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People Get Sustainability, Business (and Marketers) Don't: 20 Minutes with the CEO of Unilever
Posted by Aman Singh in Capitalism 2.0, CSR, CSRwire
Accountability, aman singh, Brand Management, Business, Capitalism 2.0, cause marketing, CEO Network, climate change, consumer behavior, Consumerism, CSR, CSRwire, Edelman, Innovation, integrated reporting, keith weed, Leadership, leadership, marketing, Marketing, millennials, milton friedman, palm oil, paul polman, politics, rainforest alliance, Social Enterprise, Stakeholder Engagement, supply chain, Supply chain management, Sustainability, sustainability, tensie whelan, the rainforest alliance, unilever, unilever ceo, Work culture
Last month, Unilever CEO Paul Polman was in town – New York – to receive the Lifetime Achievement award from the Rainforest Alliance. As Rainforest Alliance President Tensie Whelan put it, "Paul has made several lifetimes of difference by leading Unilever to become a game changer."
The company's work with the Rainforest Alliance is well-known – by setting targets like sourcing 100 percent of its palm oil sustainably, Unilever has made it easier for other companies to follow suit and helped complex supply chains become comfortable with change and collaboration.
And, the company hasn't stopped at palm oil.
Today, roughly 50 percent of the company's tea originates on Rainforest Alliance Certified farms as it works toward sourcing 100 percent of its raw agricultural materials from sustainable origins (that figure currently stands at 48 percent).
Having recently interviewed Unilever's Marketing Chief Keith Weed on the company's refreshed goals and commitments, the opportunity to discuss sustainable development from the vantage point of the outspoken CEO was tempting. We caught up over a quick phone call:
The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan:
"When we launched it we said we don't have all the answers. One of the reasons why we are working so well with Rainforest Alliance is because we share common goals. Take tea for example: Standards are driving up fast in an industry that's not easy to standardize. [This is where the] scale of Rainforest Alliance is significant – and essential for the USLP to come alive.
"[Its] only been a year since the Rana Plaza fire happened. Those 1,050 women worked in conditions that were little more than modern-day slavery. We're determined not to let that happen in our supply chain. So we've put some goals to match our resolve. We're going to help more women gain access to training and land rights. The transformation can be substantial."
Pushing forward in the absence of political will/action:
"In the absence of politicians, we need to move faster. Climate change is a great opportunity for business. Report from the White House is an encouraging sign. Needle is starting to move in the U.S. The tornadoes and hurricanes are starting to drive the message home for people.
"Besides, this is probably the only opportunity we'll have. The Millennium Development Goals, for instance, are due to be completed next year – the urgency cannot be watered down."
The most critical challenge for business:
"The biggest challenge is [that] we cannot scale our ambitious goals alone. It's a major challenge to create the right partnerships and increasingly difficult to get the political sector to participate. How do you create size and scale in a vacuum?"
The changing role of marketers:
"I always say, don't blame the consumers. There are many examples where consumers are leading business, especially the young ones. They're changing our lives and systems.
"Consumers are speaking out everyday but we don't want to see it. Then we say the consumer doesn't want to change. If we can tap into the enormous movements, we can create change much faster. That's the job of the modern-day marketers. Their job has changed. It doesn't work any more to push consumption. We need a new model and get companies to adjust their marketing strategies as well as their job roles."
People get it, business doesn't:
"I spend a lot of time on how to develop leaders who can lead us through partnerships, with purpose, can think long-term and beyond 2020. On my way back from Abu Dhabi last month, I was reading an article that reported university students rebelling against the way economics [is being taught]. If teachers are teaching Milton Freidman's theories, who is going to change the economy? For my kids, sustainability is the new normal. They don't want to watch TV or buy the newest gas-guzzling car. Their generation is already thinking differently. Yet, marketers keep saying consumers don't want it.
"Our understanding of consumers [and consumption] is too narrow. We need to get much closer to consumers. If we go to any of the emerging markets – 81 percent of the world's population lives outside the U.S. and Europe – most of the growth is occurring in climate stretched areas today. They might not understand Rio+20 or climate change language but they know that weather patterns are changing, water is decreasing, etc."
From mindless to mindful consumption:
"Marketers should switch from asking whether consumers are willing to pay for something to which consumer doesn't want less poverty, more education, a healthier world with cleaner air and better nutrition.
"We just need to be astute about solutions. Look at the Edelman survey – consumers expect more and more from business, and if business understands this, it is a wonderful time. Children die from diseases which we can solve with hand washing – new market – marketers should be very excited by this. But that connection is not there."
Three actions to change the world:
"We must get out of short termism because lots of solutions are long-term [climate change, access to education, water shortage, etc.] – and we can only solve them if we invest over longer periods and evaluate the social and economic capital. Then business people can optimize these. For example, 40 of the top 100 companies are already pricing carbon internally. They've committed to stay within these limits. Business is leading because they see the cost of action vs. inaction. We have now 40 countries that are pricing carbon including China. We have 20 other countries that are putting a tax on carbon. The system is starting to move.
"We need to give politicians confidence that this [focus on sustainable development and long termism] will not kill jobs or stifle growth. The exact opposite is in fact true but we need to provide the proof points.
"We need to get companies to adopt integrated reporting quickly as well as become comfortable with transparency. It's going to take much more than a nine-to-five job to bring all of this together. We need leaders and we're short on them."
If this was his last interview as the CEO of Unilever:
"We can use our scale to transform systems and change. We need to create a better place than the one we were born in. Ninety-nine percent of people are not in a position to make a difference. We can. We need to force change – it's our duty to leave the place in a better place. I hope this drives Unilever and everyone else."
Originally written for and published on CSRwire's Commentary section Talkback on June 2, 2014.
Fighting for the Sustainable Consumer: A Conversation on Branding, Economic Growth, Risk & Value Propositions
advertising, Apple, books, brand management, Brand Management, brands with purpose, Business, consumer behavior, CSR, CSRwire, doshorts, Edelman, gap, henk campher, Innovation, Leadership, levis, marketing, Marketing, PR, seventh generation, social media, Sustainability, sustainability, sustainable consumption, tesla, toms shoes, transparency
Do consumers care about sustainability or the sustainable attributes of products and services? Would you book a "greener" hotel if the prices were comparative? Did you start paying more attention to labels after the Rana Plaza fire?
When the discussion turns to issues like purpose, risk and connecting consumers with sustainability, Henk Campher becomes fidgety. The Senior Vice President for Business + Social Purpose with Edelman has been at this for a while. Between working with brands like Starbucks, Levi's, Best Buy, Abbott Labs and REI and leading the Oxfam International Coffee Campaign, Campher has built a reputation for challenging the status quo while operating within the trenches of corporate corridors.
Recently, he wrote a DoShorts book titled Creating a Sustainable Brand: A Guide to Growing the Sustainability Top Line [get 15% off by using Campher15 in the voucher section] to put some of his strategies and ideas on paper. We sat down for a conversation on the ideas he presents in the book, why he believes that consumers have bought into sustainability, where he sees the PR industry headed as well as his thoughts on separating the chaff from the substance of sustainability claims [Full disclosure: I was one of the reviewers of the book].
You write that the problem is not that consumers don't want to purchase sustainable products, it's that brands are unable to bring sustainability to life for consumers. Tips?
The most common mistake companies make is to lean too far to either the sustainability of the product or focus too much on how it comes to life for the consumer. The sustainability of a product is only one part of the story – the what part of a sustainable brand. To bring it to life for the consumer, you have to balance this with how this relates to them.
It is a delicate balance but extremely important. Think of the what part as showing the consumer the arms, legs, etc. of the product. It only tells them what it is but it doesn't create a connection. To bring it to life we should show the personality and all the quirkiness of the brand – the how – to help them connect and care about the product.
Sustainable branding is very much like dating – you don't go on a date because the other person breathes and resembles a human being. No, you go beyond that to try to make a connection with how that person relates to you and how you can build a relationship. It will be nothing more than a brief fling if you don't have that connection.
The same for a product – you need to become a sustainable brand or else you will remain a cheap date and/or brief fling. The model described in the book is meant to be a guide on how to build this long-term relationship AND an insider's guide on how to keep the relationship fresh.
Materiality matrices don't matter to consumers but they're proving important in helping companies focus. How can they use these to also engage their consumers?
Start balancing your materiality assessments a bit more. Too often the voices of stakeholders heard in materiality assessments are the loudest and not necessarily the most important voices. Activists, NGOs and sustainability influencers are the ones measured and engaged to inform the materiality assessment. But consumer and customer voices are almost completely absent.
Yet, they remain the most important stakeholder – they bring in the money and add to your business top line! Bringing in their voices will help you determine what areas are truly most material to your company and your most important stakeholders. It will tell you where your major threats and opportunities are as it relates to consumers.
Of course materiality assessments suffer from only focusing on the impact of the product on the supply chain. However, that is only part of the story.
As I argue in the book, you can create the most sustainable cigarette but it is still a cigarette. You have to give equal weight to the impact of the product itself. This will help you determine the weaknesses in how something is made as well as the actual impact of the product itself and help you dodge the dreaded claim of greenwashing.
But how sustainable the product itself is only tells you one side of the story.
It tells us what we should focus on when we engage the consumer but not how we should engage them. The next step will vary from brand to brand – determining how sustainability comes to life in the brand. What is the unique value proposition of sustainability in the brand? How deeply is sustainability embedded in the brand identity? How does it show itself to the consumer? Is it disruptive in engaging the consumer or more reserved?
That's the model I develop in the book – merging the what and how to create a sustainable brand that resonates with the consumer.
Getting used to failure is tough – you offer a healthy dose of how the best of brands have gone through it. Some tips for our risk-averse private sector?
Failure isn't tough – it is part of being in business.
Companies who say they are risk averse are doomed to fail. They will still be making the same boring product that increasingly fewer people buy in the future. It was a risk to create the first iPod. It was a risk to create Tesla. It was a risk to create TOMS. It was a risk to take Dove to where it is today. Sustainability folks are risk averse because they are selling sustainability instead of selling a business opportunity.
And I don't mean improving the bottom line. That has been done and there is no risk left there. Sustainability folks need to step out of their box and become part of business from a product and brand perspective and deliver against the consumer opportunity.
But it's not just the sustainability people. It is also the communications and marketing people. They think throwing more money at advertising, PR, social media, etc. will create the breakthrough they need to survive. That isn't risk. That is table stakes and nothing different from what your competitors are doing. At best you can hope for a better campaign.
We need these groups to understand how sustainability can add to the simple question people ask when they buy a product or service – why should I give a damn?
The answer is more complex than a pure sustainability story but sustainability is absolutely part of the answer. Communication and marketing people speak a different language than sustainability people and in the book I try to bridge that gap to get them to both speak "business." And business is all about calculated risk taking.
"We've embedded sustainability into the very core of our business." We've heard this classic line or a similar version of it a million times by now. It's classic PR speak – but is there any organization out there that could truly say that and demonstrate it?
Lies, damn lies and sustainability PR.
My other favorite line is "sustainability is in our DNA." No it is not. Making money is in your DNA.
Jokes aside, the simple answer is yes there are companies with sustainability at the core of their business. Method, Seventh Generation, Tesla, etc. were created with a specific sustainability goal in mind. They aren't perfect but it is absolutely at the core of who they are. But a true answer is a bit more complex than that.
In the book I create a framework to show how sustainability can come to life in a brand. Sometimes it is truly at the core but in most cases it comes to life in very different ways. I identify eight ways in the framework– from ignored to designed. Method is an example of a brand that was designed with a sustainability goal in mind – absolutely at the core of their business. A brand like TOMS was inspired by a sustainability challenge while a brand like Dove aligned itself with a sustainability challenge.
In short, sustainability isn't a simple black and white world and it constantly changes. And sustainability isn't perfect.
The only cliché that might be right is the "journey" bit. But it is crucial that we acknowledge and show the different ways that sustainability is part of a brand, as it will direct the kind of engagement we should have with the consumer. You can't just go out and hit the consumer (or anyone) over the head with a "sustainability is core to our business" baloney. No one will believe it. Know how it is part of you and then find a way to express it in a way that is relevant to both the consumer as well as the brand itself.
A few weeks ago, you participated in a Twitter chat we hosted on the confluence of business sustainability and economic growth. How would a "sustainable brand" approach the conundrum?
I think the "conundrum" is a bit of a red herring.
We can absolutely not consume the way we consume at the moment and we have to understand how to create sustainable economic growth. However, economic growth isn't a problem when it comes to sustainability. The problem is that the way the economy is growing currently is unsustainable. For instance, in the U.S. you have an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor. A more equal distribution of the wealth created by economic growth needs to happen.
It can be done – look at Germany, gap between CEO pay and average worker pay is much lower, they have a much higher minimum wage, outgrow the U.S. economy with higher taxes, more social benefits for the poor, a balance of trade in favor of them, etc. Everything that pundits say will undermine economic growth is flipped on its head in Germany – and it's working.
It is only a "conundrum" because of a lack of political and economic will to address the unsustainable elements of the economy.
On the consumption side, the world will be fine if people consume more of the sustainable stuff. TOMS and Timberland instead of cheap knock-offs on the streets. Levi's and GAP instead of fast fashion. Fresh fruit and vegetables locally grown instead of fast food. A Tesla or Leaf instead of a gas guzzler. Renewable energy instead of coal. Method or Seventh Generation instead of high pollutant chemicals.
There's no problem if growth is based on more sustainable choices. How do we get consumers to do this? Well, like I say in the book… more sustainable brands that look at product and brand!
You've worked with numerous companies on brand development over the last two decades. What has shifted?
Firstly, social media and the connected world have redefined how brands interact with consumers. Twenty years ago, companies owned brands and sold that to the consumer. Today, they are merely custodians of the brand and consumers own it. The more agile businesses realize that the easier it will be for them to be trusted as the custodians of the brand – the more consumers will give them their loyalty.
Secondly, price and quality have become increasingly meaningless parts of a brand. Companies know that it is almost impossible to compete on price and have brand value. They would love to think that there is a huge quality difference between them and their major competitors but there isn't. For instance, the difference between most cars in the same category is almost meaningless. So how do consumers make their choices? According to the value proposition offered by the brand.
Finally, the ways in which brand value proposition comes to life for the consumer has shifted. The days of the big advertising campaign is gone. Today they want you to not only be part of their lives but also do things that are unexpected and disruptive. Consumers are flooded with information and visual stimuli each day. How you break through all of that clutter is key. And that goes beyond simple shiny objects. You have to build it into your brand identity and value proposition – so it is as much strategic as tactical.
What remains as challenging?
The single biggest remaining challenge is how most companies remain paralyzed by fear without them even knowing it. Companies' inability to think outside of their walls and being frozen inside those walls are their biggest failures. They are still navel gazing and seeing the world from only their perspective instead of truly understanding the world.
It comes back to the risk question you asked before – you won't win if you don't take risks. But so often companies will say they want to win but don't really have the guts to do it. This is the difference between good brands and winning brands. Like an athlete – Dick Fosbury (go look it up!) changed the world of high jumping because he was willing to by-pass conventional thinking. Apple and TOMS did the same.
Yes you can point out all their faults but they kicked your backside because they weren't afraid. Why? Because they didn't look at what you were doing but rather looked at the problem and the consumer and created something to fill that void.
The other major challenge is how shareholders continue to drive company leaders instead of customers. This problem is too obvious to even state but they are so focused on the next quarter and shareholders that they forgot why they even exist. Imagine if they put as much attention to what their consumers truly want.
You work at the unique cusp between classic public relations and responsible brand development. Where do you see the PR sector headed in the next 20 years?
Sustainability will be like digital skills. It will be part of every single part of the PR sector. It won't be a separate practice anymore but we are still a very long way from achieving that. Too many PR hacks think they can just make it up as they go. Create a cause here and a consumer campaign there. They will get burnt so many times until they move on and the industry really starts to up-skill all of their people.
Remember, agencies are as vulnerable as any of their clients. The hyper transparent world means that any consumer and activist can look at what agency is behind the greenwashing. No one expects perfection but they better start waking up before they are hit by their own BP-style disaster.
My biggest fear is that PR agencies don't realize that their people are highly under skilled to handle the shifting world and impact of creating a sustainable brand. The industry will be caught out if they don't start relooking at what they do and whether their people are geared towards the changing world.
And, of course, for them to be a sustainable PR brand, they will need to start asking what the impact of their service is. The model created in this book goes beyond products – it covers services, software, social media and everything else in between.
A main question remains – do you have a sustainable brand?
The answer for the PR sector is the same as with most other sectors – simply, no. But follow the model and you can start creating your sustainable brand. [Grab a copy of Creating a Sustainable Brand: A Guide to Growing the Sustainability Top Line – get 15% off by using Campher15 in the voucher section.]
Originally written for and published on CSRwire's Commentary section Talkback on May 8, 2014.
When Sustainability Ambitions Become a Living Plan: Unilever Expands, Deepens Commitments
Posted by Aman Singh in Capitalism 2.0, CSR reporting, CSRwire, ESG
#iwashmyhands, #sustliving, #toilets4all, agriculture, aman singh, Business, Capitalism 2.0, CEO Network, children, climate change, CSR, CSR reporting, CSRwire, deforestation, Disclosure & Transparency, entrepreneurship, Environment, ESG, food security, keith weed, Leadership, lifebuoy, marketing, project sunlight, Social Enterprise, Social Media, Stakeholder Engagement, stakeholder engagement, supply chain, Supply chain management, Sustainability, sustainability, sustainable living plan, Twitter, unilever, women
Yesterday, Unilever released the latest refresh to its Sustainable Living Plan with yet another subtle headline [don't blame them for being European]: Unilever Expands Sustainable Living Ambition.
And once again it is seeking to set a mindset shift.
Besides a metrics update that started at the beginning of the month with the announcement that the company had successfully reduced the rate of diarrhea among children from 36 percent to five percent through its Lifebuoy branded handwashing campaign 'Help A Child Reach 5,' the company announced its decision to step away from calling the Plan, well, a Report.
A Plan That Is Meant to Evolve
As Chief Marketing Officer Keith Weed told me:
"The Living Plan is meant to evolve. Today, we're engaging more, we're collaborating more. We're not writing a separate report any longer. And I'm proud to say that we're moving toward an integrated report in our effort show how this is now integrated in our overall plan…why we closed down our CSR department. Sustainability [for us is] integrated, truly embedded across our value chain."
The company also hosted a live by-invitation-only event in London with 100 senior sustainability influencers to discuss the next iteration of the Plan: an expansion to include three specific social targets:
Fairness in the workplace ["We have been working with Oxfam on the condition of factory workers in our extended supply chain in Vietnam – and the lessons we have learned we're taking global, including a new sourcing policy, which makes clear basic levels of human rights that suppliers must adhere to."]
Opportunities for women ["By 2020, we want to help empower five million women. They're a key part of our international supply chain."]
Developing inclusive business ["Like our Shakti model in India"]
And a re-emphasis of what it considers its most critical challenges:
Helping combat climate change by working to eliminate deforestation, which accounts for up to 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions
Improving food security by championing sustainable agriculture, and improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers who produce 80 percent of the food in Asia and Sub Saharan Africa
Improving health and well-being by helping more than a billion people gain access to safe drinking water, proper sanitation and good hygiene habits.
The Rarity of Receiving Honest Feedback
I was catching up with Weed – who was among the initial creators of the USLP and continues to lead it across the organization today – right after the live event. And he was in a good mood. "In its early days, everyone was genuinely impressed [with the USLP] and were always polite in giving us feedback. They were probably also scared of scaring us off. But now, three years in, they're more open with their feedback," he told me.
The company is making good progress.
Besides good results from its #Iwashmyhands and #toilets4all campaigns, for example, some of the reported highlights include:
Over 75 percent of its factories have achieved zero non-hazardous waste to landfill
A new technology would reduce plastic in its Dove body wash packaging by 15 percent
Forty eight percent of agricultural raw materials are now from sustainable sources, up from 14 percent in 2010,
It completed training over 570,000 smallholder farmers and increased the number of Shakti women micro-entrepreneurs in India from 48,000 in 2012 to 65,000 in 2013
Avoided costs of €350million since 2008 in reducing raw materials and implementing eco-efficiency measures in factories on energy, water and waste
Launched compressed versions of its Sure, Dove, Vaseline deodorants across the U.K., which equal to 25 percent of CO2 savings per can.
As Weed counted off, "We've integrated USLP into our core business, brands like Lifebuoy are experiencing double-digit growth signifying that integrating sustainability in the core of your brand works, we're creating less waste, saving money, creating eco efficiencies across our value chain, and if positioned right, can have everyone involved engaged."
Demonstrating the [Sustainability] Case Internally
"But perhaps the most important highlight is that we are starting to show progress against our commitments and core belief [about integrated sustainability into our business] internally," he added.
But other challenges emerged.
"Although water usage across our manufacturing facilities was down, when you take into account our entire value chain, it actually went up as did our greenhouse gas emissions. Also scale is tough."
And the need for good partners.
"We're stepping up working with others on transformational change. We've learned a lot in the last three years. We need to work with others. For example, deforestation contributes 15 percent of GHG – we've been doing a lot of work on palm oil by ourselves. Now [we want to] expand the efforts to government and civil society so that we can get to zero net deforestation by 2020," he added.
Challenges: Finding Partners, Changing Habits
For a brand as diversified and exposed as Unilever, finding partners that share ideologies are critical as is changing consumer behavior.
Last year, we collaborated with the Unilever team on a communication strategy that told the USLP story as well as helped the company engage in critical dialogue with its diverse audience. Besides a detailed blog series penned by Sustainability Chief Gail Klintworth that took us behind the scenes and on the ground with the USLP goals – and a live Twitter chat that generated hundreds of questions – one of the toughest challenges that emerged was influencing consumer behavior.
And some things are finally starting to shift.
Like the 180 million people who now know how to wash their hands properly. Or the 55 million who now have access to safe drinking water. Or the 70 million people who have already watched/engaged with Unilever's innovative Project Sunlight.
"The point is to make sustainable living commonplace. We're an optimistic company – if you get engaged, let's work together," said Weed. "Stakeholders are telling us they felt this was very much a part of our business. People are sitting up and talking."
Numbers aside, changing habits is hard – and it remains the company's toughest challenge. "We're using everything we can from celebrities to local partners and rewards. They say it takes 30 days to change a habit. Initiatives like Project Sunlight are important because of this," he said.
Or the decision to replace current deodorants with compressed versions. "People see smaller cans and think it's not value for money," Weed offered. "But if there is any company that has the resolve to take on these challenges, it's us. We know markets, scale, know how."
Engagement, engagement and more engagement. As the marketing chief put it, "We need to engage more people to think beyond their own communities and families. It will happen."
More about the USLP Refresh here.
Originally written for and published on CSRwire's Commentary section Talkback on April 29, 2014.
#SodexoCR: A Conversation on Integrated Reporting, Responsible Supply Chain Management, Values, Ethics & More…
Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSR reporting, ESG
aman singh, Brand Management, community development, CSR, CSR reporting, Disclosure & Transparency, diversity, employee engagement, Environment, ESG, ethics, integrated reporting, marketing, Social Media, social media, sodexo, stakeholder engagement, supply chain, Sustainability, sustainability, Sustainability Report, Twitter
https://storify.com/AmanSinghCSR/sodexocr-a-conversation-on-integrated-reporting
Connecting the Dots Between Consumers, Consumption & Sustainability: The External Face of Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan
Brand Management, Business, cause markeing, cause marketing, CSRwire, employee engagement, Environment, ESG, marketing, packaging, palm oil, PepsiCo, roundtable on sustainable palm oil, sanitation, Stakeholder Engagement, supply chain, Supply chain management, Sustainability, sustainability, unilever, unilever sustainable living plan, waste, water
What role does a consumer-facing sustainability strategy play in an ambitious plan like the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan? That's where I left off in my interview with Marketing Chief Keith Weed last week in our review of the ambitious Plan two years since launch.
From Desire to Habit: Unilever's Five Levers for Change
He chose to respond by explaining a framework called the "Five Levers for Change" that his team developed to solve exactly this dilemma. An excerpt:
Make it understood. Sometimes people don't know about a behavior and why they should do it. This Lever raises awareness and encourages acceptance.
Make it easy. People are likely to take action if it's easy, but not if it requires extra effort. This Lever establishes convenience and confidence.
Make it desirable. The new behavior needs to fit with how people like to think of themselves, and how they like others to think of them. This Lever is about self and society.
Make it rewarding. New behaviors need to articulate the tangible benefits that people care about. This Lever demonstrates the proof and payoff.
Make it a habit. Once consumers have changed, it is important to create a strategy to help hold the behavior in place over time. This Lever is about reinforcing and reminding.
"We need to continue to work with others to drive this change. If we achieve the Sustainable Living Plan, and it doesn't change business at scale, ultimately that's a fail. Unilever's impact is huge but we're still a drop in the ocean. We need a movement going for businesses to help address this," he explained.
"We are already working with organizations like the World Toilet Organization, UNICEF and others on sanitation, for example, which is a very important issue for us. Two million children die every year from pneumonia or diarrhoea. In a world where there are more mobile phones than toilets or toothbrushes, our work ahead is sure cut out for us," he added.
The fact is Unilever cannot do it alone. None of it.
And Weed and team have understood that since launching the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. While scale is a huge factor, organizations require individual and mass power to change consumer behavior and habits. And that is where the Five Levers for Change along with creative partnerships like the kind Weed referred to can help.
Making Sustainability Personal…
"I was in Brazil recently speaking to a lady in Sao Paulo about the environment and the city's pollution. For her this meant dust from the nearby construction and the tainted flavor of her water supply. These were her immediate challenges – not deforestation or climate change. People view the world through the prism of my world – family, friends, and community. Our world is a step bigger: the city you live in, the supermarket, the local dump, etc. And the final level, 'the world' is the rainforest, the ice melting in the Arctic," Weed continued.
His point: We need to connect "my world" with "the world" for consumers. "Right now we're at level one. When I asked the lady what she thought would solve the issues, she suggested stopping the
littering because it would stop the drains from getting clogged and therefore avoid local floods. Level One," he said.
What companies need to do is create a movement and work with people to drive change. A natural question then: Is Unilever working with other companies on its initiatives or primarily with nonprofits?
… and a Business Driver
One example Weed offered was palm oil.
"We purchase a lot of palm oil but it still makes only for three percent of the world's palm oil. We started our journey by promising to source 100 percent of our palm oil sustainably by 2020. It's a clear signal to the entire palm oil supply chain that that is the future we are working toward."
"But this goal would be impossible to reach across the value chain without working with other purchasers of palm oil. So we work with other businesses and NGOs on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to do this collectively."
In fact, Weed says Unilever managed to reach the 100 percent goal last year because of this collective effort. The next step: To make the supply chain of sustainable palm oil easier and connected by 2020. "Right now procuring sustainable palm oil means weaving through a very complex supply chain," he added.
Another example: the work of the Consumer Goods Forum, which includes 650 members including manufacturers, competitors, retailers and NGOs, responsible for over $2.5 trillion in sales. And Weed is pretty positive about the goals and work of the Forum: "There are a lot of companies getting behind the need to address the negative impacts of deforestation, and momentum is starting to build," he said.
While momentum is starting to build – with several companies announcing new initiatives and collaborations – the issue did bring us back full circle to where we started: how do we connect these overarching partnerships with the average consumer?
Subtle Messaging & Cause Marketing
And what role does cause marketing play in Unilever's 2020 plan? Should we expect more nuanced advertising on the lines of the Dove campaign, for example? Or go full throttle like Patagonia's "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign?
It's going to be subtler, says Weed. "For example, for our Tomato soup in Germany or our Ketchup in India, we talk about sourcing tomatoes sustainably. With our Lipton tea, we talk about sourcing all our tea and tea bags sustainably by 2020," Weed explained.
"Consumers comprehend these messages differently though. When we talk about sourcing our tea sustainably, customers see the Rainforest Alliance logo as a sign of better quality and taste, not necessarily sustainability. With our Hellman's mayonnaise we discuss cage-free eggs. Consumers perceive that as an indication of better food: animals are better looked after therefore they're getting better food. However, it's still early days," he added.
Work Culture: Participating in Change
Early days also for Unilever's employees, who are witnessing – and participating – in a significant shift culturally at a company that has left behind decades of "doing things one way" to a more complex ideology. How has the company's culture evolved since 2010?
According to Weed, the greater purpose espoused by the Sustainable Living Plan has been significant for employees – kind of like Performance with Purpose over at competitor PepsiCo. "The notion that you can work for a business to earn money, build a career and also do it in a better way is significant. We need new ways of doing business in the future – our generation has stolen from our children's
generation financially and environmentally – so we 're going out and saying we want our employees to innovate and encourage new ways of doing business," Weed said.
In fact, the marketing chief, who also leads internal and external communications for Unilever, says despite the many crises facing our world today engagement levels among employees have gone up consistently every year.
A sentiment that resonated in an email I received this week from Kam Erik Fierstine, a project delivery manager in Unilever Engineering Services at the company's Henderson, Nev.-based ice cream plant. Here's what he wrote when I asked him about the culture at his company:
"The Sustainable Living Plan is something that is quite apparent to those of us that live in a desert-like area where we are very conscious of water usage. It has shown our employees that Unilever has the same values that we were raised with. Our employees would not put up with a leaky faucet at home, and now they have the backing of management to proactively fix these simple issues at work."
"We all agree that we want to leave a healthy planet for future generations and we can help do that by conserving our resources. Our employees see the management team walking the talk and that empowers them to escalate issues and voice new ideas. They will now do small things to make a larger impact like pick up things from the floor or switch off conveyors or equipment when not in use."
The Henderson, Nev.-based ice cream plant was recently honored by the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy for its sustainability practices.
"They see us taking on challenges in a positive way and that's inspiring," Weed wraps up.
Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan: The Challenges of Being Too Ambitious
Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSR reporting, CSRwire
agriculture, Brand Management, Business, cause marketing, climate change, Consumerism, Corporate Governance, CSR, CSR reporting, CSRwire, disclosure, Disclosure & Transparency, dove, energy, environment, Environment, food, hygiene, Leadership, lifebouy, marketing, nutrition, paul polman, Social Enterprise, supply chain, Supply chain management, Sustainability, sustainability, Sustainability Report, unilever, unilever sustainable living plan, water
Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan was created and launched amid much fanfare in 2010. It was lauded for its ambitious goals, an exhaustive list of metrics and for its commitment to put sustainable and equitable growth at the heart of its business model.
This week, the consumer products company released its second progress report and it began with a stark statement from CEO Paul Polman:
The world continues to face big challenges. The lack of access of many to food, nutrition, basic hygiene and sanitation, clean drinking water or a decent job should be a concern to all of us. We firmly believe business has a big role to play in striving for more equitable and sustainable growth, but large-scale change will only come about if there is real collaboration between companies, governments and NGOs across all these areas.
Now, the report is impressive, exhaustive and filled with data. So to get beyond the flash, the avalanche of numbers and statistics, I reached out to Keith Weed, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer also responsible for the Sustainable Living Plan, to discuss not only the challenges of reaching some of the goals Unilever is striving for by 2020 but also the successes, the unforeseen road bumps and the transformation the company is undergoing culturally because of the Plan.
To get started, here are the three overarching goals Unilever began its Plan with:
Help more than a billion people take action to improve their health and well-being;
Source 100 percent of agricultural raw materials sustainably;
Halve the environmental footprint of its products across the value chain.
Ambition: Sustainability in Perspective
"The report is indicative of what we're trying to do. We're trying to do things at scale. This is not a [standalone] CSR project in Africa but something that touches every single element across our value chain," he began.
It takes a mindset shift to put Unilever's plan in perspective. As Weed explained, "The idea that it isn't just about the footprint of your facilities…we have to think all the way through the lifecycle of a product from consumer to facilities to sourcing to the impact of key productions. The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan guides our direction."
Did his team realize the magnanimity of the goals they were setting? "We knew that we couldn't achieve all of them but that if we set them like this, we would find solutions along the way by working with others," he said, adding, "When you get interconnected, solutions and opportunities open up. That was the spirit we started with."
And the results encapsulated on Unilever's website and a 53-page PDF download, are in keeping with that spirit. "It's not about mechanically ticking off the targets and goals. Our Sustainable Living Plan is a movement to get business to move toward socially and environmentally sustainable future," he clarified.
The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan: Highlights
First of, he reminds me that from the outset, the Plan set out the sustainability goals to be achieved alongside the mission set out in 2009 to double the business. "We serve two billion people a day and another 2.5 billion are expected to be added to the world's population by 2050. So our goal is to reduce our environmental footprint and increase our social impact while doubling our business."
The good news: "We have started to drive sustainability into the core of our business and today, our sustainability efforts are helping to drive business growth." One example is Unilever's popular Lifebouy soap, which was rebranded in 2010 with a social purpose alongside:
[We went] from selling soap to encouraging people to wash their hands – and wash them correctly. And our efforts have resulted in double-digit growth over the last three years – and reaching millions with our Handwashing campaign. It's proving the coherence of our strategy of combining social impact with business growth instead of just a sales goal," Weed explained.
Other examples:
Laundry cleaner: Unilever increased its market share by 10 percentage points since 2010 to over 25 percent, with its concentrated liquids, which according to Weed carry a much lower carbon footprint in production and use.
Dry shampoos: A huge opportunity for the company, right now dry shampoos are mostly sold in the U.S. – where Unilever occupies a 75 percent market share. But as the company enters into more water-restricted countries, Weed predicted an accompanying increase in sales. The environmental benefit? Compared to heated water, dry shampoo reduces CO2 by 90 percent through lower water usage and less heating of water for the shower. An added benefit for developing countries: water conservation.
Dove: The Self Esteem campaign continued to gain momentum with 62 percent of women who know of the campaign now recommending Dove to others. "The campaign started with the idea that we should think differently about how we portray beauty," said Weed, "Today, it's a global movement."
Oral hygiene: Unilever's oral hygiene campaign helped its Signal brand grow by 22 percent in 2012. "People brush their teeth in the morning and evening, which requires more toothpaste, ergo a virtuous circle," contextualized Weed.
A Twist on Purposeful Cause Marketing?
So cause marketing spelt and implemented differently. By attaching value and impact with its core products, Unilever is addressing a question all consumer products companies continue to struggle with: how do you change consumer behavior to scale a company's sustainability efforts?
For Unilever, this has meant active pairing of product and messaging with a focus on impact and growth, yet ultimate success is far away.
As Weed explained:
This is a coherent strategy that works – we're increasing our social impact while growing our business. However, while we're making good progress, we're still facing challenges across the value chain, whether it's with sourcing, food production or disposal.
And each carries with it a nuanced set of challenges, a complex set of solutions and invariably a cobweb of marketing, brand positioning and partnerships.
We have reduced our CO2 emissions, non-hazardous waste to landfill has been reduced in 50 percent of our factory sites, we're sourcing over a third of our agricultural raw material from sustainable sources, up from 14 percent when we started in 2010…yet we're miles away from our 2020 target of 100 percent," he offered.
Scaling Behavior: Easier Ideated than Done
Of course, a key ingredient in Unilever's Plan is the ability to scale. For the world's largest tea producer, these achievements might mean small metrics today but when scaled are attribution to an entire value chain at work on technological improvements, environmental studies, and more. However, the opportunity is also a challenge:
"The sheer scale of our commitments is tremendous. For example, we want to be able to educate a billion people by 2020 on washing their hands correctly. That's a lot of people – despite the progress we've already made since 2010 –119 million people reached since 2010, of whom 71 million were reached in 2012. Scale has been more challenging than we originally thought," Weed explained.
Another challenge: encouraging people to adopt new behaviors.
Consumer Behavior: The Toughest Challenge Yet?
"When someone tells you something about hygiene, it's easy to do it for a couple of days and then switch back to your old habits. Habits are hard to change and we're seeing this come up in almost every initiative," he said.
Using the example of laundry, he exemplified:
The biggest use of domestic water across households worldwide is for laundry. Only a few hundred million in North America and Europe use machines. The other billions wash their clothes by hand and usually use four buckets of water to do so: wash in one, rinse in three. Our challenge is to reduce that rinsing from three buckets to one. So we came up with a product that kills the foam – wash in one bucket and rinse in one bucket. Water used is instantly cut to half. And we expected the product to be a runaway success.
The team found that embedding that behavior change of using one bucket instead of three was instrumentally tough. Even in water scarce markets where people have to walk long distances for water. "Rinsing is hard work. I thought this would be a rapid victory but we found that it takes time to change habits and we ended up reaching only 29 million households, much lower than anticipated," he recalled.
When your footprint encompasses billions of culturally diverse populations with very different social and environmental settings, scale becomes an ever-moving target.
Perhaps Weed puts it best again: "If you went to work in a Boeing 747, it wouldn't make a difference to the planet. If half the planet started doing that, it would make a huge difference. The power of individuals is when you scale them together."
And Unilever's 2012 Progress Report while celebrating the company's achievements does not undercut the challenges ahead. "We're breaking new ground every day. We're showing results. But there are several pieces we are yet to crack," said Weed.
Greener Products: Johnson & Johnson's Blended Formula
Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSRwire
al iannuzzi, Brand Management, change managemet, consumer products, CSR, CSRwire, earthwards, ehs, environment, gaia, green, green products, johnson and jonhson, lifecycle analysis, marketing, ray sharples, Sustainability, sustainability
A "fully sustainable company" remains an aspirational goal for many organizations – yet the road to this ambitious endpoint is filled with challenges waiting for innovative solutions.
To get started, a company must assess its environmental impacts and consistently work to minimize them. But can a company ever become a "fully sustainable company" and, if so, what's the right roadmap to getting there?
In last week's post, Al Iannuzzi, Senior Director for Worldwide Environment Health and Safety at J&J wrote, "We believe in greener products." He was instrumental in mapping out Johnson & Johnson's EARTHWARDS process to improve product sustainability and its successful adoption across the business units.
Earthwards is a proprietary process that guides Johnson & Johnson teams to holistically identify, address and improve their products' biggest environmental impacts across a broad range of areas. For Johnson & Johnson, this accounts for a major leap in its journey to becoming a more sustainable enterprise.
Earthwards & GAIA: The Need For Tools
While Earthwards is now the criteria used to assess the sustainability of Johnson & Johnson products, it also requires business specific tools to help make products greener. A key tool for the Consumer Products division is the Global Aquatic Ingredient Assessment, or GAIA for short.
I sat down with Ray Sharples, Manager of EHS & Product Stewardship for Johnson & Johnson's Consumer Division, to discuss the impetus for GAIA.
According to Sharples, there was a need to develop a tool to measure the environmental impacts of the products Johnson & Johnson puts into the marketplace. To address this need, in 2010, the Johnson & Johnson Consumer Product Stewardship team set out to create a new tool to quantify the impacts of various formulas.
"We needed a way to assess which materials were "better" among our ingredients so we could make improvements in the environmental attributes of our products," Sharples said.
Interestingly, this technical and scientific process at Johnson & Johnson spurred opportunities for innovation and got employees engaged in the development of greener products. As part of the Earthwards lifecycle thinking, GAIA now plays a role in helping products achieve Earthwards recognition.
Johnson & Johnson started the GAIA scoring system in 2010. GAIA rates the ingredients in a Johnson & Johnson product. GAIA scores are primarily based on scientific issues such as persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity along with other factors, which, in some cases, can reduce the score of an ingredient.
"The intent behind GAIA was to guide product developers around the world to choose environmentally preferred ingredients," Sharples said.
"The use of ingredients that are readily biodegradable and have minimal environmental impact to the ecosystem allows us to reduce our global environmental footprint. By making this process more streamlined and quantifiable, we're not only increasing our environmental successes, we're making it a part of everyday life," he explained.
Getting a Lift From Earthwards
GAIA was operating almost exclusively with R&D because it was a science-based tool with specific emphasis on measuring downstream ecosystem impacts, but Earthwards changed that.
"Incorporating GAIA as one of the tools within the lifecycle thinking of Earthwards has been really important in mainstreaming GAIA across Johnson & Johnson Consumer group," Sharples said, pointing to the much broader implementation of Earthwards across the company's various business units and divisions.
"GAIA soon took off in the Consumer group, as brand teams tried to obtain Earthwards recognition. We're now using GAIA as a way of educating and engaging our employees on key considerations for
sustainable product development," he added.
Under the GAIA tool, a product with a score between 80 and 100 is considered environmentally preferred, which means the product consists primarily of biodegradable ingredients that minimize its impact on the ecosystem. "Sixty-five percent of our new formulations today achieve a GAIA score of 80 or higher. Our goal is to ensure that 80 percent of all new Johnson & Johnson consumer products score between 80 and 100 by 2017," said Sharples.
Why stop at 80 percent?
"One-hundred percent is just very, very difficult to reach. Even reaching 80 percent will be challenging because of the complexity involved in our formulations," Sharples explained.
GAIA: Hidden Opportunity?
GAIA offers obvious benefits and some less obvious ones. The tool, for example, has often led formulators and R&D teams to find opportunities that they would have previously missed. And making product improvements first through GAIA can help a product development team uncover other lifecycle improvements towards an Earthwards recognition.
Examples of products that first went through the GAIA process and then advanced to achieve Earthwards recognition include Johnson & Johnson's Baby First Touch Zinksalva (Nappy Cream) and Baby First Touch Shampoo, both marketed under the Natusan brand in Europe.
Sharples' comments reminded me of a keynote speech by Jeff Swartz, Timberland's former CEO:
"Sometimes you have to stop wanting the consumer to dictate market trends, innovations and movements. Sometimes you have to take a stand and lead the market."
But not all issues are as easy to remedy.
For example, zinc oxide is a "red" ingredient under GAIA and therefore, one that Johnson & Johnson aims to
avoid. But when it comes to sunscreen, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration [FDA] has approved zinc oxide as an active ingredient in these products and alternative sunscreen active ingredients have other potential environmental concerns.
So how does the company choose its next step?
Challenge the FDA? Continue with the status quo? Change its product formulation? And who takes on the cost burden of changing the formulation of a successfully tested product? The company? The government? The hospitals and health care institutions? Consumers?
These questions are complicated and require equally complicated solutions.
Like Johnson & Johnson, there are numerous companies aspiring to produce sustainable products, using renewable energy, pursuing zero waste and achieving other targets to ensure their impact on the planet and society is a net positive.
So far, their responses have been piecemeal with Johnson & Johnson's Earthwards serving as an excellent example of the holistic approach needed in the marketplace. But is there a truly "fully sustainable company" that has figured it all out? If you know one, drop me an email.
Originally written for and published on CSRwire's Commentary section Talkback on February 27, 2013 and part of a series on Earthwards, a Johnson & Johnson program.
Practicing CSR: Edelman's 2012 Corporate Citizenship Report Reveals Tough Love
Brand Management, Business, CSR, CSR report, CSR reporting, CSRwire, disclosure, diversity, Edelman, human rights, iirc, john edelman, Leadership, marketing, PR, pro bono, supply chain, Sustainability, transparency, voluntary disclosure, volunteerism, work culture
When a PR and marketing firm publishes a corporate citizenship report, there's a tendency to view the results – and the commitments – with a pinch of salt. After all, they're traditional masters of spin. Right?
Wrong, says John Edelman, the namesake PR agency's managing director for global engagement and corporate responsibility. Here's how Edelman's press release describes the firm's commitment to corporate citizenship:
"Some call it corporate social responsibility. Others call it sustainability. For Edelman, global citizenship resonates most as a term describing the larger responsibility business has to society. The firm recognizes its place in the world as global citizens, local offices and individuals."
"We're incredibly pleased [that] we were able to provide over $5 million in cash, non-cash (volunteerism) and in-kind giving in FY12 to the communities in which we operate. Giving back has always been a big part of our agency's heritage and helping our communities is just one of the ways in which we can be responsible global citizens," John added in a recent conversation over email.
So what does the report detail beyond the private firm's green commitments and philanthropic donations?
Human Rights & Supply Chain
Reminding me that citizenship at Edelman has only been a global function for two years, John pointed to two major accomplishments. "The introduction of our human rights policy and our supplier code of conduct. When I started in this role, we began to see more and more client requests and requests for proposals (RFPs) in regard to our citizenship policies. Our development of these two policies in FY12 is directly related to stakeholder expectations of Edelman as a global company," he wrote.
The firm also joined the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex), a web-based platform and registry where companies report on CSR-related initiatives around business and labor practices, health and safety and the environment.
For the past two years, the firm has used the GRI framework as a baseline for its CSR reporting. In 2011, the firm also became "one of 80 companies to join the International Integrated Reporting (IIRC) pilot program…as part of our commitment, our report reflects elements of the Integrated Reporting framework, such as identifying our capitals and transforming that capital to value."
Challenges of Setting CSR Goals…
I have often said/written that the challenge of contextualizing what corporate social responsibility means for the service-based industries is uniquely harder than the consumer products sector. Not that the pressure is any less, as evidenced by the increasing numbers of CSR reports publishing in the last two years, but I do believe that B2B firms must dig deeper to identify – and fulfill – their responsibility to society, employees and the environment.
What's been a unique CSR challenge for a firm that relies on its talent and has an immense global presence?
According to John, "the environmental initiatives and goals have been the most challenging." He explained:
"The biggest contributor to our carbon footprint is business travel, which accounts for 73 percent of our emissions. Business travel for client-facing projects is a key part of what we do every day. Other industries and companies have more control over Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and can achieve reductions through direct actions. Given that we need to travel to service our clients, it's harder for us to control our Scope 3 emissions. While we understand this challenge, we still need to work towards reducing our GHG emissions."
"To that end, we are working individually with each hub office on setting a greenhouse gas reduction target and implementing practices such as increasing usage of video-conference facilities and purchasing 50 percent recycled paper."
And it's not just setting the goal that's been hard.
…And Implementing CSR Programs
Implementing new programs across the firm's markets has been a challenge as well, he said. "We want to be a guiding force without being too prescriptive. We want to empower our employees around the world to implement and take part in citizenship initiatives with the understanding that they need to balance these with their regular workload," he added.
John points out the inherent paradox that organizations like Edelman must tackle: how do you compel employees to volunteer and donate their time, money and skills while expecting them to manage a full workload and often, as is common in the PR world, 60-80 hour work weeks?
Ultimately it comes down to the committed few, driven by their passion and subjective understanding of their society and environment.
Disclosure: Led by Demand for Transparency
Since inception, Edelman has been a proudly private company. So why bother reporting on its non-financial goals? Especially when their service/product is often perceived in the market as spin?
It all comes down to being transparent, says the veteran marketing executive.
"Transparency has never been more important and we strongly believe that whether you're a private or public company, you must be accountable for everything you do. Being transparent is part of how we operate and it's necessary for us to report on the progress and challenges of our citizenship journey."
As an example he pointed me to a section of the report, which highlights that the firm's carbon footprint at "15,518 metric tons CO2e [had] actually increased since our last footprint period." "We provide explanations for that increase, such as improved data-capture practices and control data quality, particularly on business air travel," he said.
CSR: Business Opportunity?
Which leads to another question: As a PR agency, what was the motivation behind launching the Business + Social Purpose division – led by the legendary Carol Cone – beyond the obvious business opportunity with companies evolving from cause marketing initiatives into more robust CSR strategies?
"It was clear that we wanted to 'walk the talk.' Working with clients on sustainability and citizenship is certainly a business opportunity, but beyond that, we needed to evolve and integrate our own practices. This is what we tell our clients: sustainability and citizenship should be integrated into the overall business," he said.
Has the client-driven practice impacted cultural behavior and the firm's organizational hierarchy?
"We have partnered with our Business + Social Purpose (B+SP) team members since we established Global Citizenship as a functional department. This partnership was important because citizenship was a new function, and we wanted to access the expertise of our people to evolve our own Global Citizenship capability."
"As an example, we involved our B+SP team in our materiality analysis to prioritize our FY12 report topics. Through this analysis, we added an entire section on engaging with our clients, as a result of the dialogue with our B+SP members."
Walking the talk? That at least is the objective, he said.
"We talk about the importance of the inside matching the outside, and the idea that your employees are your best ambassadors. Citizenship is an integrated part of our overall corporate strategy and having a unified message and integrated approach to it is imperative for effective impacts on our business and society, rather than having a siloed approach where citizenship sits on the periphery of the company's strategy and operations."
CSR Reporting: The Ultimate Reward
The ultimate reward of having a CSR strategy is when you can use the reporting function as a reflection on your organizational practices and improve them incrementally. As Edelman helps other organizations weave their way through and inculcate CSR into business strategy, it is important that the firm use the same philosophy internally.
"In the long-term, citizenship needs to be further integrated into our overall management systems. We have been making incremental progress year to year….During year one, we established a foundation; during year two, we have established some goals. In year three, we hope to develop metrics around CSR performance and eventually, we hope to create a citizenship scorecard that can be integrated into our management systems," informed John.
How does the firm measure the impact it is driving with its clients?
"We believe it is important to measure impact of citizenship by looking at internal and external measurements. In addition to contributions to the bottom line, such as money saved by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and hours and value of volunteerism, it is important to measure employee engagement, such as employee recruitment and retention."
"Now that we have established goals in some of these areas, we will next develop metrics to assess employee engagement and impact. In an effort to drive a deeper level of employee engagement, we created the Community Investment Grant program, which provides any full-time employee around the network with the opportunity to apply for funding to support a nonprofit organization where they volunteer or serve on the board."
And let's not forget the external piece, he reminded me.
"Any citizenship initiative must be tied to producing public engagement behavior outcomes which are at the core of Edelman's business strategy such as building deeper communities, building trust, adding commercial value, and changing behavior."
Holistic CSR goals, got it.
PepsiCo's Sustainability Communications Manager: "Want to Work in CSR? Focus on Service"
Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, Guest Author
Americorps, brand management, Career advice, corporate social responsibility, CSR, CSR communications, CSR jobs, CSR strategy, daniel pellegrom, Job search, job search in CSR, Jobs in CSR, jobs in CSR, jobs in sustainability, marketing, Netflix, Peace Corps, PepsiCo, PR, Reed Hastings, Social Responsibility, Teach for America
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of joining a variety of leaders in CSR for a roundtable luncheon. Aman Singh chaired the conversation and people from Edelman, Best Buy, Humana, Boeing and Northern Trust discussed some of the CSR issues our companies face today.
But this blog is not about the roundtable. It's about the question Singh asked at the end of our lunch: What advice would I give to aspiring students and professionals who want to work in CSR?
Here's what I said:
I believe students should not focus so much on getting the right job in CSR right away; rather they should focus on getting diverse experiences that will serve them well should they go into business later.
It's these diverse experiences that bring fresh perspective and will help exponentially in defining and driving CSR, sustainability and corporate citizenship in the future.
My answer stems from personal experience.
After college, I joined the Peace Corps and worked on providing water, sanitation and heath care in Ghana.
Then, it didn't seem like living without electricity, bathing in river water, and building schools and rain catchment systems would lead to much of a career in business.
But today as a senior manager for sustainability communications at PepsiCo, I work with partners like water.org and recently attended World Water Week in Stockholm, where PepsiCo launched a report on positive water impact with The Nature Conservancy. I believe coming to a job via a less traveled route, and having learned about important global issues makes one more effective within their company.
There are lots of people in politics, media and business who have benefited from the perspectives only a service program can provide.
In fact, one of my favorite quotes is from Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix who was a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 80's in Swaziland. He said:
Once you've hitchhiked across Africa with 10 bucks in your pocket, starting a business doesn't seem too intimidating.
While I am most familiar with Peace Corps, there are many other service programs like Teach for America and Americorps that provide the same depth of realistic perspective. I am a believer in service, but there are other options too – work for an NGO, travel, teach — just get out there so you can bring something new to the discussion.
— By Daniel Pellegrom
VIDEO: 2degrees Launches Sustainability Quarterly in New York
Posted by Aman Singh in Uncategorized
2degrees, aman singh, aman singh das, brand management, corporate social responsibility, CSR, diageo, Events, Green, Mark Serwinowski, marketing, metavu, PR, roberta barbieri, Social Media, social media, social media and sustainability, Stakeholder Engagement, supply chain, Sustainability, sustainability, Uncategorized
I was recently invited by U.K.-based 2degrees (an online community of over 16,000 sustainability professionals) to participate in their inaugural Sustainability Quarterly in New York City. It was a great panel (co panelists: Mark Serwinowski from Metavu and Roberta Barbieri from Diageo) and my role was to discuss the increasing importance of social media. Not only did I have an interesting task, considering most in the audience did not have a Twitter or Facebook account, they also had some outstanding questions for me.
If you are in the New York area, I highly recommend attending their next quarterly on September 27, 2011. Their working groups methodology and nuts and bolts approach is effective, engaging and immensely productive.
You won't be disappointed.


text:
Montereale may refer to the following Italian comuni:

Montereale, Abruzzo, in the Province of L'Aquila
Montereale Valcellina, in the Province of Pordenone

it:Montereale

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home / Album Reviews / Album Review: Abbreviations "ABBV"
Album Review: Abbreviations "ABBV"
Michael Stover October 26, 2021 Album Reviews Leave a comment
The new album ABBV from Dallas, Texas-based quartet Abbreviations features ten songs centered on guitar, but there's much more going on during these performances. Textual variety is one of the chief strengths distinguishing the songs. Guitar is the musical heart, yes, but the tidy and well-recorded rhythm section provides crucial cornerstones for each performance. Listeners will appreciate the subtle tweaking of otherwise conventional melodies throughout ABBV; much of the songwriting included on the release has at least a slight unsettled quality.
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/abbvband/
It's the sound of discontent. Songwriter Ashley Leer's inspiration for these songs springs from discovering her father's terminal illness, but the settling of personal accounts isn't familial. It's much more broad-based. The songs are dealing with various events in Leer's life and connect with listeners despite their unambiguous autobiographical edge. "Tower" begins the album and introduces us to her approach straight out of the gate.
It highlights the talents of drummer Tony Wann and bass player Chad Walls. They lock in from the beginning and push the track at a brisk pace. It never feels rushed, however. "Tower" breezes along but has tremendous attention to detail – identifying any "holes" in the arrangement and performance is difficult, if not impossible. The lyrics are suggestive rather than specific but nonetheless effective. Leer has a writing style quite unlike anyone else working today, it has poetic trappings meshing well with the arrangement, but some listeners might crave more specificity.
The band's two-guitar lineup gives them plenty of muscle. It's telling, however, that Ashley and Matt Leer seldom lower the hammer on listeners and flatten them with six-string pyrotechnics. Chad Walls' bass line for "Leavin'" has melodic bounce unlike any other track on ABBV and draws you in with little effort. A consistent aspect of the band's identity is their insistence on incorporating melody into whatever they do; anyone who understands how music works its magic on us knows that it's melody that lodges the best songs in our memory. These are songs written to stick in our brains.
"Trick" is a sparkling example of pop and guitars coming together in the best possible way. The only weak spot some listeners may pluck from hearing the song is that the chorus is a little long. Abbreviations never tackle the refrain the same way twice, however, and any drawback is minor. The album's fourth cut "Turn on You" is one of its central performances. It's easy to hear why. It forms a great duo with the preceding track because both master songwriting fundamentals with such ease and then elevate them. Leer's singing lends a near-incandescent air to both tracks.
The stormy and brawling aggression flaming from "Won't Say" couldn't be more different. They are wholly comfortable, however, with these stark shifts in style. They never lose their way and the chaotic energy sustaining the track isn't sound and fury signifying nothing but, instead, there's well-disguised artistry provoking the listener's reactions. "True to Form" has one of the best guitar riffs they concocted for this release and the remainder of the song more than lives up to its rambunctious bite. Rock fans of every ilk should enjoy this album. Abbreviations is a convincing guitar-pop and hard rock, among styles, and effortlessly balances these competing impulses. Those impulses help fuel ABBV and results in one of the genre's most invigorating recent releases.
Hannah Weeks
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Although they play a minor role in the grander scheme of things, the vocals we …

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The final exam will cover all the materials in units 8-15 of the course.
The final will consist of five parts: map quiz (25 points); five identification questions (50 points); surprise question (25 points); timeline (50 points) and essay (100 points).
In the testing center, you will complete the five identification questions, the surprise question, timeline and the essay using Wordpad on a computer. You will then log into Blackboard to submit that part of the exam and to complete the map quiz part of the exam.
For the Map quiz, you already have a copy of the Russia Outline Map (The printable version, which is a *.doc file, will be the one used on the exam although the exam copy will be a bit larger.) and the list of HIS 242 Map Items to be located on the map. On the exam, when you log into Blackboard, you will see a blank map with numbers on it, and you will have to put one of the items for each of the numbers on the map. (I have available a copy of my old study map of Russia, which I have scaled down in size if you wish to use it as a reference. The original map was about 18X28 which made it much easier to locate the items, but that meant I had to scan pieces of it and then splice the pieces together.).
The identification items will be taken from the Key Terms listed in the units. In a few sentences of about a paragraph length for each historical term, you will be asked to completely identify that term and note its importance. See the Sample Test Items.
The surprise question will be taken from the Questions to Consider listed in the units. The surprise question will require about a long paragraph to complete.
Way back in 1969, Andrei Amalrik posed the question, "Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?" Well, it is now more than twenty years after 1984, and the question that you will answer on the final exam is, "Will Russia Survive until 2025? You should analyze Russia's present condition, identifying some of Russia's strengths and weaknesses and noting some of the problems that Russia faces. Given your knowledge of Russian history in the twentieth century, you should then explain what you think will happen to Russia.
Please take the time to organize your thoughts in a logical manner to support your analysis. Please be sure to read the short background information about Andrei Amalrik before you take your exam.
Please review the ELI rules and regulations for examinations and the information on the course page in Blackboard about finding your exam passes and taking the course exams.
If you live outside metropolitan Washington or are incarcerated or handicapped, see the information in the general ELI Policies and Procedures for exam proctors.
Please do not let fear of the exams stop you from completing the course. If you have great difficulty getting to a Testing Center or are concerned about taking exams, please contact your instructor.
There is no specific time limit, but it is recommended that you allow at least 3 hours to complete the exam.
YOU CANNOT USE YOUR TEXT, NOTES, ELECTRONIC DEVICE OR ANY BOOKS TO TAKE THIS EXAM.
NOTE: you will see your score for the map quiz immediately. Your instructor will grade the remainder of your exam and post your total score on the Blackboard gradebook. You will also receive feedback on your exam.
The Final is worth a maximum of 250 points. You must pass the final exam with a grade of "C" (175/250) or better to earn a passing grade of "C" or better in this course.


text:
Luena can refer to:
Luena, Cantabria, Spain
Luena Martínez, former member of British girl group RLY
Luena, Moxico Province, Angola
Luena people, Angola
Luena River (disambiguation)


I especially love rainbow when it comes to vintage items, as you'll be able to see in my shop often. They have such a great retro feel to them, whether its bright colors or pastel. Below is a collection of some rad rainbow vintage from a few of my favorite fellow vintage shops on Etsy. Enjoy!


The Studio Lounger sofa with chaise has a changeable chaise cushion so you can swap the chaise side if you want to rearrange your room or move house.
The simulator fabrics display a representation of the fabric colour shown in the fabric samples on a real life product. These images are a guide only and we recommend ordering samples to see how the fabric looks in your own space and light conditions.


Social media marketing is a mainstay of business today. No matter how stupid you believe tweeting and pinning and liking are, in the end there is a tremendous value to being present online WHEREVER your customers and prospects are.
Used to be business dictated how people found out about them and how they were projected in advertising and the media. You bought an ad, placed a yellow page listing or had a write up in the newspaper that you basically controlled. Today, consumers are out there talking about you and your brand, searching the internet to find out what your company is all about and making buying decisions based on what they find.
Yesterday we had a business owner call to say that there were bad comments out there on a website and he wanted to know what one thing he could do to make that go away. Unfortunately there is no one thing. There are ten spots on google every time someone does a search and he will need to fill those up with LinkedIn listings, website and blog listings, Facebook and Google Plus profiles, YouTube videos and all other manner of data about his company in order to battle that.
So what if no one is talking bad about your company. You are okay with sticking your head in the sand and ignoring social media right? Hmmmm no! Having one website that was supposed to carry the load for your entire marketing efforts may have worked in 2003, but today, you need to be visible across a wide range of media. Your customers all have a favorite and if you aren't on there, your competitors will be attracting their attention before they even get around to searching for your products or services!
So now you know why you need it, why can't you just hire someone in house to do your social media marketing? That way you can look over their shoulder and manage everything internally. Here are my Top 10 reasons for why this is a very bad idea!
1. It is cost prohibitive to get someone that is good. The AVERAGE salary for a social media marketing manager according to Salary.com is $101,969 a year. This does not include benefits that anyone decent will require.
2. The benefits package for this employee will be another expense. In addition to the salary requirements, you have another $12,550 to cover Social Security, retirement, healthcare, etc.
3. Getting someone with marketing experience. Social media marketing is not about social media, it is entirely about marketing. While learning the tools of how to accomplish the tasks is important, you would not hire a surgeon just because she had a good way with cutting her food. Knowing the company's goals, what you want to accomplish and the best ways to do that are skills that are learned over the years. There are four hour courses that some of the so call "social media experts" take to learn the tools and then put themselves out there as gurus. Make sure to ask how long your in house employee has been doing marketing.
4. Staying current with the trends. Social media marketing and SEO are a moving target. You cannot learn something today and think that it will be the same in a year (or even the next two months). One glaring thing that comes to mind here is the practice of using posting services like Hootsuite. While there is a place for those, all you need to do is take a peek at your Facebook timeline to see that there are not nearly as many Hootsuite auto posts as there are real people who hand posted.
5. Keeping up with training. Another huge annual cost you will be bringing in house is training. Your employee will need to take courses and attend conferences and training events to stay current with the technologies. We spend between $6,000 and $10,000 annually in training for our employees and our marketing expert. The problem with spending this money on an employee is that all that know-how walks out the door if they leave.
6. A commitment to keeping jobs in America. One thing we do hear is that companies are sick of outsourcing US dollars overseas. This can make hiring a person for your company seem like a patriotic thing to do. We agree whole heartedly and there are social media marketing companies who are not outsourcing work (we know, we are one of them!). Simply ask if their employees are in the US or if they employ overseas workers when you are doing your due diligence.
7. Lots of hands. If you have your social media in house and your employee becomes sick or unable to do their job, there is no one to step in and pick up the ball. When you outsource your work, the social media marketing company should have multiple employees who can step in and take over your posting at a moments notice.
8. No animosity. Another big problem we find is that employees who are leaving or getting ready to leave on bad terms have sometimes tampered with or otherwise disrupted marketing channels before heading out the door. We have had more than one company contact us to see if there is a "secret" to getting their Facebook page back after a disgruntled employee has changed passwords or deleted pages. When you are working with an outside company, their workers are do not have any "skin in the game" to hurt your company. In fact, we hire all "seasoned" women who are proud of the job they do and who have never stepped a toe over the line without asking first.
9. Time and consistency. We have worked with a number of big (and small) companies who have every intention of hiring a social media marketing manager to, well, do the social media tasks. What we have found is that this person rapidly becomes busy doing other company things and the focus on tweeting, answering messages and generally minding the social media store gets diluted. Having an outside company dedicated to this allows your marketing department to keep the goals and focus in mind while directing the outsourcing agency, but the work still gets done.
10. Doing what you do best. If your company is not a social media marketing company, then the focus of your business needs to stay on your industry and not get mired in the social media flavor of the day. Utilizing internal talent to be doing outward facing tasks is definitely not the highest and best use of their time. It is fine to have sales people working with specific prospects, but your company as a whole has to have a plan in place to take advantage of this huge (and multi-legged) marketing opportunity.
Are we biased because we ARE a social media marketing company, probably! But I have to say that all of these are items that we have encountered in our work with companies and they are valid problems in this internet, social media based world.
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Please click on your state on the map to download a life settlement application to submit a case to us. See state details below.
The life settlement marketplace is regulated state-by-state. Where life settlements are regulated, currently 42 states and Puerto Rico, the state insurance department oversees the licensing and conduct of companies in the business. Q Capital is pursuing licensing in all jurisdictions where required. The map below outlines where Q Capital is currently accepting new cases for review. Q Capital is licensed or registered to purchase policies in 32 states – Arkansas, Arizona, California (through its sister company LSS), Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia (through its sister company LSS), Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas (through its sister company LSS), Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma (through its sister company LSS), Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Q Capital also purchases policies in an additional eight states and jurisdictions where no license is required or Q Capital's license application is pending – Alabama, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming, and District of Columbia. If Q Capital is not licensed in your state, the Company can put you in touch with a company that is.


text:
Laurent Fabre, né le  à Marseille, est un prêtre catholique français. Entré dans la Compagnie de Jésus en 1961, il y suit des études avant de rencontrer le Renouveau charismatique. Ayant fait en 1971 l'expérience du baptême dans l'Esprit-Saint, il est le principal fondateur de la Communauté du Chemin Neuf, créée en 1973.

Biographie
Né en 1940, Laurent Fabre entre au séminaire dans la Compagnie de Jésus en 1958 ; suivant à Lyon sa formation théologique, il rencontre en 1971 le Renouveau charismatique grâce à un étudiant jésuite américain, Mike Cawdrey ; lors d'un weekend de prière en 1972, il reçoit le baptême dans l'Esprit-Saint. De cette expérience naît un groupe de prière situé Montée du Chemin-Neuf, sur la colline de Fourvière.

À l'été 1972, Laurent Fabre, accompagné d'un autre jésuite français, Bertrand Lepesant, futur fondateur du Puits de Jacob, part aux États-Unis rencontrer les charismatiques américains ; en , après un temps de rencontre rassemblant une soixantaine de personnes, sept d'entre elles dont lui-même choisissent la vie communautaire : ainsi naît la Communauté du Chemin Neuf.

Depuis 1973, tout en étant engagé dans la Communauté du Chemin Neuf, Laurent Fabre reste de droit membre de la Compagnie de Jésus. En 1994, deux ans après la fondation de l'Institut du Chemin Neuf, il quitte les Jésuites.

En 1995, le premier chapitre de la Communauté le réélit à la tête de celle-ci pour sept ans, à 97 % des suffrages ; les chapitres suivants, en 2002 et 2009, voient également sa réélection. En parallèle, le chapitre de l'Institut du Chemin Neuf (prêtres et religieux) le réélit supérieur de l'Institut en .

En , l'archevêque de Cantorbéry et primat de l'Église anglicane Justin Welby lui remet un  dans la catégorie « Prière et vie religieuse ».

Il quitte ses responsabilités à la tête de la Communauté du Chemin Neuf à l'occasion du chapitre d' . C'est le Père François Michon qui est élu pour prendre sa suite.

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Articles connexes
 Communauté du Chemin Neuf
 Compagnie de Jésus
 Famille Cyprien-Fabre

Liens externes

Bibliographie

Naissance en août 1940
Prêtre catholique français du XXe siècle
Prêtre catholique français du XXIe siècle
Personnalité liée à la Communauté du Chemin Neuf
Naissance à Marseille
Jésuite français


As a Bobcat Battalion cadet/student, you will be part of a small fellowship of OU students who have committed themselves to National Service, in training to be Soldier/Leaders. Our freshman cadets begin their academic lives as part of the Army ROTC Learning Community, living together in Tiffin Hall (OU East Green). You and your fellow cadets will meet three mornings per week for physical training, and every Wednesday you will "show your colors" by wearing the Army ACU uniform to class. This chart shows what the normal expectation is for a cadet. Each cadet will take ONE military science class per week and attend Leadership Lab on Wednesday and Physical Training on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings.
Physical Fitness - The Bobcat Battalion prides itself in creating physically fit leaders. Our physical fitness program will set you up to "lead from the front" in all physical endeavors.
Building your personal character over four years of college to mold you into being a moral and ethical leader of men and women.