A large part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) involves what you aren’t doing: not extracting oil from war-torn countries, not casually slaughtering dolphins, and not paying five-year-olds to assemble your clothes. But that doesn’t make for a great marketing message. Companies that prefer to focus on what they are doing increasingly rely on PR professionals to help them make strategic choices.

David Weiner, a senior partner with National Public Relations in Toronto, says the notion that firms need a ‘social licence to operate’ is now firmly entrenched. The problem is doing it strategically.

‘What you often see is corporate philanthropy re-branded as strategic philanthropy,’ Weiner says. That can work, but ‘it’s better to look at the concomitant obligations in terms of the social contract. A company needs to know how it can establish a program or define a sphere in which it has competency and interest and a contribution to make.’

Strategy spoke to three other professionals to find out how companies can get the most value out of their CSR programs.

Maryse Cardin, partner, Turtle & Hare Creative, Vancouver, B.C.

‘At its fundamentals, PR is about building and sustaining relationships. And CSR is about relationships – towards the community, toward the environment, and your employees, and consumers are looking for that. If anything, I think PR has always been about the kind of topics that are becoming, more and more, our social values.’

She cautions that ‘the positioning is very important. As more and more companies are involved, there could be some cynicism among consumers. It must be positioned as driven by a sense of responsibility.’

Cardin suggests one way to build a credible CSR-driven program: ‘If anything, I would like to see more long-term relationships and partnership marketing. If you are associated with some nonprofits that are in line with your brand development and what you’re trying to achieve, both parties can benefit from it. That can only be done if you go in for the long term.’

Turtle & Hare client Hain Celestial Group, a large natural foods maker, moved into Canada just two years ago. ‘We knew from the get-go that a really important part of how they built their business would be with CSR. We suggested a local group that was also about food and nutrition – the Loving Spoonful, which provides meals for people homebound with AIDS.’

Celestial donates its line of Earth’s Best baby foods to families who have children with AIDS. ‘It’s also an opportunity for staff to deliver meals,’ Cardin says. ‘One of the things most underutilized is in-house communications; making sure that everybody in-house is proud and knows. I’m a real believer in the power of small conversation.’

David Eisenstadt, partner, The Communications Group, Toronto, Ont.

‘We get called in to look at a variety of things for our clients because they see us as trusted advisors and we can often cut through the clutter. They ask ‘What do you really think about this?’ or ‘What do you think the media thinks of this?”

Eisenstadt thinks PR professionals can offer valuable objective insight when it comes to pro-active initiatives.

‘Sometimes CSR is at the whim of the CEO. ‘I want to get involved with the kidney foundation because my son has been on dialysis for years.’ It may be a well-meaning, emotionally driven decision, but it may not be in the corporate interest.

‘Years ago we represented a high-tech client whose president’s wife loved figure skating. They wanted to be in Skate Canada very badly and it made no sense for this particular company. Were they really being socially responsible? I’m not sure they’re being responsible to their stakeholders, whether it’s people who buy stock, the management team, employees, the board of directors…. They’re trying to do good and trying to get credit, but they’re way off target and I don’t think they were winners at the end of the line.

‘There’s just so many places to give, you can’t give to everybody. It has to be more than just an emotional decision. It has to be a business decision.

‘Our strategy is kind of back-to-basics. If women are the people who make the buying decisions for our clients’ services, then we would be looking at charitable organizations that have a strong female connect. The objective is that everybody should win.’

John Sacke, president and founder, Sacke & Associates, Toronto, Ont.

‘If companies want to increase the business value of CSR then, number one: they must engage the customer. If you’re going to support the Children’s Wish Foundation by doing a dance-a-thon, engage your customers. Invite them to come along, and encourage them to bring their wives and kids. Make it worth their while. Have a gigantic barbecue first. Make a scene about it. Make it fun for your customer to join in. That will definitely translate to business benefits because first you can engage with your customer, and plus, you’re not in a business environment.

‘Secondly, your initiatives must come from the top down and be embraced by everybody in between. The president must embrace the initiative and spend the morning in the soup kitchen or at the pride parade.

‘Our counsel is, by all means, support charity. But you’ve got to leverage the heck out of that. People have to know about this.

‘Say you’re sponsoring the Run for Heart. Why not challenge your top customers? Put together your team of five and say, ‘If you beat us, I’ll throw in another $500 bucks.’ It may be a very small amount! But try and involve your clients and try and involve the media. Maybe a simple thing, like a news release to 20 of our key media, with a Dr. Seuss hat, and that’s going to be our uniform.

‘I like a little bit of a crazy kind of shenanigan, that’s partly tongue-in-cheek. There’s no use sponsoring a charity and not telling anyone about it.’

Responsible to whom?

Companies keen on CSR have found a new role for PR

Ask consumers what corporate social responsibility means and they will mention concern for the environment, social causes, or labour conditions in foreign countries. Ask a CEO and he will tell you that CSR means being responsible to ‘stakeholders’- an increasingly diverse range of people that includes clients, shareholders, environmental groups, non-governmental organizations, and usually the general public.

Naturally, this can get confusing. That’s why companies are asking PR professionals to identify stakeholders for them, and find out just what corporate social responsibility means to these various groups, and what they should be doing about it.

This month Hill & Knowlton announced the formation of a new corporate social responsibility group designed to ‘counsel companies on their CSR policies and programs as well as to offer communications and reporting support.’ National Public Relations’ Montreal office has its own group, National Sustainability, already in place and a wider roll-out is imminent. Both groups think that PR will play a large role in CSR initiatives.

The move represents a significant shift from massaging messages to determining just what messages companies need to be able to make.

‘PR professionals were always expected to understand what the public thought about their company,’ says Boyd Neil, who heads Hill & Knowlton’s new CSR group. ‘The PR professional will increasingly have a responsibility to be a guardian of integrity within the company.’

Rick Peterson, project director for National’s National Sustainability group, agrees. He’s already helping clients to develop, implement, and communicate corporate responsibility programs. A large part of the role involves managing stakeholder relations, and making sure that the company is engaged with the community – as well as detractors.

Peterson says that engaging with stakeholders has always been a part of any PR practitioner’s job. ‘I think it’s right in the heart of the role of PR professionals.’