Eric Block On Responsible Branding

In its 18th year of tracking the reporting of Corporate Responsibility, KPMG has issued its latest annual CR Reporting survey.  KPMG analyzed the reports of 3400 companies in 34 different countries.  Among the findings, companies based in the U.S. are lagging behind other regions of the world in terms of the walking the walk vs. talking the talk on corporate responsibility.

According to KPMG, “Companies that can be seen as ‘Scratching the Surface’ are those that have the highest risk of failing to deliver on the promises they make in their CR report and/or targets they have set. These companies have chosen to focus more heavily on communicating their CR achievements effectively by choosing multiple channels and integrating CR in the regular annual reporting without focusing equally on the CR systems and processes. As a result, they may reach their audiences more effectively than the group that ‘is getting it right.’ However, they could also risk increasing feedback and pressure from their stakeholders, including their investors.”

Among other interesting insights and facts in the report include:

• Of the 250 largest global companies, fully 95 percent now report on their CR activities. This represents a jump of more than 14 percent over the 2008 survey.

• With almost half of the largest companies already demonstrating financial gains from their CR initiatives, and with the increasing importance of innovation and learning as key drivers for reporting, it is clear that CR has moved from being a moral imperative to a critical business issue.

• Companies that continue to utilize only one channel of communication (such as an annual report) for their CR reporting will quickly find that they are losing ground to competitors who offer their data across multiple forms of media that appeal to a wider variety of stakeholder groups. However, the design of the specific systems and processes to facilitate this level of communication and specificity may prove complex for many organizations.

Download a copy of the KPMG Survey here.