Emily and my CSR surprise

I love waking up to nice surprises! Today, my nice surprise was Emily, the famous and fabulous presenter of the CSR Minute, announcing the Beyond Business Sustainability Report 2010 on The CSR Minute .

The CSR Minute, now an icon in CSR news communications, is produced by 3BLMedia and is 3BL Media's own daily video digest of the most relevant and timely CSR and Sustainability content all in about a minute. 3BL Media's own correspondent, the wonderful Emily Polk,  reports on the latest CSR trends, topics, and  breaking news every day. See all the daily videos since April 2009 here on the CSR Minute site. Using the weekday calculator, I reckon that it would take only around 182 minutes to view every single CSR Minute news video since the service started to bring you up to date with all the most important CSR headlines during the last 10 months. So get in some popcorn and Chunky Monkey and settle into your favourite armchair to become the most informed person in the CSR world.

For BeyondBusiness, a little consulting firm who makes a big impact, being featured on the CSR Minute is a big deal and we are delighted. Thank you to all the team at 3BL Media for this great opportunity to show the world how small businesses can practice and advance sustainability and do so on a low budget. 

Thank you also to McKesson Corporation , the largest pharmaceutical distributor in North America with a strong tradition of corporate citizenship, delivering healthcare to our communities, for sponsoring this edition of the CSR Minute.

Here is the CSR Minute for 4th February 2010.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices Conntact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

Who will be the FIRST to talk about YOUR CSR report?

Disclosure: This is a bit of a sales pitch for a new service related to reporting. I wanted to make you aware of a new offering by CorporateRegister.com and 3BL Media, and myself. It's called the VideoReportAlert and as its sounds, building on the highly popular and effective ReportAlert sevice offered by CorporateRegister.com, it uses the innovative and attractive format of video to announce your sustainability reports to stakeholders in a format they can easily absorb via one of the most extensive distribution networks available.

This is the press release announcing the new service.

You see, one of the things about sustainability reports is that you have to work very hard to get people to take an interest in them. No matter how fascinating, fair, balanced, well written or well designed your report is, it's not the Taj Mahal , the Leaning Tower of Piza or Stonehenge. People will not flock in their droves to get a glimpse of it just because it exists. They will not suddenly decide to descend on your website, click on the tab that says Sustainability Report , if there is one, and spend hours reading it online. They will not analyse your sustainability KPI's before doing their weekly shopping, and they will not take your report to the beach to read as they bask in the sunshine. Your report is a non-issue for them. With the exception of a few professionals who are in the know, for most people, sustainability reporting just hasn’t hit the radar. Despite the fact that over 6,000 companies report on sustainability around the world, the reach of sustainability reports is still not exploited to its full potential. Say the words CSR report to anyone who's not associated with reporting professionally and you draw a blank. Before you can get people to engage around you report, you have to get them to know that it exists.

So, what do you do? You have written your report, you are really proud and quite exhausted. All that is needed is for people to NOTICE it.  Oooooops. Not happening. What next?

The question of "what next" is actually  something you should plan long before your report is published. What to do with a report after it is published is the most important question you can ask, early on in the process, before you even start to write. Missed that ? OK. Fine. Now you have published, you issue a press release. A proportion of your target audience will notice. You send a few hundred (thousand?) copies to stakeholders. Fine. More people take note. You advise all your Facebook and Twitter fans and shoot a message over to Linked in. Brilliant. You're getting there. Nevertheless, at the end of 2009, youTube was getting ONE BILLION HITS per day. Clearly, this is where people are (also) (mainly?) going in order to hear about new stuff, get informed and entertained. And there are many other video hosting sites around too. Why not take advantage of this and bring your report to where one billion stakeholders are hanging out every day? Present your report using this massive network of video channels. This will enhance exposure to your report tremendously and will not only inform but be more effective in encouraging more people than ever before to take a look. BUT. It takes time and effort to produce a video. You are dead beat just producing the report. You didnt plan for additional  expense of  producing more communications  materials. Here is where we come in. Let us do it for you. With this new service called VideoReportAlert,  we prepare for you a short video highlighting the key points and personal insights from your sustainability report in a lively way, and actively promote the video throughout our extensive networks. We can put this together within 7 days at a very reasonable price that won't be too much of an obstacle even for smaller companies. If you want to know more, ask me, or write to info@corporateregister.com . Perhaps your VideoReportAlert could even go viral! But even if it doesn’t, you can be sure that it will enhance exposure for your report and the interest of a much wider range of stakeholders. Let us be the ones to start off the conversation about YOUR report.

In the meantime, see Paul Scott, CEO of CorporateRegister.com talking about VideoReportAlert (VRA)




Also, you can take a look at the VRA we prepared using the HP Citizenship Report for 2009.




Finally, you can read more details of this service on the VideoReportAlert section of the CorporateRegister.com Services page here.

See you on camera!

elaine cohen is co-founder and co-CEO of Beyond Business, a leading social and environmental consulting and reporting firm. contact elaine at www.twitter.com/elainecohen   or Visit our website at www.b-yond.biz/en

Sustainability Education starts at home

Practice what you preach! That's not a bad doctrine to live by, right? Which in my case, means, amongst other things, educating my kids about sustainability, and in particular, sustainability reporting. In recent weeks, my kids have been witness to me making video blogs for 3BLTV. Or should I say, making thousands of video blogs for the recycle bin for every single video blog that actually makes it to 3BL TV. (If I sold all my out-takes, I would be able to feast on Chunky Monkey every day till I reach the age of 324).  If you havent checked out 3BL TV yet, the most exciting video CSR news and commentary channel available on the web, starring accomplished experts such as Christine Arena, Fabian Pattberg, Chris Jarvis and David Connor, then you should so so soon. The CSR Minute starring Emily Polk is a great way to keep updated whilst you are eating your sustainable cornflakes, and the CSRUnscripted and CSRReport channels are exactly what you need to reactivate those tired brain-cells when you sense they are short on inspiration and new insight. If we dont make it to the Oscars next year, I may have to take up making movies about war and violence. To save me from that, please watch a great team of experts, and me, on 3BL TV.


Anyway, back to preaching. Sustainability Education begins at home. My nearly 12-year old daughter Eden is always keen to learn. See her first lesson in this short video. Very short. I think we will  postpone lesson number 2 till she's 19.




elaine cohen is the joint CEO of BeyondBusiness, a leading reporting and social-environmental consulting firm. Visit our website at: www.b-yond.biz/en