Everything You Need to Know About Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility, also known as corporate conscience or sustainable responsible business, is a self-regulating system where a business actively monitors itself for strict compliance to government laws, ethical standards, and international regulations.

CSR’s goal is to hold the business responsible for every action it commits and and create a positive impact relating to environmental issues, consumerism, communities, and all public concerns that affect or can be affected by the company’s actions.

Examples of such activities that businesses usually take are as follows:

  • Making donations to charitable institutions
  • Organizing social awareness programs like fight against child labor, drug trafficking, human trafficking, upholding women rights, and/or fight against racial discrimination
  • Organizing Earth and environmental awareness drives, like planting tree movements, clean air drives, lake and river cleaning activities

Why is CSR important and how does it help business?

CSR is one way for your business to not only uphold its responsibility to the community in line with your company goals, but also maintain healthy public relations through your socially-aware programs, thus helping your brand gain a favorable position in the market.

You are recommended to hold at least one major CSR event because it calls the attention of media and therefore gains you free publicity. The idea here is to get someone else or a group of other people to talk about you in a good way without you asking them to.

Another reason for holding a CSR event is the creation of a secondary selling point about your product. Aside from your current Unique Selling Proposition, CSR creates a new property or character about your product to make it more marketable.

How do you choose a CSR campaign for your brand?

Choose a CSR that is nearest to the industry you are in. If you own a printing company, it would be best to choose a campaign that promotes the use of recycled paper and soy-based inks as it opposes the idea that printing companies waste too many trees and use toxic inks that may pollute our environment.

Also, your company is not tied up to just one CSR – you can choose as many as you like as long as you can sustain it.

How do you plan for a Corporate Social Responsibility campaign?

Just like any other event or marketing effort, planning a CSR campaign requires the basics of making an integrated marketing plan. But if you are making a plan for a CSR campaign alone, you can make a short-term marketing communications plan instead that includes a situation analysis before proceeding. Don’t forget to arrange tie-ins with concerned sectors and other businesses that might be able to help you organize your event.

Market your campaign at least a week to two before the actual event. If you have a mailing list of your clients, you can take on a more personal approach by postcard printing and sending these via direct mail. Include freebies inside like stickers or a business card that has a design that describes what the event is all about as a treat. Otherwise, you can also do flyering or put up posters on highly visible areas.

Should you have additional information, insight, or you simply want to share an experience regarding the topic, please feel free to tell us by writing a comment below.