collateral. Additionally, incorporate your social values into training packages for new employees.
5. Measure Results – obtaining a hard Return on Investment is difficult for programs such as this. But being a good corporate citizen makes business sense.
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