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ABSTRACT. The corporate sustainability, and responsibility, movement has considerable implications for and impact on the discipline of brand management. It creates pressures to which the discipline must adjust, and new growth opportunities for it to enjoy.
In Maio's view, "brand" permeates all aspects of the corporation and therefore the values of the brand can serve as an effective touchstone for all corporate behaviours: in the Boardroom, in financial markets, in negotiations with employees, in customer interactions, in dialogue with other stakeholders. Moreover, most corporations already have "plumbing" in place (the organizational substructures and processes to manage their brand), that can serve as effective conduits for nurturing values-driven behaviours and measuring them.
I. Impact of the current "sustainability" movement
The corporate sustainability, and responsibility, movement has considerable implications for and impact on the discipline of brand management. It creates pressures to which the discipline must adjust, and new growth opportunities for it to enjoy.
Pressures
The prevailing approach to brand management is obsolete. Whirling currents of economic, political and social change have dramatically strained the contract between business and civil society. Society has raised its voice and is demanding that business take adequate responsibility for its impact on its stakeholders' good. In a global marketplace, that stakeholder group embraces everyone.
Accordingly, the corporate brand mirrors strong, shifting public sentiments as never before. In the past, perceptions of a corporation's behavior and therefore, of its corporate brand had been managed easily enough. Highly integrated marketing communications and public affairs programs presented a consistent image of good citizenship: If a company issued the "right" type of documents, such as environmental reports, mission statements, and later, social-impact reports, and belonged to the "right" clubs, such as those that populate the responsible business category, it was given the benefit of the doubt. Let's not forget Enron's superb, values-laden mission statement.
But those times are over. At first, the internet communities of interest and information helped to cohere a civil voice around NGO-led advocacy on various issues. And vociferous public protests that began with the WTO demonstrations in Seattle three years ago accelerated the pressure for business' greater accountability for global societal interests.
The nail in the coffin so to speak has come rather recently, through the past year's scandals...