Expert View: Is helping the community sexy?!
If you’re a fashion photographer, a restaurateur, an EnVogue clothes designer or a director of Agent Provocateur underwear, then the link is easy! If you manufacture widgets or supply aerodynamic nuts and bolts to the aeronautical industry, it’s harder to fathom, yet even in the grey suited pinstripe politics there are great furores when even at times war governments are accused of sexing up documents.
The word has been hijacked. Once the spin of the advertising industry, it is now trotted out to the most palatable and ‘normal’ areas of commerce. Sexy is synonymous with power, success, triumph, profit, increased share price, dividends yet the word to often is not synonymous with morals or obligations.
Should businesses have a social responsibility? Should they care about the communities they deliver their product to? Why should they bother? The reality is ignore communities at your peril! The millions spent by McDonalds in reaction to the lampooning of super size me, or the green and organic stance Tescos are investing billions on, are both reactions to a community. At the end of the day communities are consumers and they have ultimate power, and cynical manipulation of them often becomes unstuck.
Take the film ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ an award winning book, and a very sexy cast, but it bombed at the box office. The chemistry didn’t work, its components were not orchestrated, the heart of the film community - its audience were ignored in the pursuit of the dollar. Ignore communities at your peril! It’s not just about communities manifesting themselves in the guise of consumers. Consumers are people whom respect good will.
A company perceived with a heart and a conscience automatically engenders its brand with an integrity and honesty. The reality is companies whom have that foresight can turn the elevated status of that brand into meaningful profit.
Cynical spin and PR for the discerning will always be transparent and negative. Equally clear in a positive sense is a company that demonstrates its heart, its ownership, its sense of place, its responsibility and where possible serves the community it provides for or has a connection to in some capacity.
To demonstrate a project meriting your help please visit the link below. I invite all of the business community to help and assist with this project which I fundamentally believe will enhance your integrity on a subject matter that affects all of us.
http://www.colourblindfilm.com
Ignore Communities at your peril!
