by By Sara McCauley @saramccauley7 & Nici Bentivegna @nicibentivegna
On April 21st, our class discussed the importance of transparency, especially for companies, on social media. We took a look at how transparency can either help or hurt a brand, like with the controversy between messages of Dove and Axe (who are both owned by Unilever). Dove targets their audience by promoting women’s natural beauty and healthy body images. On the other hand, Axe sells products by giving their consumers a boost of confidence and proclaims that they could get with supermodels if used their products.
Why are the two companies contradicting themselves when they both have the same parent company, Unilever?
The answer is simple; “Unilever is famously a house of brands and not a branded house,” says Barbara Kahn, a professor at Wharton Business School and author of Global Brand Power. “It’s costly to do that, because you have to build up each brand name independently.” In short, always be transparent with your social media as it will clear up any issues with stakeholders, consumers and employees. Transparency can also improve customer service and lead to more potential consumers.
We also discussed the importance of being transparent about all aspects of a Corporate Social Responsibility campaign. A major part of remaining transparent, according to Shel Holtz book Tactical Transparency, with your customers is to be “OPEN”, which stands for objectivity, purpose, esteem and navigation. CSR falls under the esteem category, where our class discussed factors that affect the esteem an organization has with it’s stakeholders.
According to the Sustainable Business Forum, “CSR is about managing [em
ployee, customer, supplier and stakeholder] relationships to produce an overall positive impact on society, whilst making money.” Our class talked about how some companies, such as Tom and their One-for-One campaign, seem to produce a positive impact, but in reality the CSR model has some flaws.
Take a look at a Storify of our tweets from the day!
