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"CSR"
Bingo! I win! My experience so far fits the second-to-bottom horizontal row. How did you do?
Seriously, though, I came across an amazing resource for visual thinking, creativity, design, and corporate social responsibility. It’s called Change Order: Business + Process of Design, by David Sherwin. In his words, “In my previous lives, I’ve worked as a user experience lead, information architect, visual designer, art director for print, and magazine editor. I’m also an unrepentant chocoholic.”
I really like what he has to say about social responsibility.
1) Don’t spend money on marketing social responsibility. Spend it on being socially responsible and being humble about how far you need to travel in your quest to lessen your impact on society.
This could be translated as, “Put your money where you mouth is, marketer.” If you’re spending millions of dollars on a corporate campaign to say how great you are, you’re wasting money actually being great and signaling to your customers that there’s a perception issue that needs to be shifted. There are better ways to evangelize your behavior than this.
Take a page out of the Patagonia playbook. Sure, they spent money on a nice Web site to highlight the true cost of creating and shipping one of their items to you. But they do something practically no one else does: they show you the good and the painful truth, and acknowledge they need to do better. How rare is that?
This is very similar to what I wrote about Levi’s yesterday. Levi’s invested in redesigning its process to reduce the water footprint of making jeans. As a result, they saved and will continue to save lots of water, and gave their PR firm a great story to publicize in the news media. (Are you reading this Levi’s? Levi’s? If you are let me know and I can send you my size… 
)
Levi’s is humble in describing its achievement, by emphasizing the customer’s role in reducing the product’s impact over its life cycle:
At the same time as the new product launch, Levi’s is encouraging its customers to also reduce the water used in the care of the jeans. … if owners washed their jeans every two weeks instead of every week — [it would save] more than 80 million liters of water, equivalent to over 13 million toilet flushes.
I like the toilet flush comparison. Way to make it tangible! Another tangible example: this image, which I found here on ChangeOrder.
Scary.
What do you see as the best ways to communicate responsibility and risk to people who don’t live in the same jargon bubble as you?
This adorable little girl lives at the ger camp in the Semi-Gobi Desert, the place where we rode camels. I chose her photo to illustrate this post, because I think her stylish coat and practical boots exemplify the type of consumerism that improves the lives of everyday Mongolians.
While I was in Mongolia, the insightful and prolific Akhila Kolisetty featured this quote from Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund:
You told me that you don’t like the phrase ‘Doing well by doing good.’ Yet, that’s what comes to mind for many when they think about social investing. What does it mean to you?
It implies that there are easy solutions. That the perfect way to change the world and end poverty is if we all can make a lot of money doing it. But when you look at poverty and what it takes to break through entrenched systems, high levels of fatalism, unbelievable levels of corruption, incredibly bad distribution, no infrastructure, you are not going to make a lot of money and serve the poor in a way that they can afford. You may make a lot of money and serve the poor in usurious ways that keep them poor forever, like many of the mafia services do, but if you want to provide systems that are fair and affordable, and that they can trust into the long term, building them takes a long time. Over time as you really hit scale, you will make money, but we’ve been in some of our deals for six or seven years and we feel we’re just starting.
I like Akhila’s response, which includes these words:
At the end of the day, “doing good and making money” is all a myth that we have deceived ourselves into believing. And perhaps it’s a marketing tactic of social businesses. But I’m sorry, but you can’t do both. Sure, you can ensure your social business is sustainable, but you, yourself are not going to be rich. In fact, your lifestyle and salary will probably be comparable to the lifestyle of non-profit employees. There is no difference between the two. Joining a social business is not a way to get rich or make money – it’s ultimately simply another way to empower the poor and work towards social justice. And I hope we can change our language to reflect this truth.
Click here to read the rest, and while you’re at it check out the rest of her excellent blog, Justice for All! I wrote her an email in response, which included these words:
I am writing this from Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. Good businesses in this country include cell phones, satellite TV, car repair products, warm coats, solar panels, tourism, stuff for kids. All of this stuff makes life better for ordinary people, and makes money for the companies who sell it (though probably not a lot given all the things that Novogratz mentioned.)
The little girl’s coat and boots are probably imported from China, and purchased with cash brought in by hosting foreign visitors. The family has lots of livestock, so it probably produces most of its own food. But in this modern world, with solar-powered TV and foreign friends, a family cannot live on salty milk tea alone!
I’m curious to hear what you think
I'm Leslie and I connect entrepreneurs in Chile, China, California, and beyond — especially through translation, training, and trade. More about me.
