CSR or Greenwashing?

Corporate social responsibility does not have a universally accepted definition and thus organisations globally, who practice it, do it differently. CSR has seen a huge take up with companies since 1970s, everything from cars to food is being sold to consumers as 'green' or 'sustainable'.  In some companies, CSR falls to be crucial and genuine but the majority of them use it as a spin to damaging events - a concealer for dark circles. In the UK less than 1% of an organisation's budget is allotted for CSR activities. 

BP Green Fiasco

The baddies like organisations in the oil and gas industry, coal and mines or any sector that directly harms the environment try very hard to sell their products/services as green/sustainable . One example was British Petroleum (BP)'s revamp to Beyond Petroleum, a green project to ensure responsible and sustainable activities of its organisation. While they did invest huge time and money on this project - changing their logo to a green one took up most of the investment. It not only pinched the organisation hard on the waste of investment, it trampled their little existing reputation.

The need for something like CSR arose with varied and increasing environmental issues and increasing number of NGO watchdogs, reduced trust in companies, 'more than just business' attitude of companies and the economic turndown to an extent. With these factors in hand, most companies developed CSR strategies to show their participation in different ways. There has been an observation made by most CSR strategists that CSR plans and strategies have not yet been merged with business objectives and when that happens CSR may not be viewed as such a green sell off. 

Due to media exposure on companies with good and bad CSR initiatives, NGOs cracking the whips on companies to be increasingly sustainable, consumers are highly aware and alert about CSR vs green washing. Websites like greenwashing index equips consumers with a information and tools to spot CSR as green spin offs. 

The Green revolution

Organisations need to recognise the opportunities behind genuine sustainability initiatives as it not only builds their financial performances but also is an excellent way of maintaining high brand value, reputation and trust. For public relations such authentic CSR planning and strategies is a recipe for positive communication for all stakeholders, tailoring CSR strategy planning and free and positive news coverage. The PR department in the baddie organisations, on the other hand, will keep brushing green to mask its damages.

Political Communications

Like public relations, political communications finds it hard to define itself and its remits. A simple way to understand this field is to understand what political communicators do. Political communicators use various paid and free media to communicate messages of their political parties to their audiences, who are the citizens. While this explanation is fairly simple, it remains highly debated and in some sense controversial.

Breaking down the above explanation, three important words can be spotted - media, messages and citizens. Media - the evolution of media has carried with it the evolution of its usage at different periods. Political leaders and preachers, historically,  stood on boxes at market places to reach out to their audiences in a rather personal fashion. While that mode of communication did disappear for a few decades, it's back and so is the 'interpersonal' and 'conversational' medium of communication between politicians and citizens. Citizens more and more want to directly communicate with their leaders and leaders on the other hand have their own agenda behind conversational communication. 

Media bias

The print media, in Britain at least, has been relatively open about their political stance, which again is not fixed. Reporters and reportage on politics is biased, highly opinionated and influential. The people reading the newspapers know it, and the political communicators have a great opportunity to pitch stories with papers that would use it without refining it too much. 'Objectivity' in journalism sounds good in theory rather than in practice. McNair affirms that, "Media biases are of key importance. In democratic political systems media function both as transmitters of political communication which originates outside the media organisation itself, and as senders of political messages constructed by journalists." Another important factor while considering media is the ownership. At the end of the day it all boils down to whose powers outweighs who, defining the agenda-setters and gate keepers of journalistic information.

To get back their personal touch with citizens, politicians worldwide have begun to use the digital space which is argued to be 'two-way' and 'conversational' medium of communication. The Obama campaign is one of the best examples of successful political communications and online election campaign. He was able to touch base with millions of Americans and continues to do so. It ticked all the boxes of the role of a PR professional or communicator. Not only did Obama win the elections, but also proved  to skeptics that strategic usage of the online media can deliver. 

Obama campaign poster

The Obama campaign used all forms of media - advertising, merchandising, online and offline party broadcasts, posters and above all earned media through news coverage. The political messages were simple, clear and extremely effective. The election campaign messages connected with the audience and showed 'un-mashed' resonance. Not only did his campaign churn out 'effective messages', it crafted an image for Obama. This almost 'celebritization' of made him an idol of many Americans and significantly raised trust in him and his policies.

Political communicators today need to not only focus on media management, but need to dive into more creative ways to produce messages and content that remain in the minds of the audiences intact and opens new methods of conversations with their political leaders both on online and offline medias.