Commentary: Branding Your Business for Good

Social enterprise is a popular phrase often linked with tech startups, Fortune 500 corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and global, multimillion-dollar nonprofit ventures like Matt Damons Water.org. But what makes a business a social enterprise? How can you become a social entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurs at every level have always served a philanthropic role in the community, but being a social entrepreneur involves more than just writing a check for charity. During the past 20 years, Ive seen the concept of social responsibility in business change direction dramatically. Originally, a global corporate initiative driven by government or shareholder requirements, it has now become a business essential, driven by customer expectations. Here are three ways Seattle entrepreneurs can blend business operations with social justice to make a profit as well as create positive change.

1. Strategy
As a social entrepreneur, your first step is to identify a cause you truly care about and then authentically tie your organizations vision and specific objectives to that issue. For example, if you manage a chain of retail stores, you could create a strategic plan for the business that simultaneously grows revenue while building awareness of homelessness. As a result, instead of just measuring outcomes and evaluating the success of your plan based on your return on investment, you would also measure the return on your overall impact or what I call ROI+I. Were you able to meet your goals around educating the public about your cause? While not always tied to specific revenue goals, impact matters.

2. Story
When business leaders talk about their brands, they sometimes focus on the wrong things: logos, websites and business cards. While these are important marketing tools, your brand is much more than just your companys visual identity. Every part of your customers experience creates a powerful, storytelling opportunity. Your consumers increasingly value purpose-driven businesses, so an effective brand story is a competitive advantage for social entrepreneurs.

For example, Top Pot Doughnuts cofounder Mark Klebeck and his brother had their brand in mind when building their first doughnut shop. Intending to invoke a fun, quirky, nostalgic feel for patrons, they designed their space to encourage customers to slow down and remember the good parts of family and childhood.

Top Pot has found ways to bake engaging and enticing social causes into its brand experience. Since Klebeck is a parent, childrens social causes are personal for him as they are for many of his customers. The companys main promotional event, an annual 5K race, builds awareness of child abuse and neglect, and raises money for Childhaven.org. If you examine your businesss brand experience and the causes you and your customers care about, youll uncover an engaging, authentic story to use in your social entrepreneur branding efforts.

3. Strength
Instead of going it alone, a smart move for social entrepreneurs is to team up with like-minded businesses and nonprofits to strengthen their respective efforts. By creating powerful alliances, socially minded leaders can maximize opportunities to do good, even if that means working with a competitor.

This approach paid off for Barbie Hull, voted Best Wedding Photographer by Seattle Bride magazine. In 2007, Hull approached six of her top competitors. The group formed a nonprofit organization called Get Hitched, Give Hope (GHGH) and threw a glamorous, indie wedding expo to promote their individual businesses and to raise awareness and money to grant last wishes to terminally ill patients.

To date, GHGH has raised more than $300,000, but Hull says the group has done far more. She attributes her long-term success to these partnerships that expanded her social impact beyond what she could do as a single entrepreneur.

Every leader can benefit from incorporating do-good values into his or her business model. A solid strategy, an authentic brand story and strong partnerships are three keys to help you transform your business into an effective social enterprise that helps people, gives back to the planet and makes a profit.

Whitney Keyes is a fellow at Seattle Universitys Center for Strategic Communication and the author of Propel: Five Ways to Amp Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business. Reach her at 425.941.0102 or [email protected].