How photography for corporate social responsibility can build trust with stakeholders.
Barely a week passes without an article or Op Ed describing how companies are deceiving the general public with claims of corporate social responsibility and sustainability that cannot be verified.
The Financial Times wrote: Nobody wants to be caught out as a liar, and no company wants to be caught out as a greenwasher. Trust matters, and a company that is found to be lying about how green it is risks losing the goodwill of its customers and its investors.
The article described five practices employed by companies to deceive and mislead.
- Disclosing misleading information – Greenwashing. This assumes that the customer has little knowledge of the claim or how to verify it and so can state that a product is low carbon or has positive social impact when in fact the opposite could be true. Two frangrance companies were recently linked with child labour, which the suppliers claimed was a result of the same companies squeezing prices.
- Attention deflection – also known as green shifting whereby a company plays down its own impact and instead blames its customers for the problem. An example of this was when Coca Cola claimed that plastic bottles weren’t the problem, it was the way their customers disposed of them.
- Attention reduction – Greenhushing means providing less and less information over time, making it hard for people to find sustainability information or to verify any claims being made. At the moment it appears to be the financial services sector that it coming under fire for claiming to have ceased funding fossil fuel companies and other unsustainable activities but they keep being caught out on a fairly regular basis by those determined enough to seek the truth.
- Peer overshadowed attention – getting lost in the crowd and hoping not to draw attention. Making the same claims as competitors but not doing the work. Or joining the same schemes as others in the same sector and doing the minimum amount required.
- Timing – this involves either withholding information or releasing it at a time when it is less likely to be scrutinized. We see this where companies present their report and accounts for the year but with sustainability information reported separately at a different time without fanfare.
Trust Matters
The regularity with which these types of articles are being published might imply that all companies are lying to us but that isn’t the case. There are some great companies who are making real progress, so how do you build trust?
Documentary photography is an effective way to communicate corporate social responsibility activities and achievements. Visually documenting in real-time, at real locations (not studios) enables companies the opportunity to not only explain what they are doing, but to also demonstrate the impact they are having.
Click the image below to download my short PDF booklet:
Five ways to use photography for corporate social responsibility communications
- Stop using cheap or free library images in your materials.
- Commission someone to visually document a problem that you are helping to address.
- Photograph everything you are doing and the people involved.
- Photograph the impact you are having, either directly or indirectly
- Create photo essays, which are easier to read than text and have the benefit of creating an emotional connection.
The Picture Superiority Effect is a well documented concept which has proved that we read and understand pictures faster and with greater clarity and connection that we do with text. The better the picture story, the bigger the impact on the audience.
‘Sometimes there is one unique picture whose composition possesses such vigor and richness, and whose intent so radiates outward from it, that this single picture is a whole story in itself. But this rarely happens.’ Henri Cartier-Bresson, from The Decisive Moment, and the reason why he dedicated his career to the ‘picture-story’.
