Episode notes:

• Follow Erin on LinkedIn

• Learn more about Artio Strategies

• Check out the story of Starbucks’ Guest Barista program

• Learn more about Pete Carroll’s foundation, A Better LA 

• Check out Lyft’s Transportation for All programs

• Get the story behind Lyft’s partnership with Mary’s Place

• Learn more about CSR at PEMCO

Transcript:

This transcript was automatically generated.

You know that feeling you get when you talk to someone who's genuine?

They aren't angling for something or trying to come across in a certain way, but they're present and curious and willing to be imperfect.

For CSR professionals, it's worth thinking about what authenticity feels like at the personal level, because that's what you're trying to achieve at a larger scale when you talk about your company's CSR efforts.

I know that creating a messaging strategy for social impact programs can feel fraught.

If you don't talk about your programs, you'll miss out on a whole host of benefits to your brand and your employees. But if you talk about them in the wrong way, you risk coming across as inauthentic and self serving, and that can really erode trust.

Erin Combs has spent her career helping companies thread that needle.

She knows how to build an authentic story around social impact that's rooted in a brand's core identity.

Today she lays out the framework she uses to get it right.

Welcome to Impact Audio. I'm Sam Caplan, Vice President of Social Impact at Submittable.

I'm joined today by Erin Combs, founder of Ardo Strategies.

Erin has spent the bulk of her career in social impact and marketing at big brands like Amazon, Starbucks, and Lyft. She specializes in helping companies talk about their CSR programs in a way that puts the impact front and center.

Over the course of my career, I have developed a very deep seated philosophy that for profit companies, large and small, can and should have a role in improving the communities that they serve. And so that has sort of driven my career into CSR and to really helping companies think about CSR better or differently and helping them talk about what they're doing in a really effective way. So, you know, the way that I think about communications for CSR, I think there are first of all, I think there's a kind of a growing movement of companies, more and more so that are investing in social impact, in one way or another. You know, all kinds of data out there is showing that this is good for companies, whether it's, you know, consumers buying based on values or employees looking for values driven employers.

So when companies are doing this more and more, but I do think there's a little bit of a kind of a a learning curve or a growing pain, where companies aren't always sure how to talk about it. And it's kind of like they feel like it's the right thing to do, but they don't quite know how to, you know, marry what they're doing from a community standpoint with their core business model. And I think that's where the the real, like, authenticity piece comes in is that companies that are doing this really, really well, are really effectively telling the story of how, you know, their actions in the community or from a social impact standpoint are in are, like, intrinsically linked to their business. And companies that don't do that very well, I think those are examples of, like, where those two things feel really disconnected. Right? So at the top level, I think that's kind of how I start to think about communicating authentically.

The companies who do social impact well make building a communication strategy look easy. That's because they have strong alignment between their CSR programs and their core brand identity. The story is clear.

But make no mistake, their teams are putting in work behind the scenes to make it look that easy.

One of my favorite examples, was when I was working at Starbucks. So this was, you know, several years ago now. I was leading local community engagement, and so the objective was really connecting with customers and and partners, so people, the population of the Puget Sound around Starbucks headquarters area. And this was not an effort to, you know, communicate about coffee or the pumpkin spice latte. Right? Like, the company really wanted, like, local residents to know what they were do what the company was doing to improve to, like, affect the local community.

So one of the tools that we I launched there was a partnership of traditional sponsorship with the Seattle Seahawks, the NFL team.

But, again, like, this was not designed to, like, put, you know, messaging into the stadium. This was designed to communicate about social impact. And so we partnered with the Seahawks and, at the time, head coach Pete Carroll to the company made a donation to Pete Carroll's, foundation that worked with the local YMCA to, you know, work with, like, at risk youth in the community. And we brought in we created an event that we called guest barista, where we brought in Pete Carroll and ten Seahawks players and put them in, you know, green aprons behind the Starbucks bar and had them serving, you know, serving coffee in stores.

And the result of this was, you know, there were thousands of people that came into stores lining the streets to like see their favorite Seahawks player.

But the message, like, the the headline in the newspaper, and it was on the front page of the Seattle Times. The headline in the paper the next morning was Starbucks and the Seahawks come together to raise money for at risk youth. Right? It had nothing to do about coffee.

The headline was, like, these two organizations are helping youth in the community, and here's how they're doing it. And so I think that's a really powerful example because, you know, it's easy to sort of look at sports and say, like, well, it's just kind of like a shtick or, like, you know, it kind of feels like superfluous. But it was really, really effective for Starbucks as a brand to get out the message that they were trying to get out. Right?

And frankly, it was good for the sea like, the Seahawks. So it gave the Seahawks a great message to get out as well. So it was kind of like an all boats rise proposition.

A lot of companies who have social impact programs struggle to find the right tone and medium to share their CSR messaging. Part of the problem is that social impact is rarely the top priority in the corporate sphere.

I think there's a couple of reasons. Number one, I think it's what you just said. I think it's a lack of sort of re of, like, internal resource and expertise.

And if you think about it, that makes sense. Right? That, you know, CEOs are making hiring decisions and, like, internal budgeting decisions based on, you know, what's driving the revenue for their business. Right?

And so if you're faced with the decision of whether to hire, you know, a marketing manager for your prod to, like, sell your product or a marketing person for your social impact work, you know, I mean, you're nine times out of ten, you're gonna choose the person that's gonna be tied to your to your revenue driving initiatives. Right? So from a business standpoint, I I get that. As a result, then I think, you know, the the comms and marketing for social impact is really is managed by a number of different people.

Maybe it lives within product marketing. Maybe it lives within PR and comms, perhaps policy. Right? Like, it could be organized in a in a lot of different places.

And so with that comes a very diverse sort of range of expertise on how to think about communications for social impact, and it is a slightly different thing than communications for product. And so I do think that's kind of the core of it. I also think that and this is a generalization. But among a lot of business leaders, you know, there is a sense, like, a human sense of, like, wanting to sort of do the right thing. But that falls flat in communications if it doesn't, like, tie back to your business. And I think a lot of business leaders, either don't take the time or don't have the expertise on their staff to really, like, dig into that strategy of, like, how to talk about it.

A lot of companies conflate CSR messaging with traditional marketing, but getting a social impact message out into the world is a whole lot different than building a customer base. You can't just take the framework you use for marketing and then map your CSR messaging onto it. You have to build something distinct that centers the community, not your company.

So like I mentioned, I think, you know, a lot of times we see companies that are sort of producing or managing marketing comms for social impact through perhaps their marketing departments or through their comms department, which, you know, comes with pitfalls. Right? So I think the default for someone that is sort of trained in product marketing and leaders that are accustomed to to, like, funding marketing plans, I think the default is to kind of fall back on what we know works to sell products. So thinking about taking out large advertising campaigns, thinking about, you know, social media keywords, like, you know, all of sort of, like, the very metrics driven industry and science behind marketing.

And we know that, you know, from a marketing background, we know that advertising is very effective in raising awareness. It is effective at driving trial on a large scale.

But that is not but that is a different sort of beast, and that's a different outcome that you're looking to drive when you're talking about social impact. You're not trying to get someone to buy something when you're talking about social impact. You're really trying to affect their hearts and minds. Right? And what we know about advertising as an example is that advertising is one of the least trusted mediums out there. Social media is one of the least trusted mediums out there. And so I do think that there is a real place and a role for, you know, all of these communications channels to communicate about social impact.

But I think that the balance is different. Like, the priority is different when you're talking about comms for social impact. You know, to give an example, one of the tools or kind of the strategies that I've used and that I work a lot with clients on is thinking about using leaning into partnerships. And that could be nonprofit partnerships, that could be traditional marketing sponsorships.

But thinking about, like, how you sort of put your message in the voice of a third party so that it's not just you taking out an ad and saying, like, aren't we great?

But you're working with, you know, another trusted brand, whether that's a nonprofit or community organization or a sports team, which are beloved in a lot of cities. Right? How are you partnering with, like, another brand to get your message out there? And then you have that sort of third party validator.

So that's a lot of the of the work that I think about as well is, like, what are the other channels besides the traditional kind of paid advertising and, like, social media to talk about social impact?

These days, the public has a good nose for sniffing out PR masquerading as CSR.

So as important as the mechanics are of how to get your message out, the message itself has to make sense coming from your company. If your intentions aren't authentic, your efforts will ring hollow.

So I think, you know, the other piece that I think about a lot with with communicating with us authenticity is understanding what your story is in the beginning. So like I mentioned, I think that, you know, there's a lot of companies that are out there that really struggle to tie what they're doing from an impact standpoint to their business. Right? One of the examples that I love was working at Lyft from my time there.

I was there before the company went public, before the company had a really formal, crystallized social impact platform. And so a lot of what the we were doing from a social impact standpoint was happening in the local regions. And so in the Pacific Northwest, we identified you know, there is a a a real you know, as many West Coast cities have, a real kind of homeless, homelessness housing crisis in the city. It is the number one problem that people like social problem that residents identify in the local community, at least at the time.

When we started to sort of digging in to see, like, how we can affect this, we learned that the number one reason that people decline the offer of shelter is because they don't have transportation to get there. And so once we learned that, it was like, wow. Like, this is a problem that as a transportation company, Lyft can uniquely solve. Right?

And so we at Lyft ended up partnering with a family homeless shelter called Mary's Place here in the Seattle area and offered rides to anyone that any woman or family that needed that needed transportation to shelter in order to help get them there and solve that, like, solve that gap. And what that did was it started with, like, a really authentic, like, here's the problem. Here's how this company uniquely can solve the problem. And so when we went out publicly to talk about it, it just made sense.

Right? It was like, wow. Like, here's this company that's using their, you know, corporate assets to, like, really make a difference in the local community. And it was well received.

And it you know, like, things like that really helped to shift the perception of Lyft in this area.

And now that actually is sort of Lyft's social impact model is looking at, like, how can transportation solve prob like, solve real world problems. So I think it's a great example of, like, really thinking about, like, authentic communication or, like, authentic CSR efforts because it makes sense for the business and it solves a problem.

When it comes to corporate social impact, the story is all important. You've got to be clear about how your CSR programs fit into a bigger narrative of the change your company wants to create in the world. Cutting a check is not enough.

There is an expectation that that company writes a check, but from a communication standpoint, like, writing a check is not very interesting. It just kind of, you know, it just kind of falls flat. It doesn't have the heart like we talked about before. It's not very interesting to the media.

I mean, you don't know the number of companies that I've talked to that wanna send a press release for every donation that they make. But, I mean, it's not newsworthy. Right? And so companies really need to figure out kinda how to put their money where their mouth is.

Like, how to really, like, boots on the ground, like, demonstrate what they're doing above and beyond writing a check. Not that writing a check is not important.

For CSR practitioners, there are two layers to measuring the success of your programs.

The first is whether the efforts are making the community impact you intend. The second measure is how you spread the word about those programs and whether the story you tell has the effect you want it to have.

Measuring comms, like, measuring the impact of social impact and measuring comms for social impact is a very different thing than measuring comms for product, but I do think it's possible. It does go back to being clear about what your expected outcomes are in the beginning so you know so you have a plan in place to measure it. So, you know, for an example, a lot of companies are investing in social impact, to strengthen their connection with employees or to strengthen employee engagement as an example.

If that is a company's goal, how are you talking to your like, how are you measuring that? Like, are you doing you know, are you measuring that through attendance at events? Are you measuring that through volunteer hours? Is it through, you know, are can you are you doing surveys to ask your employees what their perception of their employer socially is?

Like, really being clear about, like, what you're expecting to drive in the first place so that you have a plan to measure it, and so it's not like an afterthought. So I do think it's it is possible to measure social impact outcomes.

For comms for social impact, it is a little trickier, but still very possible. At Amazon, part of what we did at Amazon was really take a data driven approach to messaging. And so we would go out and we would do qualitative and quantitative data collection to ask consumers or ask the public, what do you think of x y z programs or, like, message points or whatever it was? And then and then you know, are is it is it working or not? And people will tell you. I mean, there are there are ways to get at that data.

Admittedly, not every company has the the budget to conduct, like, the level of research that Amazon does, but it is definitely possible to measure in, you know, ways large and small.

For companies who conflate the impact of CSR programs and CSR communications, the messaging often doesn't get the attention it needs. They put out a once a year impact report. If you're really looking to get your social impact story into the world, that isn't going to cut it.

A lot of companies are required to do impact reporting, whether that's for, like, regulatory purposes or shareholder purposes, whatever it is. One of the misconceptions I frequently hear is that companies will produce a, you know, an impact report, which is a great tool, but that's kind of the end of the their communications strategy. Right? It's like, well, we have this impact report, and that's and it's like, why don't people know what we're doing?

Right? And I think that's, like, a big misconception is that the notion of, like, impact reporting gets sort of muddled or, like, intertwined with what a real communications strategy looks like. And so I've talked with some of my former employers and some clients that, you know, will come and say, we're gonna produce this impact report. And it's like, well, great.

But the impact report needs a campaign of its own. Like, it needs, like, a calm strategy of its its own to get it out there. Right? So that is one misconception, that I would say.

And I do think the other misconception that I would say, I think when we talk about marketing, marketing usually has dollars attached to it, and particularly in large companies.

And for social impact, I do think that companies often overestimate the amount of budget that they need to communicate effectively about social impact. And so I think that's the other maybe, you know, sort of myth or takeaway that I would offer is that it is very possible, sometimes even preferable to build social impact comms and marketing plans on a much smaller budget than product marketing takes.

Although a traditional marketing plan doesn't map one to one onto a CSR comms strategy, some of the motions are the same. After you develop the message, you've got to get internal alignment and then a way to deliver the message to your audience. Erin lays out the key steps to building a CSR comms plan and putting it into motion.

I would break it down into four steps, and these perhaps are not easy or small steps, but I would break it down this way. I think number one is really understanding what the business objective for the company is. Because like we've talked about, that's the first step in authenticity is really understanding why you're doing what you're doing. Right?

If, you know, why does why does homelessness matter to Lyft? Why does, you know, hunger matter to, you know, Walmart or Amazon or whatever it is. Right? Like, really understanding what the what the objectives and the expected outcomes from your CSR investments are.

Once you have that understanding and aligned internally, the second step is developing the messaging. And I think this is a really critical step because, again, recognizing that when it comes to CSR, there's a lot of people at at companies, especially large ones, that are talking about their social impact efforts in one way or another. So getting really crisp on what you're saying, so how are you describing the why behind your giving, and also what those proof points are, whether those are impact numbers or how are you really supporting and demonstrating what you're doing. So the second step is really developing the messaging kind of architecture so that everyone is speaking from the same songbook, if you will.

The third step, just like any other marketing plan, is really developing your go to market strategy. So thinking about what is the right approach to talk about this to reach your your audiences?

What are the right tools and channels and tactics? Is it like, what is your budget? Is it advertising? Maybe, maybe not.

Is it partnerships? Is it, you know, digital? Is it events? Like, what is the right mix of communications to to get the word out there?

And then I think the last piece is also measurement, which I think is really important and a lot of, you know, like, easy to kind of step over. But, like, how do you know you're being effective? Going back to step one, if you know what the objectives of your CSR work are, how are you measuring that at the end? Did you reach the people you intended to reach?

Did you shift the perception in the way that you intended to? Really getting surgical to understand if what you're doing is working. So that's kind of the process that I think through.

That first step is vital. You've really got to make sure you have a deep understanding of why your organization is doing CSR. Why is your organization uniquely suited to address a certain cause? If you don't answer that question, you risk a muddled and inauthentic message.

If you don't believe what you're saying, if it just you know, if what you're saying isn't actually authentic, it will never read authentic. Like, you it has to actually mean something and make sense on the forefront. You know, I will give you one just one example of that. I've met I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with the head of the CSR team for PEMCO, which is a Seattle based, like a Pacific Northwest based insurance company.

And she walked me through their what their kind of CSR priorities are. And she said, well, you know, our first priority is, you know, looking at things that that affect insurance rates. And so they're thinking about climate change and natural disaster preparedness and things like this that have a direct tie to the insurance business. And I was like, I get it.

Like, that makes I'm not gonna question it. Right? Like, that makes so much sense. And then she said their other pillar was, of, like, social impact pillar, was education and in investing in ways that will further, that will increase graduation rates and or celebrating teachers.

And I thought that's interesting. And she said, well, we're, we our company's over a hundred years old, and our founder was a school teacher a hundred years ago in the King County, Seattle area. And so this is part of our heritage of our company that we continue to invest in education and celebrate teachers because our founder is a teacher. And those were their pillars.

And I was like, it was, like, such a beautiful talk track. You know what I mean? Of, like I was like, the story of, like, ways to that social impact is gonna affect your business and we're celebrating our heritage. I was like, this is wonderful.

It was, like, such an authentic story for a business to tell me.

Often, the difference between effective and ineffective CSR messaging comes down to the work teams do on the front end, whether they put the time and energy into the strategy behind the communications. And make no mistake, the work is worth it.

And I don't wanna make I don't wanna make it sound like it's easy. It's not an easy thing to do. I mean, that's frankly, like, that's one of the things I love working with clients on is, like, helping them think through that because it's not easy. And it does sometimes take really, like, in-depth, you know, strategy work to figure out, like, how are we talking about this? Why are we talking about this? And then to get everyone internally aligned is is difficult.

But I do think it's possible, and you and you can tell the difference of companies that are doing it well and companies that aren't.

As a consumer, you've probably seen social impact messaging done well and done not so well. And you've felt how each of those messages shifts your perception of a brand. If you're building a messaging strategy or reimagining the one you have based on Aaron's advice and examples, I'd start with these steps.

First, find your authentic CSR message, What you're doing and why you're doing it. Next, create a messaging architecture that everyone at your company can use.

Then, develop a go to marketing strategy for your CSR story. And finally, find a way to measure the effectiveness of your CSR communications.

You don't have to do it all at once. Start with step one and build over time.

That's all for me today. Thanks for tuning in to Impact Audio produced by your friends at Submittable.

Until next time.