Sometimes you see something that helps put into perspective a whole class of behavior that makes no sense. I’m talking about the bland kind of corporate good citizenship that is stamped out by a cookie cutter and could easily be grafted on to any business. Does your company constantly make donations to worthy causes? Does it show everyone how it is going green? If your company really stands for something, then carbon copy humanitarianism doesn’t really cut it.
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All this was brought to mind as I flipped through Consumer Reports recently. The magazine poked fun at a manufacturer of a doggie shampoo that bragged that its product had undergone no animal testing. This might be one product that you’d want to test on animals, no?
And that’s the point. While proclaiming products free of animal testing is a nice bland corporate citizenship stance, it was copied out of the standard issue company goodness catalog, and makes little sense in this situation. Now, there might be a great story to tell about the kinds of testing that was done, or the kinds of testing that was avoided, but that’s not part of cookie cutter good citizenship. That kind of claim would actually require your company to stand for something.
And plenty of companies that make human cosmetics or pharmaceuticals can stand for something with the same “no animal testing” claim—it’s an absolutely wonderful thing to stand for—but not a doggie shampoo maker. Which again is the point. Your corporate citizenship needs to fit you and your business, not be some kind of generic checklist that could have come from any random company.
Don’t get me wrong. In no way am I criticizing companies for any of these good things they do. It’s certainly better than so much of the bad behavior that we’ve seen from corporations over the years. But the repetitive list of good causes and environmentally friendly and other uncontroversial niceties don’t distinguish your business either. Don’t let your customers file you away as the same as everyone else. Your citizenship activities should differentiate your business the same way you strive to be unique in your offerings and your marketing.
