CSR A MARKETING TOOL

                                          CSR A MARKETING TOOL FOR THE COMPANY

Corporate Social Responsibility has emerged as one of the prominent Marketing tool for the Companies. Companies should always be visionary about the CSR, as it acts like catalyst for brand building. Looking to the pre liberalization period in our country mainly Tata & Birla had immense respect among public & I must say they understood the essence of CSR at the initial period of Corporatization. Both the companies still follow their culture of passing their wealth for the betterment of our society. Kumarmanglam Birla & Ratan Tata has followed the long run culture of their organization with their own trust for CSR.

If we will see we could easily correlate CSR as one of the vital marketing tool where on one hand Goodwill will be created & on the other hand there will be promotion for the company that will create the brand equity resultant into enhancement of revenue generation. Can we say that CSR is an investment rather than the Expenditure? As mentioned we are well known of the fact that how Tata & Birla have their brand name all over the country, even in rural India they have very high brand recognition. If we will have our glance with some of the advertisements, companies are mainly focussing their CSR initiative in the print & electronic media with the clear motive for revenue generation. One of the frequently seen advertisement is for P&G where they are emphasising on education with tag line’ Padhega India Tabhi to Badhega India’. We could better understood the importance of CSR with the newly entrant Anil Aggarwal’s London based Vedanta group advertisement ‘Creating Happiness’ that clearly focuses on its CSR initiative specially for tribal areas of our country to show its footprint in India & create the Brand image.

Businesses corporate nationally as well as internationally taking part for the Social cause that resultants into the benefit for the society as well as for the company in terms of strong brand awareness. But I think apart from CSR the billionaire businessmen should look for ISR (Individual Social Responsibility) it means the huge wealth created by them should also be used for the benefits of the society & this is the real philanthropy. Some of the businessmen are doing this like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, HCL founder Shiv Nadar are among the few.

So we can easily interpret that how CSR helps in brand building & became an important marketing tool, companies should focus on CSR very actively, as on one hand it shows the generosity of the company & on the other hand generates long term benefit for the company.

Warm Regards,

Hem Jha