DISCUSSION Put purpose before profit – and make money anyway

“Tal ordentligt – det koster dig ikke noget“ (“Speak decently – it doesn’t cost you anything”) is the tagline of Danish low-cost mobile company Call Me’s public awareness-raising campaign, which focuses on the harsh tone in the Danish public sphere. The campaign is the culmination of Call Me’s strategic shift from focusing on profit to focusing on purpose. A strategy which has already created tangible results on both the inner and outer bottom lines.

So what can we learn from Call Me?

1. Your corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts should be related to your company’s core business. So if you operate in an industry which sells communication solutions, it makes good business sense to focus your social engagement in an issue or cause that is all about communication.

2. Putting corporate responsibility and social capital into the heart of business strategy requires support – and must be driven – by top management, if you want to succeed.

3.  If you want to transform your business model into a socially responsible and sustainable one, you have to start internally. If not, your external campaigns will be experienced as unauthentic add-on communication.

4. In other words: Making your business-driven CSR-strategy come alive starts with culture – as Call Me’s CEO puts it: “Culture eats strategy for lunch“!

5. Use social media to not only communicate to but also to engage your employees and customers. It is personal, visible, accessible, enables peer recognition, and is measurable. But remember only to use relevant social media channels – choose the ones where your employees and customers are already present.

To read the full article, please visit Tania Ellis and The Social Business Company.