customer-development, brand, social-networking, market-researchUp front, I think the problem is me, frankly: I usually try to just quietly go above-and-beyond for our customers, but when we did some asking, many customers didn’t know a thing we were doing, for example, recycling, giving percentages of our profit to charity, etc and indicated that they would like to. It’s unsurprising that they didn’t know – we really haven’t said much about it. I’ve never been one to blow my own horn, which has bled into the company, I guess, and I’ve felt very reserved about putting what we do out there externally.
I can now see the value in it however… It helps people know and trust a company. So I’d like to at least have that information available. I just don’t know how to tastefully or respectfully mention some of what we’re about and what we do without sounding elitist or risking alienating our customers.
For example, we’ve been grappling for a couple of days on-and-off about how to say we emphasize a low impact on our packing slips: we recycle all paper and we print on recycled paper, etc. We were going back and forth on exactly HOW to say it without, I suppose, overemphasizing it.
Does anyone have any overall suggestions?
This is a super interesting question, and I’d like to say I have a super interesting answer, but I’m really not sure what that might be.
Thinking about it, I can imagine two viable approaches: one passive one and one active one.
Passive
A lot of companies feature on their website some page about what they do to give back to the community. You could do that. I call this approach “passive,” because I don’t imagine you going around and yelling to everyone you meet “hey, check out this page on our site that shows how nice we are,” but it would allow users to find that information, and you could mention it in polite conversation. You could also get away with linking to it from your homepage. I respect your desire for humbleness, but I don’t think it’d be too far to have a small block on your page that says “we think giving back to the community is important, and here’s what we do.” You might even be able to phrase it in the name of “transparency.”
Just a few examples I know of off the top of my head that do something like this:
It’s not a super great resource because all the companies are, of course, huge, and thus are facing this from a different angle, but Forbes has a list of the best corporate citizens, and you could search for most of those companies, followed by the phrase “corporate citizenship,” and find such a webpage.
Also, remember that your webpage could even be phrased more as a political statement. “We need to save the earth, and here’s what [company name] is doing right now.” You can make it about something bigger, and list yourselves only as an example. You could also say you want to set an example for other people and corporations, and perhaps even mention in a very brief way that you don’t like to brag but that getting people talking about things is more important than humbleness.
Active
A more active approach, and I certainly don’t mean to imply that this is disjoint from the passive one I mentioned above, they could in fact work very closely together, is to involve your community, in helping the community. This becomes something of a balancing act, because you need enough involvement to not lose money doing it (for yourself and, more relevantly, that you could otherwise give to your charity), but you could host fundraisers where you match proceeds, or even not, and have signage, or a website if it was virtual, about what you’re doing as a company.
I haven’t thought much through this particular idea, but I wonder if you could also do something more long-running, where you say “customers who’ve bought [product] are welcome to make a donation to a charity, and we’ll match it up to $x. My hesitation lies in that it might make it a bit too much about the product, but you probably don’t want to open it up to absolutely anyone.
To the same effect, you could also have a promise that you’ll give a certain percentage of sales proceeds for “any of our products” to charity. That’s getting a little advertisement-y for my taste, but I really don’t think it’s too far. I wouldn’t say “…sales proceeds to charity,” and I would include the fact that it’s for any products, because that makes people feel like they’re the ones doing it, and it doesn’t make it sound like you’re swimming in cash as much, but that’s probably me being too picky.
The issue, again, is that you need to make sure, with any sort of campaign, that your customer-base is going to take part enough that you raise more money than you spend on promoting it. But that’s really just a matter of how many customers you have and what they do.
Conclusion
In general, though, I think you’re probably fine to do most anything, as long as you approach it with a desire to “set an example.” Anything you do in the name of getting more people to do good, will likely come off as a good thing to the majority.
I believe something along the lines of “Printed on recycled paper. Please help us do our part by recycling.” is low impact but the key words “our part” would indicate to me that you recognize that all of us have our parts in recycling and you are only doing your duty as you see it while at the same time reminding me of my duty to recycle. You are not telling them to do “your part” but to help us do “our part” taking the responsibility on yourselves.
I would be very comfortable with a company who printed something similar on their invoices.
Address the alienation risk by inviting your customers to join you I an effort. Instead of stating that you are giving a percentage of your profit to charity, offer to match customer donations to that charity up to a percentage of your previous cycle’s profits Then if any of your customers take you up on the offer, blow their horns, celebrating their generosity in your gift-matching program. Put recycling tips in your newsletter and on your website, not pompously announcing your own actions but rather informing others of what they can do. Mention in those tips that ALL of your packaging is recyclable and has in fact been recycled at least once already. If you are concerned about overemphasizing the good you do, just state it with normal emphasis, saving the overemphasizing for things that you are not uncomfortable bragging about, like the quality of your products and customer care.
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