Happy New Year and the Best of the Funniest

On this last day of the year and the decade, I wanted to wish all the Reporting Blog followers and all 2009 visitors a very very Happy New Year.

The Reporting Blog has increased in readership every month during 2009 and retweet levels, facebook comments and direct approaches to me by email are increasing. The Blog feeds into Chloregy and The Green Economy Post, Alltop and other sites from time to time. Reporting  has featured in Alex Harris's wonderful  Reputation Report and the CSIC Blog with Sherie Winston and we have guest posted on Peter Korchnak's Sustainable Marketing Blog.  Fabian Pattberg picked the Reporting Blog  as a recommended website., and Chris Jarvis listed the Reporting Blog as one of the top 10 CSR blogs in his now famous list of 51 sites for CSR.  We have had feedback and conversations online and offline from all over the globe, and generally enjoyed being a part of the social media buzz in 2009. Thank you to everyone who is giving air-time and energy to promoting the CSR and Reporting message. Thank you for reading the Reporting Blog and for all your recommendations and interactions. Thanks for inspiring me to write.

My limited powers of analysis deduce from all of this that there is a healthy interest in csr and sustainability and reporting themes, and how they relate to the way we do business and contribute to a better world. I hope this will continue in 2010, and that the Reporting Blog will continue to be a useful resource for many, and an anlytical, sometimes critical, sometimes very critical look at CSR and reporting themes, but always a reporting advocate, adding an occasional touch of humour, or a dollop of virtual Chunky Monkey, to all those who land on its pages.

Wishing the CSR community, and all friends, followers, readers, professionals, unprofessionals and blogosphere addicts:

HAPPY, HEALTHY, PEACEFUL, PROSPEROUS, FUN

2010

oh, and just in case you think this post is a little too short, here are some of the

BEST of the FUNNIEST of 2008/2009. 

Santa's CSR Report - i am not sure Santa found this funny.
From cradle to market - about the life-cycle of PIGS - before H1N1 became a trending topic
The Shiseido Way - some humour in the way Shiseido reports
Can cows save the planet - what can be done to stop effects of cows belching
Now babies can save the planet - no-burp, no waste cute planet saving kids
The Henkel sustainability song - and funny variations on a theme, always makes me laugh
Is sex a renewable resource - one of my all time faves
The world is in trouble- I need to go on a diet - it still is and i still do
Can you speak CSR report - the anti-jargon of reports, this was a popular post
Chunky #CSR Monkey - about sustainable ice cream YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
33 applications of a CSR report - for the sceptics (do they still exist?)
Why go paperless when you can have crap? - rather irreverent look at paper raw materials
What's your financial personality? - and who locked the fridge?
Cuppa anyone ? - sustainable tea cures warts

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

The Shiseido Way: beautiful, cute and animated

I was intrigued to read Shiseido's Social Report. I came accross the fact that they had issued a report, and had a sudden surge of nostalgia caused by several years working in the cosmetic industry, time spent in Japan, and the reverence earned by shiseido as a master cosmetic innovator and developer, using the most expensive raw materials and producing the classiest and most predigious line of products. So how do they do on CSR, i asked myself, after the nostalgia has subsided.

Straight to website, download PDF.
Darn. It's in Japanese. Now why would that surprise me? Well, their CSR website is all in English. Couldnt they have been 無理がきく ? (that means willing to go the extra mile). (I hope!). And produce the report in English ? Wonder what proportion of Shiseido customers are not Japanese speakers? (I know a little Japanese, domo arigato). A quick trip to corporate data shows that 63% of their business is in Japan.

OK, let's take a quick look at their web. Straight to the gut. Stakeholder dialogue. Shiseido has an interesting model here. Once a year, it seems, they invite experts and hold a facilitated discussion which is fully transcripted on the website. This is a nice approach, interesting to hear what appears to be the unedited comments of stakeholders. I looked into how Shiseido dialogues with customers, and found quite a range of ways to sollicit customer feedback, including "chatterbox", where employees talk to customers in an on-line live chat enviromment. it's GREAT fun. Why ? Because it offers "The ability for participants to transform themselves into cute animated characters keeps the interview enjoyable." I think i would be a cute animated CSR consultant.
But the nice, and i think, rather unusual thing about this is that the site also gives examples of where Shiseido has modified products and packaging design as a result of consumer feedback. The value of dialogue proves itself once again.

Their report is a self declared GRI B. That self-declared thing again. Must do a post on that.
It's sort of assured - by one of the stakeholder panel participants - but there is no indication that this is anything more than an informed opinion rather than a full verification or assurance process.

The thing that strikes me most about the Shiseido web report is that it's a little like going back in time. Inside one of their nano-capsules. Their approach to CSR is really about doing good - making people feel happy because they can be beautiful by spending a lot of money on shiseido products and receiving expert advice on how to use them. Shiseido has a very benevolent approach, and works to provide products for all types of skin concerns and "irregulaties "etc. What i miss is any sense of materiality. What's material to Shiseido ? What about their role in the beauty industry which creates manipulated and distorted views of women in the name of beauty ? To what extent are they perpetuating myths about beautiful people to drive sales, that creates the sort of society where women feel they have to be stereotypically "beautiful" to be valued ? what about pricing ? What about animal testing ? What about manufacturing conditions?

And while we are on a feminist roll, Shiseido employes over 6400 female beauty consultants (and 6 males). 276 of a total of 1798 managers are female. 15%. Amazing really. The Company sells to women. Makes products for women. No way of knowing how many women are on the Board or in the executive suite. But wouldn't you have thought that there would be a few more capable women available to assume some leadership responsibility ?

Anyway, all in all, i can't help but feel a little positive towards Shiseido. (Is it that nostalgia again ?). their report seems an earnest attempt to reflect a basically solid csr position and a genuine attempt to do the right thing. Modern CSR would suggest they ought to be doing a little more soul-searching to review those areas which are more difficultly material, and also expand the scope and depth of their reporting .

For the time being, sayonara . Or, as they say in Japan, bai-bai.