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11.13.12 vol 051

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the new black.

It’s become quite fashionable for companies to take responsibility for their effects on the environment and impact on social welfare. But engaging in social efforts is more than a trend. Progressive companies are making it a new way of doing business and building their brand.

This brief explains how businesses can explore and engage the societal and cultural relevance of their brand to benefit all of their stakeholders and create shared value among them:

- Re-thinking CSR – a 2-minute video excerpt from my keynote at the Fast Casual Executive Summit

- Level 5 Relevance – a recent post about a new framework for increasing your brand relevance through social efforts

Please let me know what you think. I always appreciate your feedback!

Denise

Re-thinking CSR

At a recent restaurant industry conference, Fast Casual Executive Summit, I encouraged business leaders to think about and do things differently. Take a look at this 2-minute video:

Level 5 Relevance

The Level 5 Relevance framework outlines how companies can become a force for positive change while enhancing the customer appeal and long-term competitiveness of their brand.

Level 1: At the most basic level, companies should support the issues and platforms of their industries.

Level 2: The second level is also pretty obvious – companies need to support their local communities.

Level 3: The next level of relevance is target, meaning social efforts should resonate with the company’s target audience.

Level 4: Aligning your social efforts with your brand identity and competitive positioning is Level 4 in the framework.

Level 5: The last level of the Level 5 Relevance framework is values relevance. This is about aligning and integrating your business with social values.

Read the full post

Service Spotlight: Brand Architecture

Do know how strongly to promote your corporate brand vs. your product brands?

Have you acquired new brands and want them to complement but not overlap existing ones?

Do you have too many brands but don’t know which ones to drop?

I will work with you and your team to develop a Brand Architecture is a decision-making framework for organizing, prioritizing, and managing your brands for maximum impact.

Download an overview and contact me to learn more.

Check out other ways I help companies achieve their brand and business objectives.

- Continuing to report on new and interesting retail and restaurant concepts – check out my latest Brand Experience Brief, C9, a new active apparel specialty store from Target.
- Contributing to Business Insider’s War Room with a post about the power of emotion in technology marketing.
- Waiting to hear back from a large organization about an engagement to operationalize its brand through culture-building, communications, and customer experience.

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Forward it to them.

denise lee yohn, inc.
917-446-9325 | @deniseleeyohn
mail@deniseleeyohn.com | www.deniseleeyohn.com