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Corporate Social Responsibility Everyone Should See

9/19/2020

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

By now we all have a story of how the pandemic has negatively impacted us or those we love. Life has become more difficult for everyone, but for people with disabilities, daily living can be exponentially harder. One business, however, has made it its mission to meet such needs in an unforeseen way.

Two years ago I wrote about Starbuck’s innovative efforts to serve deaf consumers through a specially-designed store in Washington, D.C. Among its unique attributes, the store featured an open layout, low-glare surfaces, and employees who knew American Sign Language (ASL).

Even as I, a non-coffee-drinker, applauded the company’s ingenuity and initiative, I could imagine some cynicism about the social responsibility: “That’s nice, but Starbuck’s is a luxury people can live without. Who’s meeting the real needs of people with disabilities?” A former student of mine recently gave me a great answer to that question.

I first heard of Accessible Pharmacy a few weeks ago when that former student, Jason Polansky, told me he was applying to the company for a job. Jason, who wrote a guest blog for Mindful Marketing about a smart cane and who was my coauthor on a CommPRO article titled, “How Serving Blind Consumers Creates Competitive Advantage,” is completely blind.

Fast forward to a few days ago when I received from Jason the good news that Accessible Pharmacy had hired him to be its Director of Business Development for Central Pennsylvania. It’s great that the company identified Jason as an ideal candidate for the position and offered it to him. However, Accessible Pharmacy’s commitment to blind people runs much deeper than its hiring. Its mission is to make a life-sustaining service safely available to a group of consumers who are consistently underserved.

According to the Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC), in the United States in 2015, there were 1.02 million blind people, i.e., who had vision impairment of 20/200 or worse. Furthermore, 3.22 million Americans had lesser impairment as measured by “the best-corrected visual acuity in the better-seeing eye.” These numbers are expected to double by 2050 due to an aging U.S. population and more frequent incidents of diabetes and other chronic diseases associated with vision loss.

That’s a significant and growing portion of the population that could benefit from all kinds of products tailored to its unique needs. As Starbuck’s example illustrated, some business models already have been adapted, but largely missing has been a solution for one of the most critical human needs: medicine.

People who are blind take most of the same medicine others do, but for individuals who don’t drive, there’s the challenge of traveling to a pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Even more significant, blind people can’t easily read the instructions on a bottle of ibuprofen or see that the prescription pill they’re about to ingest is the right one.

According to a 2018 CNBC article, between 250,000 and 440,000 people die each year in the United States because of medical errors, making them the third-leading cause of death, behind only heart disease and cancer. Unfortunately, the inability to see the medicine one is taking contributes to those statistics.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously said, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” Medicine certainly is supposed to make people stronger, but wrongly medicating can kill a person, especially someone who can’t see the medicine they’re taking.

Enter Accessible Pharmacy, “a comprehensive, home delivery pharmacy service specializing in the needs of the blind and low vision community and their families,” which claims to be “the only provider of its kind.”

For many companies, asserting such exclusivity is merely a matter of marketing communication, i.e., they simply say that they “specialize” and do nothing to support the claim. Accessible Pharmacy is different. Its ‘product features’ back up its brand promise. For instance, the Pharmacy offers:

Patient education and consultation
Disease monitoring via teleconference
Cognitive behavior assistance
Medication regimen management
Customized packaging
Presorted disposable pill organizers by week or by month
Braille and large-print labels
ScripTalk: unique RFID tag labels that work with consumer devices to convert text to speech
Home delivery of prescriptions, as well as over-the-counter medications, vitamins, and supplements

In researching and writing about corporate social responsibility (CSR), I’ve often considered whether there’s a best way for companies to give back. Although I believe donation (giving money to worthy causes) and volunteerism (encouraging employees to serve those in need) are both important approaches, the most effective CSR occurs within a business model that marries financial goals with societal good.

In other words, positive social impact is woven into the very fabric of the business’s operations. Accessible Pharmacy is an excellent example of such integrated CSR.

Yes, the firm is a for-profit company with income expectations—a fact that might give some people pause. But should we be wary of Accessible Pharmacy making money by serving blind people?

Of course, there are other ways that organizations doing social good can be funded, for instance by donors and by government. Such models play important roles in addressing societal needs; however, what happens when donors decide to give elsewhere or politicians elect to underwrite other needs?

The point is, CSR that’s integrated into a for-profit firm’s value chain is highly sustainable. As long as both producer and consumer benefit, the mutually valuable exchange can continue indefinitely.

When I asked Jason what excites him most about his new position, he mentioned working with people with disabilities and using his marketing background to make a positive impact on their lives. He undoubtedly will enjoy both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards from his work, as he should. So should his employer.

It’s very challenging to start and run a successful business. It’s even harder to maintain one that addresses pressing societal needs as part of its mission. Accessible Pharmacy does just that, which make it a clear example of “Mindful Marketing.”

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Capri Sun Practices Child’s Play

9/5/2020

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by David Hagenbuch, founder of Mindful Marketing & author of Honorable Influence

Have you ever been food pranked? Someone gives you something to eat and “Yech!” it turns out to be much different than you expected—toothpaste inside an Oreo is a classic gag. Kids love to prank each other, but should the maker of one of the world’s most popular kids’ drinks fool its biggest fans?

Capri Sun, internationally-renowned producer of juice pouches, has decided to prank not just a few kids but a big portion of its target market by filling select silver packages with water. The company filmed reactions of several pint-sized punk’d consumers, who were given unmarked pouches and asked to test “a new flavor” of juice. It then edited the outtakes into a few video promotions.

Compared to most food pranks, which often elicit expressions of disgust, the responses to Capri Sun’s ruse were rather subdued. Perplexed young taste testers made comments like, “It’s very plain,” “tastes a little bit bland,” and “it doesn’t have any flavor.”

What made Carpi Sun’s prank poignant is that the company’s juice pouches are familiar to so many. Since its introduction in Germany in 1969, the company has expanded distribution of its drinks to 119 countries. According to its website, “ In 2014, our fans all over the world drank 6 billion pouches of Capri-Sun!”

One significant serving of drink sales have come from the greater Chicago area, where Kraft Heinz acts as distributor and a newly-formed advertising firm, Mischief at No Fixed Address, produced the prank. The campaign’s full scope includes distribution of five million filtered water pouches labeled, “We’re sorry it’s not juice,” to Chicagoland schools for free. Also appearing prominently at the top of each package is “Capri Sun” in 70-point all capital letters.

Given the immense physical, mental, and financial stress the pandemic has placed on kids and their parents, it’s kind of Capri Sun to help schools, where fountains are shut down and children need other ways of getting water. But, will the company’s corporate social responsibility really remedy that problem, and what’s likely to be the long-term impact on the brand?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city of Chicago, not including the greater metropolitan area, has a population of 2.69 million, of which 21.2% are under the age of 18 and 6.5% are younger than five. Those stats suggest that there are nearly 400k school-age children in Chicago (570,280 - 174,850 = 395,430).

Providing all of those children with a drink a day for a week would mean 1,977,150 water pouches. A full month of water would entail a total of 7,908,600 (2.9 million more than Capri Sun’s pledge). Keeping kids hydrated from September through December would require about 31,634,400 pouches.

Of course, no one company should be expected to satisfy so much demand for free. Meeting massive public needs tends to take a team effort—collaboration among the public sector, for-profit companies, and other organizations.

Still, although it may seem cynical or even ungrateful, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the social impact of Capri Sun’s philanthropy is proportional to the promotional benefits the firm may receive: Do a few drinks of water warrant the brand splash in front of hundreds of thousands of captive young consumers?

When a company gives away something significant, it’s fair for its brand to benefit. However, the amount of that benefit should be on par with the amount of social good done. The rationale is analogous to a firm needing to ante up millions of dollars, not thousands, for naming rights to a building or stadium.

It’s hard to know Capri Sun’s costs in producing and distributing five million pouches of filtered water, but an estimate of .10 per packet would put the total cost at $500,000. That’s a significant spend, but not that much for a firm with annual revenues of about a half billion dollars. A few other issues further complicate the equation.

First, Capri Sun’s promotional benefits might be multiplied in that it seeks to put pouches with its name into the hands of the most impressionable of consumers—children. Kids are understandably less discerning of promotional messages than are adults, which is why the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prioritizes protecting children.

Second, it seems that there should be some subtraction from the social good Capri Sun portends because of the message emblazoned on the foil pouches: “We’re sorry it’s not juice. [It’s just] Filtered Water.”

Is Capri Sun dissing in front of kids one of the most important substances for human existence? Of course, the company is trying to be funny. There is, however, the unhumorous reality that many children consume far too much sugar, much of it coming from sugary drinks. (1) To its credit, Capri Sun Fruit Punch contains a relatively low 13 grams of sugar. That’s not much compared to some drinks, but it is high compared to water.

Then, there’s an even more intriguing twist . . .

On August 5, the Chicago Sun Times announced major Lori Lightfoot’s decision to close Chicago Public Schools due to worsening coronavirus conditions—the city’s children will be learning online. That news would seem to punch a hole in Capri Sun’s water pouch plans; however, over two weeks later, on August 21, an AdAge editor’s pick article described the campaign with no mention of the district’s pivot away from in-person education.

Maybe AdAge missed the mayor’s announcement, or perhaps Capri Sun has found another way to distribute the water without access to kids in classrooms. Assuming the later, there’s still one more potentially serious flaw in Capri Sun’s ‘Got Juice?’ strategy:

By associating its iconic packaging with a less desirable drinking experience, the company risks leaving a bad taste in the mouth of young, impressionable consumers.

Can you imagine sipping a Starbuck’s coffee and discovering it was only warm water, or biting into a Hershey’s Bar and finding it was sans-sugar? It’s doubtful either company would intentionally give even one consumer such an indelibly unpleasant experience, let alone broadcast the negative reaction for millions of others to see and learn from vicariously.

As suggested at the onset, a large part of Capri Sun’s food prank success was the fact that so many people, including children, recognize the straw-impaled drink packs and associate them with sweet refreshment and other pleasant sensations. Those positive associations can be easily washed away, though, by even one unfavorable brand encounter that one experiences him/herself or sees others endure.

Of course, a natural retort is, “It was just a joke!” That’s true, and the prank itself was kind of funny. However, there are some things that food and drink companies just don’t joke about, a main one being the taste of their products. Any such negative association is too risky.

It’s a little like when Watergate-embroiled president Richard Nixon infamously declared, “I am not a crook.” Regrettably for him, many people forgot the words “I am not” and remembered Nixon and “crook.” Any negative frame is inherently precarious, particularly when it involves food.

Advertising humor can be very effective, and who loves to laugh more than kids? However, although Capri Sun’s water switcheroo may have been well-intended, the campaign threatens to spill much of the brand equity the drink maker has built over fifty-plus years, making “I’m sorry it’s not juice “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

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Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

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Corporate Social Responsibility Everyone Should See

Capri Sun Practices Child’s Play

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