"Unlikely Alliances" ads win EthicMark Award, imc2 issues study on sustainable communication, Carnegie Council looks at role of Web 2.0 in corporate responsibility

You've seen them: the 'couch' ads featuring traditional adversaries such as Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton sitting side-by-side on a sofa to join forces in addressing the climate crisis. The "Unlikely Alliances" ad campaign, which popularized understanding of the high stakes of climate change, won this year's EthicMark Award for pointing the way "for advertising to achieve its true potential as an agent for creating positive futures for the human family." So said sustainability pioneer Hazel Henderson of Ethical Markets in presenting the award to the Martin Agency and the Alliance for Climate Protection (the folks behind the "We Can Solve It" initiative launched with Al GoreÕs Nobel prize money) at the Green Media Show Conference last week in Boston.

The ad campaign, and the conference, underline the vital role communication plays in advancing sustainability: in order to act, we must first understand. For example, in a Green Media Show panel on corporate sustainability reporting, imc2 vice president of CSR Beth Bengtson discussed her new study on The State of Sustainability Communication. Based on an earlier SIRAN study finding that 86 of S&P 100 companies have some level of sustainability communications, the imc2 report identifies best practices in four sustainability communication categories: holistic definition, integration, engagement, and transparency. The study documents a clear connection between sustainability action and communication, for example spotlighting GM's use of Web 2.0 social networking tools such as blogs, wikis, and chats to engage directly with stakeholders on sustainability issues.

"Can Web 2.0 Revolutionize Corporate Responsibility?" was the title of a luncheon panel last week in the Carnegie Council Workshop for Ethics in Business series, framed by a recent Financial Times editorial from panelists Steve Rochlin of AccountAbility and James Farrar of SAP. "Although Web 2.0 can help businesses interact with stakeholders to find solutions to problems, big challenges remain over how all of these groups will develop trust," said Devin Stewart of the Carnegie Council. "For example, user ratings, such as those on eBay, provide a benchmark for measuring a user's integrity, but how can we be sure that the ratings came from reliable sources?"

Joining these panelists was CSRwire's senior editor Emily Polk, who discussed CSRwire's new Video, Commentary and Research (VCR) platform that allows users to upload multimedia resources such as podcasts and blogs. In addition to the above-mentioned study that Bengtson uploaded to VCR, presentations from last month's "Transparency: Risk or Opportunity?" forum hosted by Framework: CR have been added to VCR. Check out the primer on "Where to start" in identifying sustainability issues from Aleksandra Dobrowski-Joy of Framework: CR, or delve deeper with "Meditations on Carbon Disclosure" from climate attorney William Thomas.

This article was written by CSRwire contributor Bill Baue.