I was cleaning off my desk this morning so I have maximum space to work on my book and I found an ad that has been sitting around waiting for me to write about it - so now it is time!   I find in my work that companies are sometimes hesitant to report on their community involvement.  They worry that tooting their own horn will have the opposite effect of what they are hoping for by causing consumers to view them as cold and self serving.  Of course if the reporting or sharing provides trumped up details or is making a mountain out of a molehill for a pretty small effort considering the size of the company, perhaps they should think twice before doing that.  However, these days many consumers do want to know that the companies whose products or services they use are making the effort to be socially responsible and give back to their communities.  Helps with strengthening loyalty of existing customers and draws in new customers, as well.  They like your offerings AND they like your company values. 

I’d like to tell you about two nice examples of companies sharing what they have done in low key but direct ways through newspaper advertisements.  First, Macy’s Department Store took out a full page color ad in the Denver Post on January 1, 2008.  The page is largely black - a night sky view with stars, 2008 written in stars and a shooting star exclamation point.  The bottom show the Macy’s logo and above “WISHING A MAGICAL NEW YEAR TO ALL.  AND A WARM THANK YOU TO OUR EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS - AND TO THE MACY’S FOUNDATION.  THEY ALL HELPED MACY’S GIVE BACK $17,000,000 TO OUR COMMUNITIES.”  Simple and gets the message out about their commitment to the community.

Second, In today’s Denver Post, there was a similar one page black and white ad from the Post-News on Community Programs of the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News.  The ad features a letter from Harry Whipple, President and CEO of the Denver Newspaper Agency,  highlighting their 2007 Annual Report to the Community.  The letter outlines that they invested ” value of more than $13,000,000 in 257 nonprofit organizations through financial funding, sponsorship, in-kind advertising, volunteer hours, and more.”  The ad then goes on to give some examples of including 1,800 hours of employee volunteer service, more than $2 million cash to 91 local nonprofits, and sponsorships of community events including Race for the Cure and A Taste of Colorado.  In the ad, they also subtly let people know their philanthropic focus areas. “Thank you for taking the time to review this report of our community efforts, focused primarily on the arts, youth, education and literacy, and the provision of basic human services.”  Well done!  If you go to their website, the full 2007 Annual Report is available as a pdf.

I really liked the letter’s closing line: “Together we can make a difference.  And thanks to your support we did that last year.  We look forward to many more years of continued partnership and impact in our community.”

How do you get the word out to your customers and/or the general public (potential customers) about what your company does in the community?  Is a newspaper ad something that could work for you?  If you run ads in the newspaper anyway, perhaps you do not have to dedicate an entire ad to this but place a statement about the value of your philanthropy prominently on an ad selling your products.