why sustainability holds the key to engagement & distinctive storytelling - james osborne

15TH EUROPEAN SEMINAR ON

DIGITAL CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

WHY SUSTAINABILITY HOLDS THE KEY TO

ENGAGEMENT & DISTINCTIVE

STORYTELLING

&

PREVIEW OF 7TH CSR ONLINE AWARDS

James OsbornePartner and Head of Sustainability, Lundquist

Sustainability communications as an island

Where we started from…

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR TODAY

• Don’t think about sustainability communications in isolation as an add-on at

the end of the process: your audiences don’t, so you shouldn’t either

• What does this mean in practice?

• Effective sustainability communications needs to be

• Relevant, cross-cutting and people-focused

• These are the foundations of the CSR Online Awards and all our work

EUROPEAN SEMINAR ON DIGITAL CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS AND 15TH WEBRANKING AWARDS

FULLY INTEGRATED INTO THE SUSTAINABILITY PROCESS

FULLY INTEGRATED INTO THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM

Your challenge today

• Shorter attention spans & greater

competition for that attention

• More complex digital environments

• Mix of “tasks” even among the same

audience groups

IMPACT OF DIGITAL EVOLUTION OF SUSTAINABILITY

• Integration across digital ecosystem

• Showing a distinctive way of doing

business

• Conflation of reporting, communications

and engagement

THE IMPLICATION FOR YOU

• Materiality undermines unitary concept of

“sustainability”

• Return to focus on stakeholders

• Importance of the core business rather

than “nice-to-have”


USER

-

CEN

TR

IC

STA

KEH

OLD

ER

-CEN

TR

IC

PEO

PLE-

CEN

TR

ED

People… do you know their critical issues?


What is the CSR Online Awards?


Goals of the new edition of the research

• Investigate how the “age of materiality” affects communications – both in terms of stakeholder

expectations and in company responses

• Make a natural evolution in the protocol but maintaining continuity from previous edition to allow for

easy comparison of performance

Four main rankings• Europe Top 75 – a combination of the top 50 European companies by market value and industry leaders/top

performers from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index• Germany Top 35 – components of the benchmark DAX index plus leading non-listed companies• Italy Top 100 – largest 80 listed companies and selection of 20 unlisted brands• Switzerland Top 50 – members of the SMI Expanded index plus leading non-listed companies

• Monitor trends towards transparency ahead of the EU directive on non-financial transparency

• Move to more quantitative assessment of social media activity by analysis of Facebook and Twitter

analytics


How we measure good sustainability communications

16,0%

16,0%

19,0%9,5%

15,0%

11,5%

13,0%

18,0%

18,0%

20,5%

11,0%

12,0%

8,0%

12,5%

SEVEN PILLARS: CHANGES IN WEIGHTINGS

Concrete

Exhaustive

User-friendly

Ongoing

Social

Integrated

Distinctive

Source: Lundquist CSR Online Awards

Evaluation protocol in 7 pillars: 2016 (inner ring) vs. 2014 (outer ring)

100 points max score


4 WAYS WE PUT

PEOPLE AT THE CENTRE OF THE

CSR ONLINE AWARDS


1. We ask real people what they want

Ongoing surveys of users about

digital habits and expectations

• 1,700+ responses to date

Mix of corporate respondents,

experts and stakeholders• Journalists & bloggers

• SRI analysts

• Financial analysts & investors

• NGOs and non-profits

• Academics, students and

researchers

Backed up by monitoring of

sustainability and digital trends

We saw the decline in report reading coming…

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Non corporate

Corporate

Percentage of respondents citing “reading a report”

as a top priority when visiting company websites for

CSR and sustainability information.

Source: Lundquist CSR Online Awards

HIGHER PRIORITIES IN 2016

• Sustainability approach,

strategy and objectives

• Case studies and projects

• Identification of priority

issues

• Targets and progress


How to address topics that matter most?

A vast majority of our respondents said they expect companies to talk about their most material issues

differently compared to other topics. But how…?

Better assessment of how

the issues relate to

business strategy

Deeper stakeholder

engagement around

key issues

Greater evidence of action

(stories, examples, case

studies, interviews, etc.)48%

47%46%

Percentages refer to amount of respondents selecting among top

three choices. Source: Lundquist CSR Online Awards


What frustrates users the most?

Sustainability presented in

isolation from the core

business

Difficult navigation and

complex website

structures

Company presents itself

only in positive self-

promotional way67%

64%46%

Percentages refer to amount of respondents saying they are “frustrated” or

“highly frustrated”. Source: Lundquist CSR Online Awards


2. Setting hurdles to enter the CSR Online Awards

No “automatic” qualification for

full ranking – we evaluate only

companies that clear two hurdles:

• 1st test: do you report systematically

about environmental, social and

governance topics?

• 2nd test: are you transparent online

through the corporate website,

meeting basic requests of core users?

…because people need to trust

what you are saying.

3. New, data-driven assessment of social media

Social media represent a direct engagement between a company/brand and its stakeholders/users (sorry…

people). With the support of Twig, we have adopted qualitative assessment of Facebook and Twitter in

order to measure:

• How much companies address sustainability and CSR topics in social media

• How much engagement they generate (and difference between large vs. small communities, etc.)

SEMINAR ON DIGITAL CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS AND 15TH WEBRANKING AWARDS

17,916 posts

84,998 tweets

• Created of a sustainability “lexicon” of 200+ words, terms and hashtags grouped into themes (environment, community, etc.)

• Lexicon drawn from mining of posts/tweets and also from materiality analyses of companies in the research (10 sectors)

• Comparison of engagement performance of sustainability vs. non-sustainability posts

WHAT WE ANALYSED* HOW WE ANALYSED THE DATA

* German, Italian and Swiss companies only


4. Integrated storytelling

Digital storytelling assessed not as an

end in itself but as part of telling

relevant, human stories about a unique

set of impacts and issues, how each

company does business

• Strategy, governance & ethics• Sustainability context• Environment• Social

… and not just a one-sided story

(external perspectives)

Leading companies showing the way by

“debundling” sustainability and using

stories as a way to conect with people

across the wider ecosystem

Where we’ve ended up…

JAMES OSBORNE

@jabosborne

Lundquist company page

Lundquist

Lundquist page

Lundquist channel

Slideshare account

Lundquist page

Thank you

http://www.linkedin.com/company/lundquist

http://twitter.com/Lundquist

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lundquist/193592210711028?sk=wall

http://www.youtube.com/user/Lundquistsrl

http://www.slideshare.net/Lundquistsrl

INTEGRATED CONTENT STRATEGY

PUT INTO ACTION

&

WEBRANKING AWARDS 2016

ITALY & SWITZERLAND

15TH EUROPEAN SEMINAR ON

DIGITAL CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

why sustainability holds the key to engagement & distinctive storytelling - james osborne

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