Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Stakeholder

Raising the Retail Sector’s Sustainability Bar

“Oh, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia,” said Slartibartfast breezily. “Everyone in the universe suffers from that.”

It’s always good to know that the architects of the Earth, as depicted in Douglas Adams’ “The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy”, were aware of the fundamentals of life.

Nevertheless, it can be disconcerting to find these theories being borne out in real life.

For instance: I always had a sneaking suspicion that some smaller country was quietly getting on with sustainability without getting hung up over principle, cost or advantage.

That country, I’m starting to conclude, is Portugal. It appears to be a hotbed of Social Entrepreneurship, a centre for positive news reporting and, now, the home of the sustainable shopping centre.
[Read more…] about Raising the Retail Sector’s Sustainability Bar

Spin, Fads and Taxes: CSR in the 21st Century

Is corporate social responsibility really just spin, an expensive corporate fad and a tax on shareholders’ profits?

Sonia at Remarkable Communication recently wrote a helpful article about corporate social responsibility (CSR) for small business – how small businesses should set up and use a CSR programme. As she says, what works for giant companies will work for small lean businesses too.

But she raises some interesting questions:

1. Sonia refers to CSR as 90% spin, and as a corporate fad.

CSR has been around for a long time, just under a different name. Probably ‘philanthropy’ would have covered it back in the 18th/19th centuries …
[Read more…] about Spin, Fads and Taxes: CSR in the 21st Century

Innovation and Corporate Governance: Risks and Opportunities


At first glance corporate governance and innovation seem to have no relationship.

Corporate governance is, or perhaps should be, a rigidly defined set of principles and practices that are well codified. Innovation, on the other hand is not well defined, being somewhat free wheeling and creative.

Organizations are facing unprecedented rapid change and an ever increasing demand for faster decision-making. They must adapt to changes both inside—such as multi-generational employees and changing organizational arrangements—and outside the company such as regulations, competitors, and technology. 

While this is happening, the current menu of business tools and techniques is becoming less effective. The tools that worked in a Newtonian, mechanistic business world are too rigid and less effective. We are now in a Quantum world where chaos and complexity are the norms. 

The evolving business landscape demands that companies deal with “wicked problems”.  Wicked problems are messy, they are complex, don’t have direct solutions, cause experience and tools to be irrelevant, are based on conflicting, contradictory information and are connected with other problems. A wicked problem is so puzzling and confusing that it seems insoluble. This is where innovation comes in.

Perhaps this BusinessWeek article quote says it best:

“What was once central to corporations — price, quality, and much of the left-brain, digitized analytical work associated with knowledge — is fast being shipped off to lower-paid, highly trained Chinese and Indians, as well as Hungarians, Czechs, and Russians. Increasingly, the new core competence is creativity — the right-brain stuff that smart companies are now harnessing to generate top-line growth. The game is changing. It isn’t just about math and science anymore. It’s about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation.”

Companies  need innovation to launch new products, services and to reduce costs. Innovation is also risky since the outcomes are somewhat uncertain and could take more time and costs than anticipated. This is the nexus with Corporate governance. The Board needs to balance the need for innovation with the associated risks.

A simple definition of innovation governance is provided by Professor Jean-Philippe Deschamps  (Switzerland based IMD business school) :

Current innovation management techniques and organizational solutions tend to focus on many – not all – of the hard aspects of innovation, but much less on its softer elements. The scope of innovation is so broad that few companies appear to have thought deeply about what it takes now and will take in the future to steer and manage innovation in an integrated way, across all its aspects, hard and soft.

Innovation governance should be a key issue for Boards. As Steve Lennon puts it:

So directors need to establish a framework of corporate governance that can deliver two things that normally go together like oil and water: more innovation and less risk.

As tough as it may seem, this dilemma is at the heart of every director’s duty.

Yet, according to a report from Capgemini Consulting:

  • only 42 percent of respondents have an explicit innovation strategy;
  • only 43 percent of respondents say they have a formally accountable innovation executive.
This indicates that many companies need to look more carefully at how they govern innovation. Future posts will profile companies with best practices and other issues related to innovation governance.

 

Socially Responsible Brands Jump on Fair Trade Certified Bandwagon

There is a new wave of socially responsible brand labeling available for companies to slap on their products called Fair Trade Certified. In 2008, 284 Fair Trade Certified products were launched in the United States, up from 130 in 2007.  According to an article in Brandweek, Mintel reports that most of the products attaching the new label to their brands are coffee, tea, herbs, cocoa, chocolate, fruit, sugar, rice, spices, cut flowers and (coming soon) wine.

What is Fair Trade Certified you ask?  It’s a product designation handed out in the United States by TransFair USA out of Oakland, California to signify products from farmers in locations such as Ghana or Costa Rica who, “work in safe labor conditions, use environmentally friendly practices and are paid at least a minimum floor price for their crop. These family farmers may also belong to a co-op that democratically decides how to invest their profits in building schools, health clinics or developing better business and sustainability practices.” [Read more…] about Socially Responsible Brands Jump on Fair Trade Certified Bandwagon

The Rise of Social Logins in the US and UK

social login lockSocial logins have become the norm and consumers not only look for a social login option on brand sites and mobile apps, they also expect a social login option.

Gigya’s 2014 State of Consumer Privacy and Personalization study recently surveyed 2,000 people between the ages of 18 and 55 in the United States and the United Kingdom. The results showed that 77% of U.S. consumers and 60% of U.K. consumers have logged into a brand website or mobile account using a social network account.

This is a huge jump (45% increase) from 2012 when just 53% of U.S. consumers used social logins.

The rise of social logins is happening for three very specific reasons according to the Gigya report:

  1. Convenience: Fewer passwords to remember
  2. Ease: Particularly on mobile devices where filling out registration forms is difficult
  3. Relevance: By using a social login, consumers believe they get more personalized, relevant content and offers

In addition to convenience, ease, and relevance, consumers also believe that social logins offer greater transparency. The Gigya report explains:

Social login gives consumers the power to permit brands access to the data points housed within their social profiles needed to provide them with more relevant and timely user experiences, effectively striking a balance between two traditionally competing goals: privacy and personalization.

In other words, consumers feel like they have more control over their privacy and data sharing when they use a social login to access a brand site or application. With that said, it’s important to note that far more respondents to this survey used social logins because they’re convenient and easier than respondents who used social logins for greater transparency, relevance, and personalization.

Here’s the breakdown of why U.S. and U.K. consumers use social logins:

  • I don’t want to spend time filling in registration forms = 53% U.S. and 60% U.K.
  • I don’t want to create and remember another username and password = 47% U.S. and 46% U.K.
  • I feel that my personal data is better protected when I use social login = 21% U.S. and 15% U.K.
  • I want to share articles, products, or other content with my social network friends = 26% U.S. and 12% U.K.
  • Other = 3% U.S. and 4% U.K.

What Should Brands Do?

First, it makes sense to provide an option for consumers to use social login on your website and in your mobile apps. Make sure that you clearly communicated how and why their information is used.

Furthermore, don’t ask for information beyond what you need to give the user what they’re looking for. The Gigya survey found that 84% of U.S. consumers and 81% of U.K. consumers have abandoned an online registration form because they weren’t happy with the amount or type of information that was requested. It’s nice to get extra information that you can use for targeting in the future, but you need to weigh the worth of that data with the possibility of not getting any data at all when users abandon your form. This is a time when split-testing will be extremely helpful in creating the highest performing forms possible.

Does your brand use social logins on its sites yet? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Camilla Ahrensball

3 Keys to Designing Effective Online Ads

facebook mobile appNew research from Facebook’s Marketing Science team identifies three keys to designing effective online ads as well as a variety of recommendations and warnings about things to avoid.

The researchers studied 350 brands in 18 industries between October 2013 and March 2014 by recruiting 700 people from around the world to rate more than 1,500 ads that ran in their Facebook News Feeds.

Using the data collected, the team identified the following recommendations for online advertisers to increase conversions:

  • Focus on the product.
  • Provide product information in the ads.
  • Provide a clear directive in the ads.
  • Focus on the brand.
  • Provide a strong link between the brand and the ad.
  • Provide a good fit between the brand’s personality and the ad.
  • Online conversion-focused ads should provide a clear connection to the brand’s personality
  • Single product-focused images should be used in ads to make potential customers perceive the brand as “approachable and accessible.”
  • To increase brick-and-mortar sales, use an iconic product image in the ad that grabs consumers’ attention and enables them to easily identify the brand.

The report repeatedly states that a strong brand link and product placement within online ads are important, but that doesn’t mean that ads that didn’t rank high in each of these elements among consumer participants were failures. Ads with diverse creative or ads that were highly tailored to the brand goals and audience preferences might not score well for all elements but could score very highly for the most important elements.

That brings us to the researchers conclusions. They identified three keys to designing effective online ads:

1. Know your objective because different elements are important for achieving different goals.

The researchers found that brand-focused advertisers consistently scored higher on elements like the link between the ad and brand, the emotional reward delivered by the ad, and the noticeability of the ad. However, direct response-focused advertisers scored higher ratings on call-to-action. These results make complete sense, but some advertisers still use the wrong types of ads for the wrong reasons and audiences, and in the wrong places.

2. For online conversions, focus on product or brand within the ad.

The researchers found that ads that focused on the product with a strong call-to-action and informational reward scored well in online conversions. On the other hand, ads that focused on the brand performed well in online conversions when the ads offered a strong link to the brand and a strong brand personality.

3. For in-store sales, focus on prominent product placement or well-rounded ad creative in the ad.

The researchers found that ads with strong product placement scored well for having a strong brand link, brand personality, and noticeability which successfully drove in-store sales. Similarly, well-rounded ads  that scored high on all elements (or most elements) were successful at driving in-store sales.

While none of these findings are groundbreaking, they do give you some insights into not only how Facebook users rate ads but also how well those ads performed. The researchers compared results of the rating study with previous research that tracked conversions and sales to provide a more comprehensive picture of what’s working (and what isn’t) in online advertising. Therefore, there is value in considering these research results and consumer preferences when you’re planning future online ad creative designs.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Maria Elena licensed CC BY 2.0