TLE launches social purpose offering

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Tim Riches.jpgTLE (formerly The Leading Edge) has launched TLE Social to help brands gain competitive advantage through their Social Purpose. This is about doing the right thing by society and the environment while gaining a positive reputation for the things your brand does, stands for, and supports.

Using research, social sector understanding and commercial strategy, TLE will work with companies in the Australian market to help define, integrate and communicate Social Purpose as a brand asset.

TLE’s Australian MD Tim Riches (left) says companies that ignore Social Purpose are exposing themselves to attack from competitors and missing opportunities to gain, or protect market share. While marketers have long focused on rational and emotional drivers of human behavior, what is often overlooked is that we are also moral creatures.

Says Riches: “We have strong beliefs about what is right or wrong and these beliefs can have a fundamental impact on how we choose to interact with companies and brands.

“Walk into any supermarket to see how a range of reputational issues like sustainability, community fabric, climate change, child labor, deforestation and animal welfare are increasingly becoming battlefronts for the hearts and minds of consumers. The stakes are raised through social media, which amplifies consumer power as advocates for or activists against your brand. This is the key driver of the convergence of the traditionally separate functions of brand and reputation management, and the need to achieve competitive differentiation in CSR Strategy.”

The newly developed offer comes on the back of recent projects in the retail and FMCG sector in which TLE has recalibrated CSR programs for improved cut-through and helped clients grow or defend market share on the basis of social issues.

TLE’s Social Purpose offer aligns products and services as well as the causes brands support, the partners they choose and the way they engage with staff, customers, the community and other stakeholders. Central to the process is the measurement and modeling of the effect Social Purpose has on brands and businesses in order to justify social investment and prioritise future activities.