I was doing some research for Staples this week, which required some fairly committed ‘long tail’ searching. Anyhow, I eventually stumbled across a section called Staples Soul, which outlines the Staples commitment to corporate responsibility. There is some great content here, which is engaging, interesting and tells users a huge amount about what it would be like working for Staples. For the life of me I couldn’t understand (a) why it was buried so deep and (b) why you could only access it from the US site.
The practice of CSR is subject to much debate and criticism. Proponents argue that there is a strong business case for CSR, in that corporations benefit in multiple ways by operating with a perspective broader and longer than their own immediate, short-term profits. Critics argue that CSR distracts from the fundamental economic role of businesses; others argue that it is nothing more than superficial window-dressing.
Whatever your credo, it is big news: our very own M&S has its much vaunted Plan A policy and most of our clients have some form of CSR policy. Of equal importance, from an employment point of view, candidates have actively stated that an organisation’s approach to CSR is one of the criteria they use to select or deselect businesses.
But in reality, the most difficult aspect of this whole area is apathy. So the sites below represent three different approaches to getting consumers and businesses off their collective backsides. They may not be technically brilliant or creatively fantastic, but the ideas hold true…
Enjoy
A
Do the Green Thing (http://www.dothegreenthing.com/)
This site does what it says on the tin. Lots of hints, tips and advice on how to save energy, supported by Facebook apps, wikis, Google mashups, blogs and other useful gadgets. What I find interesting is that clients and agencies are starting to appear within the Groups section, including Nokia, Carphone Warehouse, Agency.com and TBWA (both Omnicom companies). Is there enough interest (and commitment) for a Hodes group?
Greenscore (http://www.greenscore.org)
Another site that does what it says on the tin. The interactive scoring quiz is a depressing reminder that I’m not doing nearly enough (apologies for the hideous double negative). I would like to see better calls to action: for example, my transport score was a dismal 20%, but I would have liked to know what I could do to improve this. It struck me that there is a great opportunity here for local and national businesses to get involved, sell products and build deeper and more substantial relationships with end consumers (imagine, for example, if one of the construction companies like Laing got involved).
Greenshouts.tv (http://www.greenshouts.tv/)
OK, it’s a shameless plug for Al’s dad, but nepotism can’t be bad when the overarching aim is morally right. Greenshouts is a site that tries to bring together consumers and organisations to engage in an active debate about their CSR policies. The organisations get to post their CSR video and we, the general consumer, get to comment back. Functionally, the site could work better, and it would be interesting to see a greater use of Social Media technology, but I like the idea. And (unusually for the web) it achieves a world first: the first IPTV platform dedicated to all things Green. It will be interesting to see whether it takes off…