Getting the Balance Right

Do good things and tell the story in an appropriate way. What to dial up and what to dial down? Well, that’s the secret sauce.

What exactly do we mean when we rattle on about doing good and making the most of it through appropriate communications?

While it may appear sometimes as though we’re trying to sell sustainability as the key driver of consumer behaviour, we’re not. Although there is absolutely a growing trend amongst consumers to buy from responsible businesses, we certainly don’t advocate a blanket approach.

In fact, often, there’s very little to be gained from blatantly splashing your sustainability credentials across every aspect of your brand and marketing communications.

It’s deeper, subtler than that. And, as always, it starts with your customers.

What inspires them? How do you show that your efforts are making a material impact? How do you demonstrate that what you’re doing is relevant and actually matters to your business?

For some companies, it makes sense to display their responsible business practices front and centre. An excellent example of this is All Good Organics, a New Zealand-based social enterprise importing bananas and manufacturing organic fizzy drinks.

All Good Organics’ proposition is built on a healthy and fair alternative to regular fizzy drinks. One look at their website and you’ll find these values right there in your face—they’re even embodied in the company name.

Compare this with Crafted, a small digital agency in the UK. If you make your way to their community page, you’ll find a wealth of information espousing all the good things they’re doing. This information isn’t hidden, but it’s hardly prominent, either.

That’s because their ‘customer’—potential and existing employees—is different to that of All Good Organics.

Crafted aren’t trying to sell their service on responsible business principles. Instead, they’re working to ensure they’re seen as an employer of choice—a company that can attract and retain the best people and give them a competitive edge.

They achieve this more subtly, using the communications around their responsible business practices to support their brand rather than advertising it front and centre.

The Good Xmas Trail puts purpose first to drive customers to social enterprises at Christmas

At Good Business Matters, our purpose is to catalyse responsible business. That’s the very reason we exist—we foresee a world powered by responsible business, and we’re using our marketing and branding expertise to help bring this to fruition.

So, it makes a great deal of sense for us to be more overt about it. Our company name, our tagline ‘Doing Good is Good for Business’, our digital communications and our behaviour—they all centre on this theme.

To be clear, steering away from greenwashing, or as we like to say ‘socialwash’, is paramount – work out what matters to you, do good things, and then tell the story in an appropriate way. This story needs to be balanced and positioned to suit your goals and reach your audience, in the right place and at the right time.

The secret sauce, that will either envigorate and engage or drench and disconnect customers, employees or stakeholders lies in working out exactly what to dial up, what to dial down and when to do it.

Want more sauce? Contact us to see how doing good could be good for your business.