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Marketing executives are being urged to take much greater account of corporate responsibility.
The marketing specialists’ professional body, the Chartered Institute of Marketing, has told members that socially responsible business practice is a natural fit with their skills and interests.
In a paper published last month, the institute maintains marketing executives ‘are ideal candidates to be champions of sustainability’ because they can ‘communicate the benefits of having a triple bottom-line policy to other functions in the company’.
The institute is not the first professional body to urge members to take such a lead. Other groups, including those for corporate lawyers, accountants and public relations executives, have laid claim to CSR as their natural territory in recent years.
The institute believes that marketing executives are especially well placed because their work brings them into contact with a wide range of internal departments as well as customers, governments and pressure groups. They are therefore ‘at a powerful interface with key stakeholders’.
However, the institute admits there are also less altruistic reasons. Given the profession’s long-standing complaint that senior marketing executives rarely become board directors, it suggests that showing an awareness of sustainability might be their ‘best opportunity yet’ to show ‘they have their finger on the pulse ... thereby showing their worth at boardroom level’.
Rachel Jones, head of corporate responsibility at public relations firm Fishburn & Hedges, told EP the CIM’s move ‘should be seen positively’ by CSR practitioners rather than as a threat to their activities.
‘CSR is moving more into the mainstream, with an increasing need for companies to communicate to customers what they are doing,’ she said. ‘To do this, they need people who understand the customer mindset, which marketing professionals do.’
The marketing specialists’ professional body, the Chartered Institute of Marketing, has told members that socially responsible business practice is a natural fit with their skills and interests.
In a paper published last month, the institute maintains marketing executives ‘are ideal candidates to be champions of sustainability’ because they can ‘communicate the benefits of having a triple bottom-line policy to other functions in the company’.
The institute is not the first professional body to urge members to take such a lead. Other groups, including those for corporate lawyers, accountants and public relations executives, have laid claim to CSR as their natural territory in recent years.
The institute believes that marketing executives are especially well placed because their work brings them into contact with a wide range of internal departments as well as customers, governments and pressure groups. They are therefore ‘at a powerful interface with key stakeholders’.
However, the institute admits there are also less altruistic reasons. Given the profession’s long-standing complaint that senior marketing executives rarely become board directors, it suggests that showing an awareness of sustainability might be their ‘best opportunity yet’ to show ‘they have their finger on the pulse ... thereby showing their worth at boardroom level’.
Rachel Jones, head of corporate responsibility at public relations firm Fishburn & Hedges, told EP the CIM’s move ‘should be seen positively’ by CSR practitioners rather than as a threat to their activities.
‘CSR is moving more into the mainstream, with an increasing need for companies to communicate to customers what they are doing,’ she said. ‘To do this, they need people who understand the customer mindset, which marketing professionals do.’
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