Aug
22
According to Alloy Media & Marketing’s eighth annual College Explorer study, a growing number of students in the US are (41% up from 37% last year) are looking to spend their money on socially responsible brands.
The criteria used to determine a company’s degree of social responsibility were: donating money to a charity or cause; using eco-friendly or green business practices; employing fair labour practices; incorporating social messages into advertising; and supporting diversity in the workplace.
The top socially responsible brands identified by were:
Shoes and Apparel: Nike
Automotive: Toyota
Food: Yoplait
Retail: Target
Personal Care: Burt’s Bees
Who would come out on top in Canada? Toyota would be likely remain #1 for automotive. But I don’t see any retailers up here who made corporate responsibility and community investment as conspicuous as Target’s $1 million per week banners in their stores. How can Target do this and not appear inauthentic (especially to students)? On reason is their long history of community support and integration of a community-minded sensibility throughout their operations.
One Response to “ Students and Green Brands ”
The number of students who claim that they are “looking” to spend their money on socially responsible brands may have increased, but somehow I doubt that most of them are “looking” all that hard. And given a choice between spending significantly more on a brand that claims to be “socially responsible” and one that’s cheap but makes no claims, I’ll bet the majority of students are too poor to think of anything but price first.
Because if the under-25 population was serious about “socially responsible,” then China would be in such dire straits economically over the drop in sales of its cheap and occasionally deadly goods, that it would be forced to re-think it’s human-rights record.
Marnie Tunay
http://fakirscanada.googlepages.com/
By Marnie Tunay on Aug 23, 2008