The tipping point for me came when consumers started buying fair trade without the slightest clue what was actually different about it, and when my dedicated fashionata friend demanded her solar panel should be on the north face of the roof because that was the one that faced the street.

Perhaps the biggest indicator that we are going mainstream is the growing interest shown by the marketing community. The official rag of the industry, the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Marketer magazine, even dedicated its new year issue to the subject. Covering issues from “cause related marketing” to “advertising and obesity” this weathervane for the industry even interviewed Jonathon Porritt about, well, what it’s all about.

Much of the content was reminiscent of the early days of CSR itself. For instance: “Until recently, the word sustainable referred, in a marketing context, to long-term performance; to maintaining a competitive position. Only in the last couple of years has sustainability become more associated with marketing without destroying our environment." 

It is a relief to find a whole page dedicated to avoiding greenwash. Indeed the Advertising Standards Authority has begun to flex its muscles on green claims and CSR, noting that sweeping statements such as “environmentally friendly” or “zero environmental legacy” will be challenged.

Help from advertising standards

Indeed, last year the ASA challenged and pulled adverts from a roofing manufacturer that claimed “all materials used are totally recyclable”. Slightly less obvious was the adjudication against Scottish & Southern Energy’s leaflet claiming that the company would plant trees to balance out the carbon dioxide produced by average customers’ household power use. The company was unable to provide precise evidence on the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by a tree and lost the case. Looks like rigour demanded of advertising might actually set the bar higher than other corporate communications.

A particularly revealing insight is tucked away at the back of the magazine. On the last page you find the results of a survey of marketers showing that half think green credentials are already important and that 84% predict that importance to rise over the next two years. The arbiters of public fashion have spoken – corporate responsibility is the new black.

This interest from the communicators is sure to grow, indeed PRWeek and Campaign, the most widely read magazines of PR and advertising respectively, have also been ramping up their coverage both of corporate mis-steps on sustainability and the anticipated feeding frenzy of campaigns to come.

So where does that leave the usual suspects, those who have spent wearying years actually operationalising corporate responsibility? If CSR is going out to the masses then the current experts and specialists need to brush up their communications credentials.

Here are my five top tips for communicating to the unusual suspects:

● Empathy not explanations – Remember that most of us have a low capacity for information. Normal everyday decisions are often based on emotions rather than business cases.
● Ten words in ten seconds – Use sentences of under ten words, and concepts that take only ten seconds to grasp.
● Quality, quality, quality – The unusual suspects expect business to look good. The average consumer might see more than 3,000 “sell” messages a day, so innovation and creativity is crucial for your messages to cut through the noise.
● Hate it – As a specialist who understands the complexities, dilemmas and detail of CSR, if you think the messages look dumbed down, too brash and too simple, then they are probably the right messages.
● Love it – Your job is to keep the marketers honest, so become the arbiter of what is right, evidence-based and truthful. They will thank you for it later.

If all this talk of marketing sounds terrible, I would not worry overmuch just yet. As the survey goes on to show, 72% of companies have yet to integrate corporate social responsibility into their marketing plans. So, for the moment, the usual suspects rule