You don't have to camp outside of the Capitol to influence the government.

 The government’s influence on business is growing worldwide.  According to a recent McKinsey Global survey, 63% of executives believe the government’s impact on their industry will increase in the next 3-5 years.  It’s no surprise then that we here at CEC have been bombarded with questions about how to set up a more potent and persuasive government relations function within Comms.  Communicators are seeking to influence government and thus, more fully exert their freedom and license to operate. 

However…what if, instead of thinking about how to directly influence the government, we thought about influencing  those that hold disproportionate influence over the government — the public. 

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Linda Locke (Principal at Reputare Consulting, formely SVP at MasterCard)

By Rebecca Canan

As I’ve talked about in a previous blog post, it seems there is no limit to the amount of information that people are willing to share on social networking sites.  We are swimming drowning in a sea of data — people are talking candidly about almost everything; their words are being documented publicly on the Web for anyone to see.  How can we leverage all that audience insight in a scalable and smart way to help our reputations?   How can we take an “outside-in” approach to incorporate what stakeholders are saying (and reading) into our own internal reputation management?

We’ll be exploring that BIG question at an upcoming August 12th webinar with Linda Locke from Reputare Consulting – formerly SVP at MasterCard.  We’ll also be joined by Scott Stevener from Monsanto and Karin Kane from Evolve24.  During the session, we’ll show CEC members how they can take advantage of the tools and technologies now available – not only for traditional media monitoring, but also for social media monitoring – and apply them in a way that proactively manages their company’s reputation.  Sound lofty?  Maybe.  Sound impossible?  It’s definitely not. Read More »

I have always harbored a strong personal interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and so I am delighted to be heading up the Council’s latest efforts in this terrain.  Like all our projects, we start with the questions: “Who cares?  Why does it matter?  And what is the value to the business?”  As I was researching these questions, I was particularly interested to see if CSR had fallen among priorities in the corporate agenda (along with expense budgets and Christmas parties).  It turns out that CSR has actually grown MORE important during the recession, both to CEOs and to the key talent they are all fighting to attract and retain.  Below I’ve included some of the evidence I’ve found so far:

• CEOs vote CSR as critical to future success:  A recent survey by UN Global Compact and Accenture reports that 80% of CEOs (out of a sample of 766 globally) say that the downturn has raised the importance of sustainability.  Re-establishing consumer trust is the immediate issue.  Seventy-two percent of executives cite “strengthening brand, trust and reputation” as the strongest motivator for taking action on sustainability issues.  Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of corporate CEOs (93%) believe that sustainability has become critical to the future success of their companies, seeing it as a source of cost efficiencies and revenue growth.
• Business school graduates would trade cash for a sustainable company:  It’s not just senior leaders who are prioritizing CSR.  There is a rising social consciousness among business students too.   Read More »