Investing in American Jobs

Last week, the White House convened a group of American business leaders for its “Insourcing American Jobs” forum. I was honored to attend the forum with Hal Sirkin of the Boston Consulting Group who is one of our clients here at APCO. Hal’s study, “Made in the USA, Again,” was a big part of the forum. President Obama highlighted the study in his opening remarks and used it to jump start the forum’s discussion.Read more »

Posted on Friday, January 20th, 2012 By SharedPurpose
Catogories  Community Engagement CR in North America What's Next for CR | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Two Years Later: Haiti Earthquake Relief Signals New Age in Charitable Giving

Two years ago today, the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti made shockwaves well beyond the small Caribbean country. Hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into the country by foreign governments and traditional charitable organizations. But what was most unique was that a substantial portion of international donations—$43 million to be exact—came from text messaging. The relief effort signaled a new age in social giving.Read more »

Posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 By SharedPurpose
Catogories  Community Engagement Philanthropy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Applying Moneyball Logic to Managing a Corporate Volunteer Program

Spring training is right around the corner, so I thought it would be appropriate to dig into an analogy thrown out by Taproot’s Aaron Hurst at the 2011 BSR conference in San Francisco.

Aaron compared the recent innovations in corporate volunteer practices to Moneyball. If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you know the story: Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane revolutionized MLB roster management by employing a new approach to analyzing a player’s value. The “data nerds” have created a system that is more efficient and less risky, leading to improved performance for a franchise on the field and the balance sheet.Read more »

Posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2012 By Tara Greco
Catogories  Technology and CR Volunteerism & Service | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Universities Need to Protect Their Brands, too

Athletic conference realignments altering cherished rivalries within college sports. Alleged acts of pedophilia by coaching staff against children in their care. Compliance violations and a range of sometimes controversial penalties assessed against member schools. This is the context for which the NCAA and several of its marquee institutions enter into the previously hallowed football bowl season. Lack of preparation and poor decision-making have resulted in several senior administrators becoming a part of the anticipated December unemployment statistics instead of leading their schools or departments. This will indeed be a winter of unprecedented criminal investigations, litigation and adverse media coverage.

As daily stories regarding the aspects of these events have unfolded on our TV screens and social media, several friends and journalists have called to ask how or if any of this could have been possibly prevented. Of course, no one can fully prevent horrendous judgment committed by individuals within an institution if a person is intent on engaging in morally reprehensible or criminal acts. However, more than ever before, boards of directors of corporations and university trustees are asking their senior executives to ensure that their institutions have a fresh crisis plan and that all the requisite stakeholders in the enterprise are equipped to operationalize it when the inevitable mayhem visits their doorstep.Read more »

Posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 By Tara Greco
Catogories  Business Alignment/Integration Communications What's Next for CR | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Corporate brands must add value to society

In my previous posts, I made the case that corporate branding is out of step with the reality of the market. Why, when given the ability of companies to adapt quickly to technological change, would corporate brands be out of step?

To some degree, I think companies have been forced to adapt their operations and product marketing to technology because it has hit them over the head like a sledgehammer. The market quickly makes winners and losers, but the corporate brand doesn’t cry out in the same way. It is harder to diagnose the harm a brand suffers from being left behind, making it less likely to get attention.

There is, however, very tangible science available that documents the value of the corporate brand and its ability to predict things like sales, customer and employee loyalty, and even market capitalization.Read more »

Posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 By SharedPurpose
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It’s time for corporate brands to step up

Corporate brands need to step up. Now is the time to rethink your corporate brand in light of the new expectations and interactions it faces.

Once upon a time, we could categorize stakeholders by their occupations. Today, stakeholders can create themselves by their level of advocacy, and the tools to create that advocacy have become much more democratized and scalable. Individuals can become influencers quickly and with global reach. Their advocacy may be aimed at a particular product, but as often as not, they pierce the corporate veil and go straight to the corporate brand. Why do this? Because people are smart. They understand that products don’t make decisions, companies do; products don’t run afoul of labor standards, companies do; and products don’t have environmental problems, companies do.Read more »

Posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 By SharedPurpose
Catogories  Business Alignment/Integration | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Brand comms strategies must evolve with technology

Let’s talk about brands for a minute. I think this may be an area where semantics have overtaken common sense. I’ve read heated online exchanges about the difference between brand and reputation, but the difference when discussing corporate brands seems only one of perspective. The brand is the promise, the reputation is the success in delivering on that promise.

When we talk about corporate brands, what are we really talking about? It is the promise those brands are making to a range of potential stakeholders about what they can expect from the company. With that in mind, I am always stunned when a company gives short shrift to its corporate brand under the delusion that “no one is buying the corporate brand – they’re buying the products.”Read more »

Posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 By SharedPurpose
Catogories  Business Alignment/Integration | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

World AIDS Day 2011: Prevention as the New Great Hope

Today marks another World AIDS Day. APCO’s Linda Distlerath has been working in this field for decades and shares her thoughts on how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.

Having worked in the HIV/AIDS field for more than 20 years, I find myself each December 1 – World AIDS Day – reflecting on how far we have come in tackling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and contemplating what the future will bring.

This past year marked the 30th anniversary of the first reports from U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of unusual cases of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in gay men, both later recognized as opportunistic infections associated with HIV infection and diagnostic of full-blown AIDS. Hence, 1981 is seen as the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in terms of public attention to a frightening and previously unknown infectious threat.

Over the next 15 years, much effort was focused on the scientific, clinical and epidemiological aspects of HIV infection and AIDS with significant investment by the U.S. government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CDC among other government agencies, along with the research-based pharmaceutical industry. But 1996, the 15-year mark of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, was a watershed year for science, the industry and people living with HIV/AIDS, at least in the United States, Europe and other health resource-rich regions. In that year, the notion of the “triple-combination cocktail” of antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV infection – taking viral load to undetectable levels for prolonged periods – came to life, and indeed brought life back to those ravaged by AIDS.
Read more »

Posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 By Tara Greco
Catogories  Community Engagement What's Next for CR | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

New Year’s Resolutions on Human Trafficking

I take New Year’s resolutions seriously, which is why I am hard at work on my 2012 resolutions now. As I think about changes I’ll make in 2012, I wonder what resolutions we’ll see from business leaders as the new year begins. In particular, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act takes effect on January 1 and will require business leaders to communicate what they are doing to address slavery and human trafficking.

Many do not realize that this is still a 21st-century problem. However, through violence, threats and coercion, victims are forced to work in, among other things, the sex trade, domestic labor, factories, hotels and agriculture. According to the U.S. Department of State, there are an estimated 600,000-800,000 men, women and children trafficked across international borders each year. Of these, approximately 80 percent are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are children. California has been reported to be one of the top four destination states for trafficking victims in the United States.

Read more »

Posted on Monday, November 28th, 2011 By Leela Stake
Catogories  CR in North America What's Next for CR | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Debate Over School Lunch

Normally, we think of the government stepping in to regulate business when corporations overextend their reach in one way or another. When it comes to school lunches, however, it looks like the opposite may be happening.

The U.S. government was on the right track when the President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act nearly a year ago, followed by the announcement of new dietary guidelines earlier this fall. Just this week, however, Congress proposed new rules that would consider pizza a vegetable in school lunches. This comes on the heels of the potato lobby (yes, Virginia, there is a potato lobby) and other groups fighting for starchy vegetable allotments to remain unchanged in school lunches, leaving little to no room for healthier options to make their way onto cafeteria trays.Read more »

Posted on Friday, November 18th, 2011 By Robin Deliso
Catogories  Business Alignment/Integration CR in North America Health | Tagged , , | Leave a comment