Be Strategic, Consistent, and Authentic
When a company decides to commit to doing business for good as well as just doing good business, it must clearly define a purpose-driven strategy, align the company’s goals and activities with that strategy, and then consistently pursue it.
Vahé Torossian, ’10, corporate vice president of business applications sales at Microsoft, said for the technology giant, being a financially successful company was no longer sufficient. Microsoft undertook research to identify customers’ expectations in terms of the value that it creates—something he called its North Star.
He said a clear finding was the need to ensure company strategy was focused on genuineness and authenticity. For example, 72 percent of customers were more likely to support brands that were authentic in their advertising. “The only one way for us to crack the code of trust, loyalty, and authenticity was very much to focus on that connection point,” he said.
When Microsoft realized prioritizing sustainability and supporting the startup ecosystem were critical parts of its mission, it put in place measures to support those. On sustainability, it committed to being carbon negative by 2030 and to removing all the carbon it has emitted directly or through electricity use since the company was founded, in 1975. To help startups, it established a $1 billion capital fund to create a pool of innovation.
“Since then, we have been communicating on the progress and learnings, what works and what doesn’t work,” said Torossian. “That’s an example of a strong commitment, how we measure it, and how we are transparently communicating.”
Abigail Sussman, professor of marketing and the Beatrice Foods Co. Faculty Scholar, has researched consumers’ responses to internal changes to corporate operations versus corporate donations to external causes.
She concurred with Torossian that consumers look for authenticity. In her data, making external charitable donations was seen less favorably by consumers relative to internal change within the firm, leading to lower relative purchasing intentions. “The internal investment is what’s going to be seen as more authentic, more effortful, and more effective. It will even make the company appear more competent,” she said.
Torossian’s corporate experience and Sussman’s research findings align about the need for a company to take a holistic and strategic approach to purpose-driven work that incorporates the importance of corporate social responsibility—and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) in particular—in many aspects of its marketing model.
For Stephen Taylor, ’07, former CMO at HMG Global, home of Nokia—a relatively small player in the phones market—it was essential to define a purpose that differentiated the company from its giant rivals.
Taylor led an effort at HMG Global to adopt a new market strategy that would appeal to customers who wanted to keep their devices for longer rather than choosing an annual upgrade. As a corollary, he cited clothing company Patagonia’s 2011 Black Friday campaign “Don’t buy this jacket” that encouraged customers to consider the environment impact of overconsumption. This connected back to his point that “you’ve got to have an authentic story before you can genuinely go out and start shouting,” he said.
Taylor provided another example from a previous job that reinforced this idea. He explained that Proctor & Gamble successfully adopted an authentic strategy in their campaign for Pampers diapers under which the company donated a maternal and newborn tetanus vaccine to UNICEF for every pack bought. After 16 years, 100 million women and babies across the world have been vaccinated, and 500,000 babies’ lives saved.
All three of these speakers emphasized to attendees that successful ESG-focused marketing must be aligned with a company’s corporate mission and consistently portray authenticity. When there is a proper roadmap, business can do good business—and do business for good.