Have you seen the future? Getting and sustaining better results these days is about building and nurturing better relationships. That’s the key differentiator now. Just reporting good results is no longer enough. You have to be seen to be producing those results with integrity. That means producing them ethically and responsibly and communicating that you have done so.

And that’s called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) .

It’s a bit of a mouthful so ignore the jargon for now. CSR and the future of brand are the same. Think about it as a new and more powerful way of describing your brand. The essence of brand in the 21 st century is sustainable marketing from a place of integrity.

The new power of brand

There’s no getting away from the global impact of business communications today. We have transparency at the speed of light in an up-to-the-minute Internet world. Geography is history. What you communicate as an organisation is all over the world in seconds. Today the only brands that are sustainable are those built on integrity.

Put your brand in three different contexts:

• Your legal duty as an organisation
• The value you add for stakeholders
• Your core values at a corporate level

Now draw out all the good things you’re doing as an organisation in these areas. How much do you shout about them? Can you even identify them? It’s these credentials that, when communicated well, bring about self-perpetuating PR - and sustainable marketing. If you view CSR in isolation, your brand will become irrelevant and eventually you’ll be out of business. It’s a fact. And in marketing your career’s exposed in the same way.

Better relationships – inside and out - mean better business

But how do you identify these blocks of “goodness” for your communications strategy? You need to gain the trust of the specialists within your organisation – your lawyers, your environmental policymakers, your HR people and so on – to help them voice what they do.

Then, through a common language, you can develop powerful statements for your collateral, press interviews, online content, bid documents – all kinds of media. Building in these new ideas means you stay ahead – proactively – and it will ultimately determine whether you’re still able to do business. In the future of brand, neutral is not an option.

CSR helps you:

• achieve stronger relationships
• present and promote your credentials and show that it’s not just spin
• gain respect as an early adopter, a progressive team and a step ahead in your industry
• give your brand an emotional appeal
• stay magnetised to the top of the performance rankings
• improve brand positioning and empower your own internal experts to take forward your communications strategy

Better communications means better relationships and better business. And that means a better world.

That’s CSR. That’s sustainable marketing. “