It is, perhaps, difficult to believe that until just a few years ago the standard response for global brands was simply to deny responsibility for some of the appalling workplace practices that had become routine at their Asian production factories.
Thanks to a vociferous anti-sweatshop movement, coupled with rising consumer activism, however, that kind of strategy now looks refreshingly prehistoric. No company embodies this shift better than Nike which, for 15 years, has been pummelled by attacks on labour policies that one PR executive described as “brutal”.
In 2005, Nike demonstrated the shift in thinking that had already been embraced by the likes of adidas, Levi’s, H&M and Gap. Rather than simply insisting that suppliers adhere to a code of conduct, the sports brand published details of the 700 factories that made its goods - admitting that a quarter were not meeting minimum standards. Earlier this year, a specific China report revealed that workplace abuses remained rife. Now Nike is attempting to engage more effectively with NGOs and local governments, pitching a communications assignment to monitor and respond to CSR issues across China and Southeast Asia.
Nike’s decision may appear like simple communications common sense, in the face of rising consumer and NGO activism in Asia.
But the brand’s CSR pitch remains the exception to the rule in this region. While most brands source the majority of their products in Asia, CSR spend remains disproportionately focused on their home countries.
“From a communications point of view, most companies haven’t woken up to this,” says Stephen Frost, executive director at thinktank CSR Asia.
“There are a range of stakeholders in this region, including workers, who are beginning to get hold of information that can hold big companies accountable.”
Then again, it is not as if Asia is awash with agencies poised to unleash sophisticated CSR strategies at a moment’s notice. “There is extraordinarily limited CSR expertise in advertising and PR agencies in Asia,” says Frost. “Unfortunately, what we are getting is a lot of PR agencies espousing their expertise on CSR and reducing it to a PR message. That’s an issue we see as quite troubling.”
The blame for this could be laid at the door of thrifty clients. “It’s still a very small percentage of our business,” admits Edelman Asia-Pacific president Alan VanderMolen. “The market is just trying to sort out what clients are buying. Overall, clients are not engaging aggressively enough in creating dialogues and a lot of them do not have clear narratives about what they are doing and why they are doing it.”
Coca-Cola group communications director Kenth Kaerhoeg agrees, noting that companies that have issued China-specific CSR reports, as his own company recently has, remain few and far between. “It’s a new area, so the bench strength when it comes to CSR at agencies is limited.”
It seems unlikely that this state of affairs will remain tenable indefinitely. “A lot of companies do have the CSR without the communications,” says Frost. “But if we’re talking about multinational companies, there needs to be a much deeper understanding of what CSR is about and that the message promoted is about what’s happening in the company.
“If your aim is to make yourself look good, eventually you will come to a dead end.”
