Body Shop puts a new face on charity

By DITA DE BONI

The benefits of attaching your company name to a well-regarded rescue helicopter or popular appeal to help fight children's illness are well known by consumers and corporates alike.

In fact, marketing departments and management teams know that aligning themselves with causes involving children, animals and cancer, for example, are almost invariably successful.

The issues have a wide reach into the lives of a broad cross-section of New Zealanders, and they are family-friendly enough to comfortably fit with a company's need to appeal to a household shopper and family opinion leader.

A range of alternate charities, requiring different methods of involvement, also exists.

Increasingly, overseas, corporates are looking to extend their charitable efforts beyond traditional philanthropy to social investment programmes that both involve a company more intimately and provide more in the way of returns for the philanthropic buck.

One sector of the estimated $US250 million "corporate and not-for-profit partnership" industry that is gaining in popularity is volunteerism. Companies often state their commitment to volunteer service in corporate mission statements, match volunteer service with cash grants and provide paid time off for employee volunteers under such schemes.

In return, the companies receive the traditional spinoffs, including a "good" corporate name, customer loyalty, an easier entry into new markets, and the strengthening of reputation.

But they can also experience a vast improvement in workforce attitude, motivation and skill base.

Companies involved in volunteerism - often in less "sexy" causes that require long-term commitments - report that employees become more skilled, more loyal to their company, take on increased responsibility and develop leadership skills as a result of the work. Other benefits include intensive word-of-mouth marketing, attracting committed employees and retaining them longer, and, not least of all, gaining a caring corporate profile at a lower cost than the cost of pure financial philanthropy alone.

The idea has not quite taken off in New Zealand yet, but it is big overseas. Companies like AT&T (America's largest telco) and Eastman Kodak have fully paid volunteer days off for employees worldwide (one third of all large US companies have such days).

Several companies with formalised volunteer programmes have found employee turnover falls significantly: one Kansas firm's turnover rate fell from 22 per cent to 7 per cent in five years during a volunteerism drive in the local community.

Europe, South America and Asia, especially in areas with multinational branches, are slowly but surely following suite. Korea's Samsung Electronics offers up company volunteers to roam the street of Seoul in a peacekeeping capacity. Other projects include computer education in jails, environmental clean-ups and time spent with the disabled and elderly.

One company to have embraced the concept of volunteerism in New Zealand is the Body Shop, which stipulates that each store must be involved with a community project, reportedly at least two hours a week.

The community service thrust has a twofold importance to the image the beauty product chain fosters in the market: first, its point of difference in the vast beauty industry landscape is a business "with heart;" second, it does not do mass-media advertising and relies heavily on word-of-mouth promotion.

The Body Shop Newmarket decided last year to engage in volunteerism for the city's Refugee and Migrant Service (RMS). Five workers and manager Paula Neilson underwent a six-week training course to understand how they could help a newly arrived Kosovar family. They then spent several hours with the family, teaching them about New Zealand and its systems, and canvassing customers, friends and other Body Shop stores for furniture.

The work has had a significant impact on the lives of the workers, says Ms Neilson, now manager of the chain's Manukau City store.

"It's a huge part of my life at the moment, and I've noticed the girls have become much more enthusiastic about what they do, too.

"We just really want the family to have a happy experience in New Zealand."

The business benefits of the work have become apparent as well, she says.

While admitting the refugees themselves may not necessarily afford to be customers of the shop in the first few years after their arrival, "they make friends and their friends come into the shop.

In Wellington, where shops worked with the Cancer Society and helped with the 'Look Good, Feel Good' programme, the women realised what great products we had and then told people about that."

With no advertising, the Body Shop knows how important word-of-mouth is and is convinced that community good works engender customers to its good public profile.

While the Body Shop's alignment with the refugee cause enhances its "caring beauty" marketing efforts, RMS is also trying to raise its profile through corporate contacts.

The service has been operating for almost 25 years and has settled more than 20,000 refugees into New Zealand life, but has found its traditional church-based support network eroded and has had to become both more secularly targeted and, like many charities, more focused on financial accountability.

In a funding crisis, national fund development manager Maureen Crombie says corporate sponsorship and partnerships will be the way the service survives into the future, as the Government's grant package does not cover each year's 750 new immigrants.

The RMS has a marketing budget of less than 5 per cent of turnover. "Strictly speaking, we have no marketing budget right now," says Ms Crombie - which is why the agency's annual direct marketing appeal this week is crucially important.

The mass mail-out is the first time the RMS has gone outside church groups and its database to solicit support. Still, says Ms Crombie, "volunteers are the backbone of the organisation."

"The Body Shop has been our first experience with corporate volunteerism but we are very interested in developing the idea further.

"We would look to corporates not only to raise our profile and people's awareness of the refugee experience but also to help with providing positive stereotypes."

Ms Crombie, who has 10 years of marketing experience with Humanitarian Aid, says the same "tool box" of marketing skills applies with not-for-profits as well as corporates.

"Unless you have a high public awareness of a cause, there will always be a ceiling to what you can manage to achieve."