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The Grocer recently published its Top 100 advertisers report and showed that Coca-Cola cut ad spend by 6.6% in 2010 and invested more in social media. A spokeswoman at Coca-Cola said that while TV is still an important medium from promoting their brands,"many of our recent advertising campaigns and promotions have also utilised online facilities such as Facebook and YouTube more". With the launch of Coke Zone, a social media oriented site which offers Coke drinkers access to exclusive content and rewards, Coca-Cola has clearly realised the value of integrating offline and online marketing.

To get its employees on board with social media, FedEx's team "realized we needed to go a lot deeper" than just one hourlong workshop. So team members ended up developing an online curriculum with 17 courses. In about 18 months, more than 500 employees had completed the coursework, Horne said. "This is probably one of the best investments we could have ever made," she said. To convince leaders that investments in social media platforms made sense, Horne said she and her IT partners discovered some of the "hidden dollars" that departments were spending to build their own, ad-hoc technology to connect and seek out experts.

A workplace's key employees may be at the greatest risk of experiencing high levels of work stress, according to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Admittedly, it can be difficult to quantify a specific profit or revenue impact from some types of experience enhancers-more robust "voice of the customer" programs, more polished customer statements, better trained front-line personnel, streamlined customer touchpoints, a more user-friendly website, etc. The financials surrounding such initiatives are much less precise than those of hard-dollar initiatives, like the renegotiation of real estate leases or the consolidation of corporate functions. Of course, that doesn't mean customer experience investments have any less of a compelling return than these other endeavors. It just takes a little more work to quantify it. And, frankly, in some cases, it requires a leap of faith.

Marion Crain, JD, suggests looking at other legal models such as marriage law to more accurately respond to the realities of the employment relationship, particularly at termination. "The employment relationship possesses many attributes that we associate with marriage: emotional and economic investment, interdependence, and expectations that the relationship will endure absent bad behavior," she says.

New Post 20 hours ago KPMG's Lord Michael Hastings: Business Must Take Note of Occupy Wall Street New Post 23 hours ago Consumers Expect CEOs to Be Held Accountable and Take Action on CSR New Post 1 day ago Why Corporations With a Social Purpose Perform Better New Post 1 week ago American Ingenuity New Post 1 week ago Sustainable Consumption Is a Myth New Post 2 weeks ago Corporate Social Purpose: It's in What You Don't Sell New Post 2 weeks ago Finally, Occupy Wall Street Puts the Blame Where It Belongs: On Us New Post 2 weeks ago Occupy Wall Street: A Powerful Demand for Something New--Like This Comment 2 weeks ago Yet another point of view Paul: http://wp.me/p1IFEp-7h on Pre-Occupied With Corporate Social Responsibility New Post 3 weeks ago Pre-Occupied With Corporate Social Responsibility New Post 3 weeks ago Starbucks' Job Creation Plan New Post 3 weeks ago Stop Being Cynical About Breast Cancer New Post 4 weeks ago How Sameer Hajee Has Shed Real Light in Africa New Post 1 month ago Taking CSR to the Next Level New Post 1 month ago How A Serial Entrepreneur Found Success By Practicing Responsible Capitalism New Post 1 month ago Making Every Dollar Count: Investing for Impact and Return New Post 1 month ago The Next Global Debt Crisis New Post 1 month ago Thriving on the Value of Vice: Stop Making Too Much of CSR Comment 1 month ago Thanks for your comment. I also makes me think of the importance of [...] on A Higher Ambition for CSR: Corporate Social Purpose New Post 1 month ago A Higher Ambition for CSR: Corporate Social Purpose   *****   6   33     45   0   0   The Forbes 400 World's Billionaires Celebrity 100 World's Leading Companies more + The Forbes 400 is the definitive list of wealth in America, profiling and ranking the country's richest citizens by their estimated net worths. View complete list » #1 Bill Gates Latest News » #14 Mark Zuckerberg Latest News » #7 George Soros Latest News » #331 Stewart Rahr Latest News »

Many businesses have invested in multi-channel campaign management systems, giving them the ability to execute campaigns across e-mail, direct mail, and the Web seamlessly. We classify our campaigns as transactional, promotional, and experiential, among others. When we look at reports, we often compare campaign performance against previous campaigns or similar programs running in parallel. While this focus on campaign management has made e-mail one of the most profitable direct channels in the marketer's arsenal, it has clouded our view of something more important: relationship management. If e-mail marketers are focusing on campaign-level strategy and execution, who is left to focus on the broader relationship between the brand and consumer and how content, cadence, and channel preference all come together to create a relationship of trust between the brand and the consumer? Let's look at some examples of how a focus on the relationship changes the way we look at the programs we run and inevitably makes e-mail campaigns more effective.

A few notable thoughts here:  "as rare as these shifts are, the early predictions about [their impact] are usually underappreciated." "the number one way that customers get information today is through "personal interaction with an employee of the firm" which trumps all traditional sources that most organizations are heavily invested in such as analyst opinion, the Press, and advertising, and that gap has widened."

Organizations that are willing to overturn their communication norms can, with today's digital tools, access these benefits. Those that don't embrace Enterprise 2.0, meanwhile, will stay closer to their historical levels of knowing what they know. Which type would you prefer to work for? To invest in?

If your organization fails to invest in socially responsible measures, or even if anything about your business - such as a faked viral marketing campaign - is perceived to be phony, you will be found out. You will be tweeted about, and a Facebook Causes group will be created against you. As many corporate casualties have discovered, the result of such a campaign can be catastrophic to your firm's reputation and ultimately to its bottom line. Therefore, to avoid a public relations or financial disaster, integrity needs to be part of the DNA of every organization - not just to secure a healthy business environment, but for the organization's own sustainability and competitive advantage. It's worth noting here that I believe the word "integrity" is preferable to the expression "corporate social responsibility," as the latter puts too much emphasis on the notion that corporations should do "good" in the world and be "good" citizens out of some moral or ethical imperative. Of course, that is absolutely true. But what's new - and what organizations need to focus on - is the idea of integrity, as driven by transparency. Without it you cannot build trust, and trust is essential for competitiveness in this new environment. To put it bluntly, regardless of the moral arguments, there are now some hard, bottom-line business reasons for baking integrity into every company.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the launch of a new government initiative aimed at promoting digital literacy resources and collaboration. The federal Digital Literacy Initiative represents a major advance toward implementing the Knight Commission's recommendations for enhancing the information capacity of individuals through new collaborations, public policies and investments in technology. The centerpiece of the initiative is the DigitalLiteracy.gov portal, an online hub for librarians, educators, and other digital literacy practitioners to share content and best practices. It recognizes that Americans cannot compete globally without the skills and understanding to use technology and information effectively.

Alexis de Tocqueville observed nearly 200 years ago that American civic associations served as "schools of democracy" where members learned the skills of citizenship. A recent study by Indiana University faculty member Matthew Baggetta and several colleagues suggests that such organizations are more effective if they embrace that Tocquevillian role. The study found that associations that invest in recruiting, training and engaging volunteer leaders do a much better job than others of representing the interests and beliefs of their members -- even if they lack extensive resources for advocacy -- said Baggetta, assistant professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU Bloomington.

Mobile quiz startup Qrank will announce next week that it has raised a seed round of funding, including an investment from early Twitter VP of Product Jason Goldman. Qrank is building out a platform that will let any organization with a backlog of content use it to create smart, fast-paced mobile trivia games. The games incorporate social networks, location, chat and other social features. It sounds awesome. Goldman is one of five investors in a convertible note of $350,000, ReadWriteWeb has learned and the company has confirmed. The company will use the funding to build a self-service platform, acquire more high-profile customers and complete an analytics dashboard. The existing consumer app gets high marks for responsiveness and user engagement.

New Google CEO Larry Page, who stepped into the job this week, believes that Google needs to go "social" to compete.To that end, he sent out a company-wide memo last Friday, alerting employees that 25% of their annual bonus will be tied to the success or failure of Google's social strategy in 2011.