CSR: 1. The image is everything?

Businesses are valued for the profits they bring to those who run them. Corporate bodies leave few stones unturned, aggressively seeking the brand loyalty that ensures consumer support, and thereby a swelling bottom line.

Their heavy investments in advertising are meant to serve a dual purpose. They introduce to target groups the products they are being encouraged to buy; they also build an image in the consumer’s mind to identify with, clearly associated with the company. It is said that image is everything - it can influence sales, sometimes beyond the product quality.

Hence, image creation and nurturance is assiduous. For example, in 1924, the American tobacco company Marlboro introduced a new product, the filter-tipped cigarette. To reassure smokers there was no change in flavour, the caption “Mild as May” was used in advertisements. As a result, the filter-tips were perceived as just appropriate for women!


To attract the larger consumer body, the image had to be transformed. From the 1950s onwards, a number of Marlboro Men appeared on hoardings, newspapers and magazines around the world. Initially, genuine men of action were used. The first, Clarence Long, was a foreman at a Texas cattle ranch. The rugged and tough ‘Wild West’ appearance fit the truly masculine requirement. Propped simply with “only nature and a (filter-tipped) cigarette”, the theme fired public imagination, and made Marlboro’s smokes fashionable for men.

Time however, caught up with the company’s high-impact ad campaign. It was reported that several of Marlboro’s ‘Men’ suffered from lung cancer and other nicotine related diseases. Now, since these men were of mature age when they were inducted into the campaign, it is likely lifestyles set over years before coming aboard contributed most to their health conditions. Nevertheless, strong protests were made that with the romanticized advertisements, younger age groups idolizing them would be encouraged into early smoking addictions.

Surveys confirm that an “overwhelming majority of smokers begin tobacco use before they reach adulthood”. Awareness groups launched vigorous anti-smoking campaigns to force the tobacco industry to acknowledge the social responsibility of warning people about the health consequences of tobacco use. Legislative changes led to statutory health warnings being included on all cigarette packs, as well as on their advertisements. California Health Services (USA), for instance, utilizes the iconic poster series to drive home quite a different message.


Companies are now being awakened to corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a crucial issue in business sustainability. Fact is a company cannot hold itself aloof from the reality around it. Its business exists because of society, and hence responsibility cannot be denied for the effects of its tactics on the surroundings – the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other human and non-human members of the system at large.

Essentially CSR (also known as corporate citizenship, sustainable responsible business or corporate social performance) refers to ethical and socially relevant business practices being conducted at the management’s own volition. Respecting the human and environmental resources it receives, the self-regulated company accepts its duty to the society that shelters it, at home and abroad. As a matter of corporate policy, environmental concerns, laws, international norms, standards of ethical behaviour, and social and community developments are integrated into the pursuant business model.

Next…trusteeship