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.’
