Kaizo stole the show at the PRCA’s annual awards ceremony, picking up the inaugural Web 2.0 award, arguably the most sought after accolade as it represents the future of the communications industry.

Kaizo’s thought-leading work with Simple, the UK’s number one sensitive skincare brand, was recognised by the panel of judges as truly Web 2.0 because of the way that it engaged and involved Simple’s customers on a level never seen before in this market.

The challenge all businesses face in the Web 2.0 world is how to adapt and re-model their traditional marketing initiatives to the way consumers are now creating and consuming information. Kaizo’s philosophy is simple. Listen to your customers. With this in mind, Kaizo developed SimplyCity, a direct consumer engagement panel that to date has recruited 4,000 brand advocates. Advocates that voluntarily become involved in key business decisions and drive positive brand recommendations offline, whilst also providing Simple with clear, cost effective and invaluable consumer insight. In essence, the Kaizo strategy is turning Simple’s customers into a volunteer salesforce.

Crispin Manners, director of service innovation at Kaizo, commented: “Web 2.0 is changing everything. Businesses have to realise they have no control over what their customers say about them. It’s time for brands to rethink ‘tell’ dominated campaigns and adopt an ‘ask’ strategy that turns customers into advisers. What our effort with SimplyCity has proven, is that when you exceed customers’ expectations they love to be treated as advisers. We have been blown away by the complete positivity that our WOM approach has uncovered.”

* Connection yet to be made between environmental policy and commercial performance as businesses fail to take action

Despite increased media coverage and promotion of climate change issues, UK businesses are still unclear about the commercial impact it could have according to latest insights revealed today.

Additionally, businesses are failing to do all that they can to reduce their impact on the environment according to the new research into business attitudes towards sustainability conducted by PR and Word of Mouth consultancy Kaizo.

Key findings of the study called ‘Greener Business – Opportunity or Risk’ include:

* 49% of respondents believe their business is not doing enough to combat climate change
* 86% of respondents do not know the carbon footprint of their business
* 20% of businesses are still not making any changes at all to become a greener operation
* 67% of respondents still find media coverage of climate change issues confusing

Worryingly the research also highlights that the UK business community still sees climate change as a traditional PR issue, rather than a primary management consideration:

* 64% don’t rate climate change as an important influence on business management strategy
* 41% of respondents felt the biggest commercial opportunity was a boost to brand reputation

Christopher Broadbent, a senior consultant at Kaizo on sustainability issues commented:“The results of the Kaizo survey are alarming in that they expose a resistance to change seemingly fuelled by confusion, narrow scope and an assumption that ‘green clothing’ can be a substitute for action.

“Many businesses in the UK are not waking up to the broader commercial importance of sustainability, and the remarkable commercial benefits adapting business models to it can bring, let alone the moral imperative. Regarding ‘going green’ as a purely PR exercise is not only futile it is damaging.”

Further findings include:

* Only 6% of respondents see meeting customer demand as a primary opportunity offered by adopting a low carbon business model
* 13% of respondents felt that there are absolutely no risks for businesses that refuse to go green

Broadbent continued: “The idea that organisations failing to adopt a low carbon business model face no commercial risks at all is very naive. With the government’s (albeit weak) climate change bill in the pipeline, the tougher London Action Plan on Climate Change already in place, European production regulations tightening and energy costs rising, every business that does not address climate change will see an impact on its profits and it value.”

To coincide with these insights, Kaizo has launched a comprehensive Sustainable Communications offering, led by Broadbent. A specialist team of sustainability experts at Kaizo now counsel organisations on the changes that can be made to become a low carbon business before coordinating and executing communications programmes that unlock the commercial potential of those changes.

Rhodri Harries, Managing Director of Kaizo, commented: “Climate change has brought with it the requirement for a broader skill-set that sits outside of conventional PR. We have created a team that has the capacity to meet these new challenges and take ownership of what can be a confusing issue for many businesses.”

The full results of Kaizo’s survey, ‘Greener Business – Opportunity or Risk’ can be found here.

Michael Skapinker’s article in the FT entitled ‘You can handle the web without an adviser’ has an interesting take on how the web influences brands. It seems to me that his argument that he can recall only “four web-based consumer campaigns that had real impact” misses the point about the huge impact the Internet is having on brands. It is less about changes in business decisions such as the return of the Wispa, and more about the pervasive availability of online whispers which accumulate into a very persuasive reason for people to take action. For me it is the decisions of individuals on a daily basis influenced by the likes of content on www.tripadvisor.com  and consumer reviews on www.amazon.co.uk that brands need to monitor and influence. Too often the focus is on  ‘tell’ campaigns above the line when active dialogue online could develop a more rounded and balanced set of consumer perceptions and recommendations.

SURVEY RESULTS

Kaizo Greener Business: Risk or Opportunity

As part of the launch of its specialist sustainability communications service offering, Kaizo has undertaken research into attitudes towards climate change from the UK business community. The survey was engineered to assess the actions being taken by UK businesses, and how these actions are perceived/prioritised as part of the overall management strategy.

Making the changeAccording to the Kaizo survey, 62% of respondents’ businesses are actively making changes to become greener. 18% of respondents didn’t know if any changes are being made, reflecting a lack of internal awareness of many environmental programmes. An alarming 20% of businesses are not currently making any changes to reduce their contribution to climate change.

Climate change as business strategy

Less than half of the survey respondents (48%) could confirm that their business has a firm environmental policy in place. An alarming 52% of respondents said their business did not have a policy (33%) or did not know if a policy existed (19%).

In terms of importance to business strategy, it is clear that climate change remains a CSR issue for many businesses, rather than a profit-oriented priority. 37% of respondents claimed climate change was not at all important (17%) or not very important (20%) to business management strategy. However, 21% of respondents claimed climate change was very important to business strategy – reflecting the conflicting approaches to the climate change issue across the UK business community.

Making a difference

A strong majority of respondents (68%) believe their business can make a difference to climate change, whilst 18% believe any effort to reduce impact on climate change would be futile.

The difference to commercial performance made by becoming greener is also clearly recognised by 91% of those questioned, but 9% of respondents still believe there are no commercial benefits to becoming a greener business – supported by the fact that 13% believe there are no commercial risks to refusing to become more environmentally friendly.

The most common benefit of becoming a greener business was seen to be a reputational boost for a business’ brand (41%). The significance of other benefits, such as attracting new business (14%), meeting existing customer demands (6%) and attracting/keeping personnel (19%) were relatively low.

A startling 13% of respondents believe there are no risks to not becoming more environmentally conscious – even in the face of green taxes, consumer awareness/reactivity and media attention. 37% believe the issue is not at all, or not very important to their business’ management strategy.

The primary risk highlighted by respondents was negative media coverage (26%), again reflecting a lack of awareness for the wider business issues, whilst reinforcing the importance of sustainability to communications programmes. There was also a demonstrated awareness of rising energy costs (23%) and green taxes (22%) as risks to businesses not facing up to climate change.

Understanding climate change

Only 45% of respondents believe their company understands all of the changes it can make, and almost half (49%) believe their business is not doing enough to combat climate change.

67% of respondents find media coverage of climate change confusing, reflecting the conflicting messages conveyed by PR campaigns and scientific reports.

Sample information

For this research, Kaizo questioned 85 individuals from businesses across a broad range of industries, including the food and beverage sector, transport and logistics, property, manufacturing and construction.

The respondents were in management/decision-making positions.

40% of the respondents worked within companies of 1-50 employees, 7% in companies that had between 51 and 100 employees, and 52% were from businesses of more than 100 employees.