
Credit: Fence photo by Tim Tolle, from Flickr
The following is a joint post by Kami Watson Huyse, Geoff Livingston and myself.
Social media is in is toddler hood, especially as it applies to cause-based corporate giving campaigns and CSR initiatives. Due to the very public nature of pioneer campaigns, we are able to peer into the box to gleen the strongest approaches towards social media and avoid the weaknesses.At Zoetica, we have been examining social media-based cause campaigns in depth and would like to offer some thoughts on how corporate social responsibility is evolving in the 21st century. You can read our in-depth post over at Kami's blog.
A fusion approach that balances marketing with social change is needed. Clearly, more research needs done to study what leads to meaningful change in cause-based campaigns and CSR initiatives. As a part of my research fellowship with the Society for New Communications Research, Kami Huyse and I are working on research about how companies that contribute to online communities fare in this important metric of change, and if this also contributes to the bottom line as well.Through this, and other research, we hope to further the case for tying cause-related marketing to social change outcomes.