Social responsibility and marketing aren’t phrases that sit together very comfortably, but in this age of openness and accountability, they’re increasingly being used in the same breath. At a glance you’d think that communication solutions produced digitally would be more environmentally sound than traditional printed methods, an email, for example, doesn’t use up any trees, or expend any petrol to get to its destination. However, recent research has found that reading the news online for 30 minutes actually produces more CO2 per year/per reader, than reading a printed newspaper.

Spam emailing hundreds of potential users might seem like a cost effective way of spreading a message, but people are wise to it these days, and most wouldn’t even open an email if they didn’t know the sender. Even then, some reports have estimated the energy needed to delete spam each year is equivalent to driving a car 1.6 million times around the earth.

Email communications, whilst fast and efficient are still a very one-sided way of contacting consumers. They’re really not up to the modern ‘conversation’ that the now ubiquitous social media sites, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (etc) offer. And people really are using it, social media is now the most popular activity on the web and these channels mean you can talk directly to an individual and have them talk right back to you.

Targeting the right audience at the right time is an idea that the advertising and marketing industries have long been adopting. This article on ‘readwriteweb’ is a year old and it hits the nail on the head.

Social media has, over the past 10 years, made the world feel like a smaller place. It’s now possible for companies and brands to connect in a more open, honest and subsequently lasting way with their consumers, although as Skittles’ experience last year shows, there’s a big risk to opening yourself up to the general public. Social responsibility is such a buzz-phrase right now, but it is the only way to use new online channels successfully, users are too savvy to be hoodwinked for long and the consequences of trying it can be disastrous. Habitat attempted to jump on the social media bandwagon, but ended up using an automated system on Twitter and suffered a speedy backlash.

If it’s going to be done, it should be done right, or not at all. Companies who fail to maintain some basic standards of decency and transparency are damaging the whole marketing industry. Concerns over Facebook security and privacy and the sheer volume of data that Google have collected have already got some people panicking and when companies cynically manipulate things like this example, it’s no surprise people are wary of business’ true motives. The only solution is to embrace our social responsibility to the consumer and win them back through honesty and integrity.

Tags: digital marketing, social media, social responsibility