Do Good

To do good, everyone in the company must own that sense of responsibility. I think what's interesting is when you look up the phrase "do good" in the dictionary, it has some interesting aspects of it. Somewhat obviously, it means to act virtuously, to have high moral standards, but the part I like best when you look up the phrase in the dictionary is that "do good" is done especially by helping others, and by making a helpful contribution to a situation. And we're at a point in our social fabric where making a helpful contribution is essential for everyone in every institution that interacts in society.

Rachel Salaman: So what do businesses get out of doing good?

Anne Bahr Thompson: Well, I think historically the activities associated with doing good, with corporate social responsibility, with philanthropy, with things of that nature, have been seen as costs of doing business. And in reality, doing good is not a cost of doing business, it's an investment into your reputation, it's an investment into your brand.

What those investments get you is more loyal customers, more loyal employees. And, ultimately, things like that – more loyalty, greater loyalty – lead to greater profits. So, what businesses get from doing good is the notion of doing well and doing better, both socially and financially – adding value in multiple layers.

Rachel Salaman: Do you see any moral dissonance in that?

Anne Bahr Thompson: No, and it's interesting you say that, because I was on the phone with a woman from Sweden the other day and she had an intern, and the intern said to her, "Well, companies are doing this only because it's being demanded of them." And I said, step back a moment, why is that bad? Society advances, our standards change, and if the purpose of a business, as Peter Drucker said, is to form a customer, to create a customer, then you have to adapt to what your customers are demanding.

I think today we take that notion, and I suspect if Drucker were around he would extend the notion of customer to stakeholders, and he does talk a lot about stakeholders in all his works. So it's not just to create a customer but it's to create satisfied stakeholders, and stakeholders that interact with you in a manner that gets you further. It's not about becoming a nonprofit. So the moral dissonance that exists for some people in that notion to me is not troubling. It's just we're in a new time in society, there are new demands being called upon everybody, and there's no reason businesses shouldn't respond to that.

Rachel Salaman: In your book, you choose to talk in terms of brands rather than companies. Why is that, and what's the difference between a brand and a company?

Anne Bahr Thompson: On the simplest level, it's because my expertise is about building brands and helping companies to form relationships with people, and the nature of that relationship is, in part, what a brand is. A brand is a proxy for a company, it's the human side of a company, it's not the structure, it's the perceptions we all have in our mind when we hear a name of a company, a product or a service, and it is the relationship that we form with them.

So the notion of speaking of brands could be replaced by companies, but then it becomes a bit more cold and less about the relationship and more about the function and structure, and the emotional connections you're building.

Rachel Salaman: The subtitle to your book is "Embracing Brand Citizenship to Fuel Both Purpose and Profit," so let's talk for a minute about this idea of brand citizenship. What is it, and what is it not?

Anne Bahr Thompson: Brand citizenship is a five-step model, if we get into the technical side of it, and it runs across something I call the "me-to-we continuum," in the same way that doing good is an ethos, brand citizenship is an ethos. It's actually also a call for companies to break down silos and start behaving in a more integrative manner across departments and divisions. It's a strong call for companies to co-create and collaborate with their customers, with their employees, and join up things together.

So it's a new approach as well as an ethos to business. What it is not, it's not about varnish, it's not about latching onto the latest news story and the latest complaint that's going across activists, it's about moving in an honest and sincere manner from a higher purpose – but not a higher purpose that's altruistic, to go to the question about moral dissonance, but a higher purpose that's related to what your business is about, and how your business serves both its customers and society, and actually we can extend it beyond both customers and society to larger audiences, to all its stakeholders.

Rachel Salaman: Now, you've mentioned that you've worked as a brand consultant for many years, including conducting significant research into how consumers relate to brands. How strong or fickle do those relationships tend to be, and what are they based on?

Anne Bahr Thompson: The relationships are based on how well you are delivering what you promised people. The relationships are strong or fickle depending upon how well you're reflecting specific customers' values. I spent three years deconstructing brand leadership from good corporate citizenship and from favorite brands, which is a proxy for brand loyalty, and that research is what led to this model. The model actually was something that emerged from the grassroots up, it wasn't something I set out to create.

So, during the course of that we did both qualitative and quantitative studies, and through one of the qualitative (and then later quantitative) studies we uncovered that especially Millennials only let 12 brands into an inner circle. They only noticed 12 brands, on average, and what they said was everything else was noise on the outside, so to break into that inner circle is really important.

However, they're not eternally loyal to all 12 of those brands. They tend to be loyal to two or three brands within that set, and when you win their loyalty there is no fickleness. We asked people, and through the course of the three years we had two different studies we ran on and off quantitatively. In one of the studies we asked people about which brands were their favorites and why, and would you cheat on your favorite brands. And it's interesting – Millennials will cheat less than Baby Boomers. With certain audiences, once you have them, that relationship is not fickle, it is for life.

Rachel Salaman: What else can you tell us about the research that went into the book? For example, what was the most surprising finding?

Anne Bahr Thompson: I should put the whole book and the model and the research into context. At the end of 2011 we began to conduct a trend study; we had various studies going on and off since 2006, as part of a project I called Culture Q. We were looking to come up with five trends for 2012, frankly, to go talk to customers about their clients and prospects. We went out and we asked people their hopes and dreams for the coming year, their fears for the coming year, certain closed-ended questions about the economy, and other things about job prospects and things of that nature.

This research was both done in the U.S. and the U.K., and we also asked people which brands they thought were leaders and would exhibit leadership in the coming year, and why, and I believe they could choose three to five; which brands they thought were good corporate citizens – same choice, three to five – and why; and which brands they thought were irresponsible and bad corporate citizens, and why.

And it was the result of that series of questions that led me to then spend the next three years, and grant myself money to deconstruct. So what was surprising in that was that, first of all, people's hopes, fears and dreams were really intense. It wasn't quit smoking or lose weight, it was pay my mortgage, pay for my healthcare, help my parents as they age, pay for my education. These were things mirrored in different ways in both the U.S. and the U.K.

So that was interesting. We did not have the questions coded, so someone in a back room did not read through the questions and term them into hygienic three-word answers, we actually read every response and there were a lot of responses to read. And in reading these responses you get sentiments, so we had the sentiment of where people's minds were, and it was because the end of 2011 was a time people were being told the economy had turned around after the recession of 2008, the crash of 2008, but most people in real life, in the real world, were not feeling any of this, both in the U.S. and the U.K.

In the U.S. it was also another election year, a different election than the one we recently had, but still an election year that had a lot of volatility, parties and politics in both countries. So you start feeling that sentiment, and then when you looked at which brands people said were good corporate citizens that was really the surprise.

A lot of the studies where you read brands are ranked have a closed-ended set of companies that people rank. Ours was completely open-ended, just tell us, and there were over 2,200 companies named for each set of questions, and not necessarily the same in each set, and I know that because I personally went through them and had to clean them up.

The number one brand that rose as a good corporate citizen was what was the real surprise. There were a lot of fragmented brands, of brands that you would expect to be good corporate citizens in the way those of us in industry – and corporate socially responsible people and sustainability people and people in all those different departments – would classify as good corporate citizens.

But, to the people we were speaking to, Apple by far rose to the top as the number one good corporate citizen. And this was a period where Apple was being lambasted for supplier relationships and chip issues, so this was really surprising. When you read through people's responses why, it was, "Apple that has transformed the way I can speak with people around the globe," "Apple has brought joy into my life by bringing me music 24/7."

Apple had changed the fabric of people's lives, and to them that was good corporate citizenship. But that was a "me" proposition, and corporate citizenship in my mind – and in most people's minds from industry – is a "we" proposition. Of the other brands that rose to the surface, in the U.S. it was Walmart, and in the U.K. it was Tesco. And it wasn't for any of the good initiatives it may have going in supply chain or sustainability, it was because of its pricing structure, hence I am afforded a better life. If it changes its prices I could not live the life I live.

Rachel Salaman: So it was "me" again, instead of "we"?

Anne Bahr Thompson: Me, which was really shocking. And Ford was the third in America, and Ford was because it represents the turnaround, because Ford had turned around its finances. Ford represents the turnaround America can have, and if Ford in America can turn around, I can turn around too. That was really shocking, and we were taken aback by it, this "me" proposition, and then the other brands that came up were mostly the "we" brands.

So that was why I then granted money over three years to figure out what was going on, and what emerged was, over time, it didn't come into view on day one, but over time, from the grassroots up. The five steps that form brand citizenship quickly – trust, enrichment, responsibility, community, contribution – emerged, and this notion of them spanning a me-to-we continuum emerged.

So, to real people, corporate citizenship is only meaningful if it changes and helps transform my life, and you, the company, need to have a we proposition, but your job first and foremost (if we go back to this notion of the customer being at the center of a company), your job first and foremost is to deliver what you promised me.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned the five steps to brand citizenship. So if we can talk a little bit more about those now, the first of which is trust, and in the book you break that down into five characteristics, which are clarity, reliability, sincerity, reciprocity, and active listening. So, could you talk us through the process of building those values in an organization, perhaps using an example or two?

Anne Bahr Thompson: Yes, so if we step back and think about trust and the way we trust a business, we can actually look at how we learn to trust our friends, how we learn to trust people, because there are a lot of parallels. To trust a person, to trust a company, you need to have clarity as to what they're about, so you know what you're benchmarking this trust from. So clarity is all about knowing what you're about as a business, what you are promising.

I would like to think of clarity as to further an understanding or a larger purpose, but it is your promise to a customer at the end of the day in its most simplest, basic form. And once you do that it's about moving to reliability, and reliability is about delivering what you promise every single time. So the friends you trust the most are the ones that follow through, they don't let you down.

Then you move into sincerity, and sincerity is speaking from the heart. Today, a lot of people talk about authenticity, and I use the word periodically still, but since probably the mid-2000s onward what I uncovered through my research with Millennials, and we all know this, but Millennials are extremely cognizant of it, we all craft our authentic personas online and we craft who we are, who we really are to the people.

So this notion of authenticity when it comes to a business, when it comes to a brand, people believe is equally, if not more crafted, so sincerity is about speaking from the heart. Reciprocity is "give to give," not "give to get." You will often get a coupon for a dollar or a pound off the day after you just bought everything and that's about to expire in half a day, so you're actually not really giving me anything, you're just trying to get me in to buy what I bought yet again.

That's not giving to give, that's not reciprocity, that's not rewarding me. And then active listening is about taking that information you're collecting and targeting it to me appropriately, and in a manner that matters and resonates with me.

Rachel Salaman: What does it take to build that trust in that way successfully?

Anne Bahr Thompson: It's about hard work, diligence, constantly listening, being willing to take a risk and make a mistake, and I think that's a big theme that runs throughout brand citizenship. I think also what's actually really important is creating a trusting culture internally in your company, because if you have an internal culture that's trusting, if you allow your employees, especially those that are in any customer service, B2B or B2C, if you have an ethos that permeates the company, that everybody in the company feels every day, and give them space to move and respond to you as a customer in the way that they know is best, and trust that they'll do what's best.

And we tend to have a more dictatorial culture these days in customer service and yes, everyone tries to come up with every scenario, but when they're speaking to you, do you feel that sense of sincerity that is an earlier step for creating and fostering trust.

Rachel Salaman: In the book you talk about challenges to trust and you use Amazon as an interesting example, because there is a perception out there that its employees are not always treated well, and if it has suffered any reputational damage because of the perception that employees there are treated badly, is there really anything it can do about that, other than improving employee pay and conditions?

Anne Bahr Thompson: I would say it's really hard and I'm not sure what the answer is, but even more so than Amazon, Walmart is a really good example to look at for that. Walmart is a company done on a sustainability, a supply chain; on a doing good level when it comes to we, actually is doing some amazing things.

However, smartly it doesn't really promote a lot of this because, based on my research at least, this notion of responsibility, which is step three, is the pivot point between being seen as a brand that delivers to "me" and a brand that's given permission to deliver to "we." The first and foremost thing that came out from the research on that is how people define a responsible company, is treating employees well and fairly.

Walmart recently just had a wage increase and I tweeted it and I said, "Oh, maybe this will be the turning point to have permission to become a 'we' brand, and for us to start acknowledging what Walmart actually is doing," because if Walmart fixes the supply chain it can actually be better because its scale and impact is that large.

So the minute I tweeted this I got tweets back, saying, "Oh, but that was a smokescreen because they just laid off people in this region, that was a smokescreen because they did this to people there." So people are skeptical.

Amazon by no means faces the challenge Walmart does, but both of them, yes, it's a matter of after work in the pub, in the U.S. in the bar, people saying, "Wow, I love my job here, this is great," and more and more people saying that. You can't make great claims, it has to happen organically, and once that happens then you can probably fix the reputational damage, but you can't fix the reputational damage while making an announcement that we're raising people's salaries by one dollar an hour.

Rachel Salaman: If we can talk now about the second step to brand citizenship, which as you said is enrichment, by which you mean enrichment of people's daily lives. What are some ways that brands can do that?

Anne Bahr Thompson: When I talked about Apple, Apple is a brand that people do consider a brand that enriches their lives, so you start seeing it in that, but there are other simple ways. There is a brand in the U.S. called Mrs. Meyer's, which is cleaning products generally. It has other things, but its first thing it's known for often is its cleaning products. When people talk about using Mrs. Meyer's to clean, it's as if cleaning has become this joy.

Women told us about the lavender scent they have – when I spray this on I feel like I'm in a French lavender field, it makes cleaning so much more pleasant. That is a very simple way to enrich someone's life, and the fact that there's natural ingredients in there, the fact that there's a story told that there is a real Mrs. Thelma Meyer; some of the story is a bit of a crafted back-story, and if you ask people about that they say, "Oh, it's fine, she's a real person, she really believes these things and it's OK because I associate with it."

And I think that's what's also interesting about the notion of sincerity, when you speak from the heart in this manner, even if your authentic story has a little bit of crafting to it, if people relate to it and it reflects their values they're OK with that.

Rachel Salaman: The third step in the five steps is responsibility, and of course that's more familiar territory because it links to the well-established idea of corporate social responsibility that we've already touched on. How have recent seismic shifts in society changed how we need to view and execute on that kind of responsibility?

Anne Bahr Thompson: Responsibility is this pivot point between being a "me" brand and being given permission to become a "we" brand, and as I mentioned with the Walmart/Amazon example, the difference is that treating employees well and fairly is by far the first and foremost, most important element of responsibility. Whereas corporate social responsibility tends to be thought of more in the sense of giving back to the community, and today, often, although it's a different department frequently, sustainability, fixing supply chains, the things about being a responsible business and following legal rules.

Responsibility as the pivot point is much more than legality. It's about doing what's right based upon your moral code as a business, which hopefully is a strong moral code, and having that ethos that is represented through brand citizenship. But, if you don't treat your employees well and fairly first, people told us, as I mentioned with Walmart, you can go fix these other things but it doesn't matter.

Rachel Salaman: Step four of brand citizenship is community, the idea that brands can serve as a motivator for groups of people who share interests. How can companies avoid that looking like part of its marketing strategy?

Anne Bahr Thompson: I think it's a really important point, because when you say community in today's world people go right away to social media strategies, building digital communities, online communities. The other way you build community also is, if we go back to some of those brands and enrichment, Mrs. Meyer's has garden days in different places, Burt's Bees brings all its employees together to do a service day in North Carolina with the local community. All those are ways of bringing value, and Innocent drinks has always had an aspect of community in how it brings people together to better things.

So I think it's too easy to go to digital and the easy way out for community, and clearly you can do that, but community means so much more. And then there's the B2B communities. I talk about Forest Stewardship Council in the book, which is the tree you're seeing more and more on paper products. They bring a community of businesses that care about sustaining our forests together and the businesses help one another.

Rachel Salaman: It's somewhat linked to the fifth step of brand citizenship, which is contribution, the idea that brands play an active role in creating a more positive future. Just so that we're clear, how is that different from step two, which was enrichment, enriching people's lives?

Anne Bahr Thompson: Businesses that tend to be categorized at step five versus step two are ones that have a value proposition with a "we enrich the world" over "enrich me." However, most of the brands that are exemplars of step two also do elements of step five, they are just not thought of in that way.

The one other way, and I outline this in the book, to start making a bigger contribution without having to be a socially conscious brand is Kenco. The coffee brand here in the U.K. has its initiative of coffee and gangs, which is about bettering the lives of 30 to 50 youths every year in Honduras, so it is about enriching lives, but it's about enriching lives in a grander manner than just me sitting at home on my sofa.

Rachel Salaman: Looking at those five steps of brand citizenship, what kind of organizations need to think about this, and is there a correlation between the level of public awareness that a brand has and its obligation or sense of responsibility to do good?

Anne Bahr Thompson: I would say every organization has to think about it, and I think over time every organization will be forced to think about it, so either you're proactive now and start experimenting and seeing the best ways to do it in your company – or at some point you're probably going to be forced, if the world continues in the direction it seems to be heading, in terms of business's role.

It's easier to say companies that have large profiles should do this more than other companies, but a lot of the companies that are best at this have no profile with anyone except their local customers.

Rachel Salaman: What are some ways to set brand citizenship goals, and then, importantly, to measure progress?

Anne Bahr Thompson: So, set ambitious goals, don't be frightened of ambition, and if you don't achieve them, at least do your best to get close. People forgive brands that are human as long as they see you genuinely are trying, not that you're just kowtowing to trying.

In the same way you have metrics to measure performance across a business, whether it's measuring how well you're maintaining your cost structure, whether it's how strong your reputation is amongst certain stakeholders, brand equity, and brand valuation. You need to tie those measurements to how you are delivering your purpose, to your sustainability goals.

I should step back a moment. Social impact actually is becoming more and more important as a benchmark for measurements of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, and then employee engagement, but I would challenge companies to see employee engagement as more than how many employers are participating in their volunteer program.

Employee engagement is so much deeper than that, and to foster loyalty, it's about more than creating a purpose that has a social mission that creates a volunteer program, and I think some companies in their quest to setting out on this pathway do that, they check that box and then they forget that there is more to follow. So, anything that has numbers is clearly the best way to benchmark but it's going to depend on your culture and your budgets for tracking, to be honest.

Rachel Salaman: We've covered a lot of ground in this discussion, so what are your top takeaways for a mid-level manager who might want his or her company to do more good?

Anne Bahr Thompson: You can help to start doing good from wherever you sit in the company. Importantly, think of it as not a check-the-box exercise, there's not a definitive to-do list, look around you and whether you're mid-level or a guy who has just walked in the door and on his first job, or the CEO, look around you and see what may be the easiest ways to start fostering a culture that has an ethos of doing good.

It's a long-term journey, and recognize you will make mistakes and that you must alter your appetite for risk because of that, measured risk, but it's not about getting everything perfect every time. The other thing is challenging yourself, each time you get one thing right, recognize you've just raised the bar and you now have to work harder, and recognize that society is changing the dynamic and raising the bar every day.

So, there is no fixed formula, and for some people that is a little scary, but I challenge you, inside yourselves you know it's right and take a risk and do it one day, and then do it again the next day, and then little by little you'll change your culture.

Rachel Salaman: Anne Bahr Thompson was talking to me in London. The name of Anne's book again is "Do Good: Embracing Brand Citizenship to Fuel Both Purpose and Profit." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.