Posts in category: Blog

“Every single C.E.O. and board is having to figure out what their carbon footprint is and what they are going to do about it”

Paul Tudor Jones II, the investor and founder of Just Capital, Jan 2020

Imagine a scenario where rationing on water has become mandatory in California, delay in rains leads to widespread hunger in Africa, China becoming the dominant user of the energy consumption………..

SCARY……. Isn’t it????

Concerns about climate change has been rising since a decade now, and the situation is worsening with each passing month/ year. Rising temperatures have led to the tensions amongst the business leaders across the globe that are stemming from trade, geo-political and domestic conflicts.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that the likely costs of just 2°C of global warming would be of the order of 0.5-2.0% of global GDP by the middle of the century; even if strong adaption measures (to reach environmental sustainability) are taken. In the United States, reports from the Risky Business Project (that uses a standard risk-assessment approach to determine the range of potential consequences to each region of the US-as well as for selected sectors of the economy-if the Americans continue with their existing path of climate conservation. To add further: the research focused on the clearest and most economically significant of these risks namely damage to coastal property and infrastructure from the rising sea-levels and increased storm surge, climate driven changes in agricultural production and energy demand, and the impact of higher temperature on labor productivity and public health) show that the economic impacts of Climate Change will likely grow. For example: within the next 15 years, the higher sea levels combined with storm surge will likely increase the average annual cost of coastal storms along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico by $2 billion to $3.5 billion.

Saving the planet takes a lot of money and money is both the theme and the sub-text of initiating action in the climate process. The United Nations process that initially started with coming to the climate change conferences and observe and advice about the adversities of the rising climate (due to increased use of fossil fuels) is now all about the “show-and-tell” virtue. There has been a dramatic shift in the manner the UN conducts its climate conferences now. “Momentum is there”- declared Paul Polman, the former Unilever CEO (after having attended the UN conferences in previous years). According to him: “Climate change is the biggest opportunity of all times and we are close to several policy tipping points”.

According to the experts, there is mounting pressure for change to mitigate and adapt to the direct impacts of climate risk and its connected downstream risks. Businesses are also facing huge risks internally as well…..from its employees being unhappy about the management’s climate change initiatives and not being able to project the organization as the environmental friendly one.

In addition to the above, the industry insiders (on the condition of being anonyms) do confirm about the sky high pressure that the corporations are witnessing from its investors. The industry stalwarts do acknowledge that the leaders today are facing great heat from all of its stakeholders to engage in low-carbon transition or net-zero emissions plans to sustain in competition in the long run. In addition to this, financial regulators are also demanding for transparency against climate scenario like making the climate risk disclosure legislation and litigation against the companies mandatory. The companies that fail to disclose the climate risk should face serious consequences from both the government and the stakeholders. Example: Bank of England that stresses upon testing banks and insurers on the above mentioned parameters.

As the former CEO of Unilever Paul Polman mentioned that we are close to several tipping points… the companies need to be more strategically resilient and should be able to convert risks to significant opportunities in order to align themselves in the direction of change. To be able to do so, the companies can adopt some of below mentioned approaches:

a. Take a TRIM TAB Approach to climate change

According to Amy Edmondson: “business leaders are often depicted as greedy and short-sighted, who refuse to face crucial issue like climate change and subsequently find it difficult to change the perception.”

The term “bully-point” was coined by Theodore Roosevelt where “bully” meant “terrific.” The term was coined to explain the power and potential of speaking out and influencing public opinion. In today’s time, the same is used to describe any position with the potential to get public’s attention.

With the above explained concept Amy Edmondson wanted to explain that the business leaders today have bully point that is unparalled in history, provided they are ready to take the advantage of the opportunity.

Having access to various social media platforms and various forms of communication, it is very easy for the leaders to voice their opinion about climate change and also, to explain what all steps they are undertaking to minimize its impact.

This exemplify a simply fact that the leaders in today’s time do acknowledge the threat to the society in the decades to come, created by their operations; but with the selfish motive to earn quarterly profits, they refuse or in other words, choose to ignore the same. In fact, behind the close doors many thoughtful leaders throw up their arms thinking “my company is just a drop in the bucket” OR “until regulations happen” OR “there is nothing that my company can do or make a difference”.

This is where TRIM and TAB comes in!!!!

To maintain the business of climate change and to be economically and strategically sustainable, business leaders must recognize this principle and just get started. In other words, to be a flag-bearer in bringing about change and accepting climate change as an important stake holder, it is imperative that the leader take small steps and inching closer to sustainability with each step. In short,

Just “Trim & Tab”

b. Tackling Climate Change will cost less than We Think

Yes, it’s true!!!!

Prof. Rebecca Henderson argues that an inaction on the climate change will prove to be a costly affair than the timely action. According to United Nations estimates: roughly 1% of the world’s GDP a year or about $840 billion would be needed to curb the impact of climate change.

The above seems to be small number in comparison to the various studies that has been undertaken over the years. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: damages from uncontrolled Climate Change (an increase of 3.4 degree Celsius) could cost $12 trillion (2.8% global output) by 2095. Moreover, the same study suggests that delaying action could increase mitigation cost by 40% every decade, making it impossible to climate change impacts.

Building an energy efficient, decarbonized economy is a massive shift and will require the transformation of almost every company’s business model. Making changes in the business model is a major shift and involves a lot of planning and persistence on behalf of the leaders. However, having said so, it is still an achievable task. How??? Let’s discuss with an example:

There have been many investments in the field of energy conservation and many

of such investments have already been NPV (Net Profit Value) positive. A very

recent report (pdf) estimated that an investment of $3.2 trillion worldwide in

energy conservation would avoid new supply investments of $3 trillion and would

pay for itself within 3-5 years, while a recent Department of Defense sponsored

study (pdf) concluded that using LEED-silver or equivalent standards in the design

and construction of new buildings increased construction by less than 1% while

reducing energy costs by between 5-30% over the life of the building. Between

1990-2012 IBM reduced electricity consumption by 6.1 billion KWh, saving $477

Million through energy conservation alone.

There can be plenty of such examples on energy conservation. The idea behind citing these examples is that business on one hand is greatly impacted by climate change but on the other hand, non-action on the part of business leaders will impact the business to a larger extent and that too negatively. Ultimately, every leader aims to sustain in the competitive scenario in the long run. Whether it sustains after investing small amount today or by investing huge chunks tomorrow……..

IS DECISION THAT NEEDS TO BE MADE?

c. Need a miracle: Nuclear Energy can be the Answer

According to Joe Lassiter: nuclear power is the answer to the dangerous carbon emissions.

Various world’s governments- the United States, the European Union, Japan, China, India and the rest confirms that they fully expect their citizens to continue burning fossil fuels and releasing CO2 emissions at the above rates that by 2100. This will outstrip the cumulative amount of atmospheric CO2 needed to increase the average world temperature by 2°C if not by 6°C; and after 2100, world will have to live with the elevated temperatures and acidified oceans for 100 years or more.

Apart from China, all the other nations pledge to keep their emissions flat. But, the urge for economic growth makes the usage of fossil fuels and fuel emissions by the Chinese firms at an alarmingly high rate. This is devastating for the world at large and it need to be curbed. To curb this there is a form of energy that needs to be adopted and promoted by all the leaders. This is “nuclear power energy” and this needs to be replaced with the traditional use of energy.

This nuclear power is not the traditional one but is the one that is much safer even with today’s reactors. This energy form can run on today’s uranium as radioactive waste fuels like thorium (a waste product of rare earth mining) and depleted uranium (the waste product left is spent nuclear fuel rods).

The above is a great option but for any business leader to adopt them there are large barriers: such as outdated nuclear regulations that scare most of the leaders. According to Prof. Lassiter, it is difficult to adopt nuclear energy as the new means but it is imperative that the leaders today become nuclear driven entrepreneurs and must act today in order to conserve environment.

d. The ABC’s: Business Perspective

The business of climate change requires active participation on the part of leaders to ensure that the diversity is addressed in a proper manner. It involves that the focus should be on bringing about the change and cut down on the distraction on the part of the leaders. Prof. John Macomber (Senior lecturer of Business Administration) proposes ABC’s for the business leaders to address climate change in a more economic efficient way and to stay more sustainable in the competitive world. These ABC’s are:

· Actuarial thinking: means assessing probabilities and portfolio risks for the companies to look at what might or might not happen while a natural calamity. It’s a way where financial managers cover the possibility of unlikely but high event impacts.

· Basic Resources: society needs to collectively address the basics of water, energy, waste and transit so that we (as a business house) do a lot more with the resources and in a more efficient way so that the needs of the society as a whole are met with. Investments in efficiency and access benefits many sectors and this, in turn, gives enough opportunities to the business leaders to think out of the box and create value for them and sustainable environment within and outside the organization.

· Cities: For any business leader to be sustainable yet be competitively at the top, it becomes imperative that he works in accordance of the laws of the land and work closely with local leaders/ mayors. This is particularly important mainly for two reasons: first being the local leaders are more aware about the availability of resources and hence, the business leader can devise its strategy in accordance of the availability; and second working closely with these local leaders helps the business houses to allocate resources in a balanced manner making the development in sync for both the smaller and larger cities.

Another important aspect is working with local leaders is that these leaders together with the national leaders make the growth inclusive with active participation of the local citizens as well making the issue of climate change look smaller and well achievable. As the former Mayor of NYC Michael Bloomberg said “Nations talk, cities act”.

· Demand Management: it is difficult to manage the adversity of climate change and still have economically profitable and sustainable business. Still, if the leader aims at having modern ways and means in managing demand, the resources will not get wasted and the complexity of climate change will be well under control. Example: Ener NOC in the demand response space, and Johnson Controls, in the energy performance space that creates business value by stretching resources further.

· Finance: Prof. John D Macomber lays the greatest emphasis on finance. According to him, the projects needs to be additive so that funding is collective and the projects become competitive, resource efficient as a whole. It is greatly emphasized that the projects that are being carried out should be done by organizations/ companies/ individuals that are well-versed with their job. This leads to less wastage of available resources and the project is completed faster. Also, making the cash flow tradable makes the leaders have more capital that can be invested in reducing wasted energy, less CO2 and less wasted water.

These ABC’s help the leaders to adopt sustainable practices in improving environmental conditions and stay competitive alongside.

e. An Aggressive CEO

Scientists have reached consensus about the consequences of climate change and at the same time corporations have achieved unprecedented political war. CEO’s in today’s time are like rockstars those enjoy position to educate public and policy makers the climate change is critical for stable long-term economic growth.

However, it is imperative that CEO’s become aggressive in voicing their opinion about climate change in order to become economically viable and environmentally sustainable. An aggressive leader can approach the complexity of climate change with both the public and the decision makers together so as to make its voice heard and, hence, bring about change.

Knowing all this, the obvious question that arises:

“Which CEO will be the flag-bearer for Climate Change & Economic Sustainability”??

In a world of more than seven billion people, each of us is a drop in the bucket.

But

With enough drops, we can fill any bucket.

David Suzuki

When I cycle to work on my working days, when I choose to go vegetarian/ vegan in my diet, or when I protest at one of the climate strikes, I feel like I am doing my bit. Then, a thought comes into my mind- Why aren’t businesses across the world doing enough? Indeed, they have just as much of a role (or maybe even more significant) to play in the fight against climate control as I feel?

As the world warms, extreme weather events have become the “it” thing in our day-to-day lives. In fact, they have grown frequent, intense, and dangerous to the extent that many of our plant and animal species fear “being extinct” in the decades to come. The IPCC 2018 special report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees in the decades ahead makes me (or any individual) wonder as to why no radical steps are being taken by the governments of the various economies? Besides, I really want to understand why businesses worldwide are not playing a central role in curbing greenhouse emissions?

Adding to the above set of questions, I want to ponder upon what companies (across the globe) can do (in a collective manner) to curb the impacts of temperature rise in our day-to-day lives? What can these large organizations do to attain economic profitability as they have been doing so far, yet maintaining a curb on climate or temperature rise?

To add to the list, I want to know why is communicating the climate change initiatives (that have been undertaken by the companies) a mammoth task for any organization? What are the reasons that an organization, when it takes some initiatives on climate control, finds it challenging to communicate the same to the world, and if it does that-is unable to succeed in the desired way????

Tough questions and more challenging are the answers keeping in mind the global scenario in which our organization functions………. Let’s understand the last part of the set of questions posted since I feel communication is the essence of the success of any organization.

Climate rise is playing a growing role in the business competition. There is a dire need to pay attention to the greenhouse emissions by various industries. However, many corporates do not feel the heat of climate change. There has been an outburst of public voices demanding the need to communicate the measures taken by various companies at various levels.

Companies that perceive climate change as a social responsibility rather than a business problem are at a higher risk compared to those that take it as a business and economic issue than just acknowledging it a “Social Responsibility.” Organizations that are committed to making “Climate Change and its impacts” as an essential stakeholder in their business activities gain an edge in strategizing their policies and achieving their economic objectives alongside fulfilling their social responsibilities. However, such organizations do face a significant challenge- “The challenge of communicating its policies to all its other stakeholders.”

To communicate the steps that an organization takes or intends to take is actually a mammoth task and requires a lot of patience and perseverance on behalf of the companies. Acknowledging it to be a difficult task, communicating about climate change is possible and very much achievable. Before understanding how we can achieve a positive communication strategy for climate change, let’s know why climate change and corporate communications do not go hand in hand……????

I understand there can be two reasons behind this:

• The very first reason can be our “Human Psychology.” Humans perceive climate change as a thing of the future and do not take it seriously today. Our (humans) remarkable ability to filter the information according to our previously held beliefs and thoughts, do not allow us to register the severity of the subject at the top of our minds. It is because of this reason that whatever our governments or other concerned agencies communicate with us on the topic, we filter it and are unable to comprehend that the disaster is just around the corner and is waiting to destroy our development.
• The other reason could the way the facts and the information is being presented to the target stakeholder. Climate change has been a subject that is always backed by scientific data, graphs, analysis, figures, etc. which is extremely difficult to comprehend. Further, the information being presented in the way it scares the people at large, making it even more complex to make the world understand…..that it can be stopped and success can be achieved in controlling temperature rise.

This complexity of data and facts makes the people unmoved and less interested in the subject altogether, making it too tiresome to convince them about the need to take action instantly.

The above factors make it a tedious task for both the governments and the corporations to communicate climate change to the world. Multiple factors are considered before a communication strategy is devised and implemented to explain the measures that any company is taking to incorporate climate change as a significant stakeholder.

It is evident that communication can make or break any company’s sustainable strategy. So what’s that a company needs to keep in mind while devising this communication strategy???? I want to know more and hope you would like to add more too……. Let’s educate ourselves further:

A. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

There is no “one-style-fits-all” approach in communicating about climate change and the company’s role in tackling it. Before devising an effective communication strategy, it becomes imperative that the company understands its audience, i.e., it must identify whether it is communicating with the government (of any country), agencies that are directly or indirectly connected with climate change, business policymakers, supply chain vendors or its direct consumers……

Different agencies require a different way in which a message is communicated. However, it becomes mandatory that the company ensures its central theme remains the same. In other words, VISION & MISSION statements are not compromised.

As discussed, individuals are receptive to any form of information according to their beliefs, values, past experiences, or even intuitive perceptions and filter the rest of the information that crosses them. By filtering part of the message and receiving another part of it makes the message incomplete, and its relevance gets lost, and an individual is left with half or incomplete information, which in turn is harmful to both the company and the person itself. This can be explained with an example:

Supposedly, my (I am assuming that I have to develop the communication strategy) organization (irrespective of the nature of my business) wants to communicate the impact of my company activities on climate to the government (let’s say my home country) and the agencies that related directly or indirectly to climate change or the policymakers of my organization…. I can use facts, figures, graphs, or analysis to describe the impact. Such a method will be highly receptive to these sets of audiences.

Similarly, I have to use examples for the procedures or materials that I want to adopt in the future to reduce the greenhouse emissions along with retaining my profitability at the same pace (for my supply chain vendors)…. Will enable a healthy communicating strategy in improving my supply chain.

Lastly, if I have to educate my end consumers as to how and what all changes I am making in my organization to make it more environmentally friendly and achieving higher sustainability… I have to create a message that is in sync with the values, beliefs of the people at large and, at the same time, emphasizes the central theme of my organization’s VISION to make them sit back and notice my efforts.

Though it is extremely difficult to perceive what the various stakeholders will notice and accept in order to appreciate an organization’s effort in achieving its sustainability goals, there can be a small manual that any organization can follow to understand its respective audiences. According to this manual, there are 3 ways to get a fair idea of what our target audiences are thinking about what will be an effective way to establish contact with them. These 3 ways are:

It is necessary that the company does its homework in terms of what its target audiences are? What do they believe in? What are their values and beliefs system? What local issues do they deal with in their day-to-day lives? What kind of expectations do they hold from their governments in terms of the development of their area?? Etc. etc. (this kind of homework is necessary in case a company is functioning in different countries since every country has a unique set of political, social, and cultural views).

Having a basic idea of how and what our target audiences are, the next step is to understand as to what’s their basic knowledge in the given area. In other words, it is necessary to understand whether the communication strategy should be to educate the target audiences (in our case, it is about climate change) or to enhance the existing understanding level.

To have an in-depth understanding of the target audience or, in other words, to understand the what/ Why/Where/When/For whom/ How about the audience; establishing a dialogue with them is a great way. This can be done with the help of interviews with certain focus groups that represent certain characteristics that are relevant to our field of study. This will greatly help in having a communication strategy that will fall in sync with the VISION and the MISSION of the company.

All these measures will help in having a fair idea about the target audiences, which will be of great help in establishing communication in the future.

B. MAKE IT TANGIBLE

Climate change is a very nebulous concept, and to attract the attention of the audience, first-hand impacts an action (or inaction) taken becomes necessary.

An organization that intends to communicate its efforts take the help of the written facts, figures, etc. to explain its efforts. This, however, is a great way to communicate but makes the audience walk away from the organizations. To overcome this use of concepts like storytelling, images, etc. make the impact of communicating climate change more real, and the audience becomes more receptive to the communication message.

Having said so, it is necessary to understand that creating an image to substantiate what one wants to communicate is a hefty task since an image has to appeal and also should be able to retain its central message intact.

Another important advantage of creating advertising campaigns, images, or storytelling bulletins is that it helps in building “recall.” A recall helps the organizational communicators to associate the audience with their taglines or slogans, ultimately making it easier for the audience to create imagery associations in their mind that keeps the brand at the top of the list.

However, it is imperative that the organization decides as to what kind of message they intend to send across its audiences, i.e., whether the aim is only to attract the attention of the audience (towards the initiatives that it is taking) and make them believe that the company is an eco-friendly one OR they want their audience to act/react/to participate along with them (in the initiatives that it undertakes) to improve upon the climate change conditions.

An image or an ad campaign or a storytelling bulletin that is created by the climate change communicators can make an impact greatly, and they become more receptive to the communication process (regarding the steps that the company wants to take to reduce the impacts on climate change) and become more engaged with the organization and its initiatives.

Having a clear basic understanding of the target audience and the understanding of how and by what means the message it intends to communicate; another aspect to take into consideration is what kind of image/ ad campaign/ storytelling it is going to use so that more and more people can relate themselves with it. This is also important because a clear, tangible image or story will build up a sequence in the minds of the audience, and they will be able to put things in colors or numbers or words.

Making things tangible makes the tasks a lot easier. So what kind of message an organization wants to convey???

· Is it about promoting the idea of climate change?… this would mean that the organization wants to take cues from its audiences to develop new ways to reduce the impact on climate change (from the activities to run its business).

· Is it about preventive actions that organizations want to take?……where the companies intend that its audience take action at a more individualistic level?

· Is it about taking actions now or in the future

· Is it about communicating the impact of climate change on a national level or at a global level?

These questions can help the climate communicators to create a campaign that clearly brings the subject in words, images, or slogans. This is a difficult task because motivating a mass audience with one ad campaign or slogan or image can be quite risky. In order to cut down on the risk, certain changes can be made, keeping in mind the cultures, government laws, etc. however, keeping the central message the same.

C. CREATE A CONVERSATION, NOT AN ARGUMENT

The concept of climate change has been distorted many times in various different ways. It, therefore, becomes important that the organizations communicate the right piece of information from a credible set of groups. To add to the above, it is even more important than the climate change communicators to communicate such information to the right of a set of information so that they are able to create a dialogue and can avoid any indulgence in confrontation.

For an organization to be able to communicate its message effectively and within a time frame, it becomes important that they identify the groups that can influence their target audience in the process of decision making. This way, they will be able to engage their audience in a healthy way. To be able to do so, it is imperative the communicators identify the “social identities and affiliations.”

By social identities and affiliations, I mean that the organization needs to understand what all groups the audiences (target audience to be precise) feel associated with. Human beings being social participants, feel secure and comfortable after associating themselves with a various set of groups and affiliations. Such groups of affiliations can be of the people with similar tastes or preferences in terms of approach towards climate change as a topic or can be a set of people that are based on the basis of culture, beliefs, values, etc.. Another set of groups and affiliations can be on the basis of “ideals,” i.e., those groups that are created by the individual (s) that audience in general idealize.

Having connected to such groups or affiliations, the behavioral pattern changes greatly, and people act and react in a specific manner to keep themselves in sync with the ideologies of that particular group.

To be able to communicate its message and to ensure that it reaches a larger set of audiences, it is necessary that organizations identify such groups and arrange conversations within those groups so as to make them understand about its initiatives. Also, such an activity will help to get a 360-degree view of a given concept making the audiences think rationally and then make their decisions.

With so many benefits of creating a conversation, this seems to be a great platform for the communicators to communicate their message, this too has a major drawback:

The stronger groups can influence the smaller groups, and the identity of the smaller groups are lost. This adds to the misery of the groups and the communicators both since a smaller group (if they have a unique idea or initiative) loses its identity over the larger groups, and their identity gets lost. It is, therefore, necessary on the part of the communicators to give equal weightage to smaller groups as well to have a fair viewpoint on their message.

D. CLIMATE IMPACT: CLOSER TO HOME

“But Climate Change isn’t affecting me.”

This is another major challenge that organizations have to deal with while communicating their message to their audience. Everyone is aware that climate change and its effects are a greater problem and affects the planet as a whole; it is because of this reason, people are unable to visualize the impacts of climate change closer to their homes.

The human species recognizes the threats that happen presently or in the near future, or that affects their near and dear ones. It is a basic human trait that they filter threats that are in the future or those affecting the world at large.

It, therefore, becomes necessary for the organizations to deal with this inability of the human species to make their message effective. To make this happen, the climate communicators have to create the message in such a manner that enables or forces the audience to foresee (the impacts of their activities) and engage themselves in the entire process (of cleaning and maintaining the safe environment). In simple words: “CREATE A MESSAGE THAT SIGNIFIES THE IMPACTS THAT ARE CLOSER TO ONE’S HOME.”

I can further explain this thought with a simple example: messages conveying rising sea levels would not create an impact (simply because the rise in sea levels is going affect the public at large in the decades to come) BUT

California wildfires that have started since the beginning of 2020 and actively elevated since August 15, 2020, leading to 3.2 million acres of burnt land and worsened air quality; messages related to the same will make the audience brainstorm that climate change can affect their home as well.

Another example can consist of the flood fury in the Brahmaputra River (in Assam, India) that has led to mass destruction with crops being destroyed completely and affecting flora and fauna to drastic levels. Adding to this misery, half of Kaziranga National Park and Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary have been submerged into water forcing the animals to migrate to safer places.

Such an example can make the audience think that climate change and its impacts can affect their home also.

An important aspect that needs to be taken into consideration is bringing the impacts closer to home and communicating the same with the help of visuals; it is necessary that climate communicators maintain the fine line between the productive engagement of their audience (through their personal experiences of the climate impact) or leading people away from the positive engagement……i.e., making the message (or issue) to real or scary can lead to the “denial” of the problem.

E. MAKE IT MEANINGFUL: TRANSLATE DATA

“I have no idea what those numbers mean.”

On a subject like Climate change, scientists rely heavily on the numbers while discussing the changes that they are observing in the climate system.

In order to comprehend the data, the facts, figures, maps, graphs, etc. it is necessary that the organizations translate data according to the understanding of the public large. To be able to able to understand the scientific data in a language that is relatable helps to create a positive and emotional response to the problem…..such a response is extremely crucial for any climate communicator. However, creating such a response is an uphill task for the communicator as the climate communicator has to overcome 2 major barriers….

ü The first major barrier is to influence human psychology that discounts future events and prefer to take things easy as the impact is not immediate or in the near future.

ü Another major barrier is: people do not feel that rise in few degrees currently on in the decade to come will not be dreadful and only impact after many decades. They feel that the projections that are shown are for some future decades and not the immediate decade.

Both of the above barriers are related to human psychology or the human brain, which filters all the information that is in the form of numbers, graphs, pointers or analysis, etc. It is majorly because of this reason that the organizations or climate communicators have to communicate in a language that is more relatable, more emotional in nature. Such kind of messages touch upon the emotional cord of the audience, and people start giving a thought to the concept.

Also, people at large react to the messages (in this case, about climate change) with the thoughts, images, experiences that are already stored in their minds. They try to relate the two together and create an image that may be positive or may be based on misleading facts.

So, to make the climate change and its impacts and the steps the organization is taking more meaningful, companies need to create a message that can it communicate to the audience at large with the right kind facts and also that can touch the emotional cord of theirs. A message that is more of images and story rather than figures will be more receptive than a message that is based on facts.

Understanding the fact that message needs to be more relatable and emotional in its approach, an obvious question that comes to my mind is how to create such a message? Are there any tips to consider while creating such messages? Are there any guidelines that need to be followed?….. there are no obvious answers to such questions, but I think the communicator can consider the below mentioned 3 points to frame a message and influence the behavior of its audience:

• Images in the forms of film footage, metaphors, real-world analogies, personal and real-life concrete experiences.
• Messages are created in such a unique way that enables the audience to build recall and elicit positive responses.
• Use words or images that are commonly prevalent and can be comprehended easily by the people in general.

These can be a small set of guidelines to build up a message for the audience at large and to establish a relationship with the audiences for the years to come.

F. BE VULNERABLE: ADDRESS UNCERTAINTIES

“Vulnerability is a source of strength.”

Climate change is a subject that is filled with uncertainties, and with all the efforts that the corporates, governments, and public at large take collectively, its impacts will reduce but will not go away with certainty. An organization that is undertaking various initiatives to contribute to a better planet and intends to communicate the world about the same face a lot of uncertainties that social, political, environmental, etc.

While it is important for the organizations to credit themselves with the dues (with the efforts they have undertaken so far and what all improvements they have made with the passage of time), it is important that the companies acknowledge the areas of improvement. Talking about the flaws and failures invokes a feeling of association (since humans are prone to making mistakes and rectify them as per the situations or circumstances) with the audiences.

Human decision making deals with uncertainties. An organization that intends to communicate with the audiences regarding climate change and its initiatives alongside must create messages that explain how the uncertainties can lead to opportunities for a better future.

Dealing with uncertainties and acknowledging the flaws and initiatives together is a tedious task in itself for any company to accomplish together. An organization that intends to communicate about its climate conversation plan, it is necessary that they adopt a precautionary principle, i.e., they must develop messages or story bulletin or ad campaigns that help them beat the uncertainties yet encourage its consumers to develop contingency plans alongside to avoid any discrepancies and help the audiences and community at large reframe a potentially paralyzing uncertainty into strong and protective actions.

An organization being vulnerable enough assumes (in the first place) that each and every audience that it interacts within uncomfortable with the uncertainties, and acknowledging such discomfort makes them work on their communication plan and the overall strategies that enables them to understand that how it is (the company) is incorporating changes in its system to meet the needs of the society as a whole. Empathy is a virtue that can make any organization with its audiences.

Uncertainties and Empathy are related that make a company grow and prosper along with its society.

G. LEAD WITH IMPACT: CREATING AN EASY CHANGE OF BEHAVIOR

Crafting a climate change message that improves audiences understanding and engagement with the issue and associating the same with a company that is communicating the message is a hefty task. It depends on all the factors mentioned above (maybe some more, but these are what I thought are highly recommended and are relevant). Leaders of the companies that speak up directly with their audiences (whether internal or external) create a lasting impact creating a meaningful and emotional change in the behavior to a great extent.

The more actively a leader is involved in crafting and also communicating the message to its audiences, the more likely it is that the audience will become receptive to the entire idea, adopting the change with open arms that the company intends to.

This will enable the change in the behavior of the people and the community as a whole. Afterall………

“What you do has a far greater impact than what you say.”

The bottom line is that, to create a company’s sustainable strategy in crafting a message…….companies need to be grounded, realistic, result-oriented, and empathic enough to have a lasting impact on its audiences. Those mentioned above are the guidelines that can be adopted (as they are mentioned or with the necessary modifications) to develop a bond with the audience and stay with the communicators for the decades to come.

The evolution of mankind has been a fascinating journey. It has evolved over centuries and has been growing with each passing day. Everything that we humans possess today or have possessed earlier (that has become extinct now) has some history behind it.

Just like the evolution of mankind, there has been a radical change in the way we talk, write, or express ourselves… In simple words, the way we communicate to one another today and the way it used to be in ancient times…, there has been a radical transformation. Communication ways and channels have evolved over the centuries. This change in communication has become a field to study and an art that needs to be mastered.

I get fascinated with the way communication ways, and means have grown. So I wanted to study and to know where it all started and where it has reached. Let’s go down the history lane……

EVOLUTION OF COMMUNICATION

“New to the city and getting late for work….smartphone is there to help with maps; logged in at workplace and on snapchat….chit chatted with the family and back to work. Come evening… looking for a place to hangout… Google is there to assist for cafes and restaurants; it’s late at night and wants to go back to the hotel…no need to worry OLA/UBER is there to take you back to the hotel. “

Wowww… it’s so simple and easy to communicate and stay connected. At every step, there is a way to solve day-to-day issues, and everything is available with the click of a button. Life in today’s digital age is so sorted and straightforward. But it wasn’t the same, and communication was difficult. It has come a long way from the cave paintings to this digital age. Communication and its modes have traveled a long journey. Let’s go back and refresh our memories:

The ancient phase of communication was in the form of pictographs where stories, histories, or instructions were used to be drawn on the walls of caves (the oldest cave paintings were discovered around 30,000 B.C.). These cave paintings were succeeded by “the petroglyphs” (carvings on the rock surface popular as “Rock Art”). The oldest of such rock art has been discovered around 10,000 B.C.

Such ancient forms of communication were a great way to depict and study about the history and the life back at the Stone Age. As the humans evolved further, the communication modes started changing, and another form was discovered called “the hieroglyphs,” which was in the form of pictograms and the logographic images. This particular ancient Egyptian communication mode had a total of 1000 distinct characters to communicate.

These mediums were all in the form of drawings that were on the rocks or on walls. With time, there was a desire to communicate over long distances, and “smoke signals” were invented. The first of such signals were used by Chinese soldiers guarding The Great Wall of China around 900 B.C. These are used in the present age as well by “College of Cardinals” for the selection of Pope. However, these smoke signals were discouraged because they were not considered a very authentic way to communicate.

The signals were succeeded by a very different mode of communication. With this, humans took the help of birds, namely “pigeons,” to communicate at long distances. Pigeons (that are considered a very “romantic” mode of communication in the present age) were used to send messages due to their uncanny ability to fly back to their homes. These were used during world wars also. This mode of communication became very popular during ancient times and became a topic to study by scientists (but they could not establish how pigeons managed to do this).

The above have modes that were predominant in the pre-industrial era, and with industrialization picking up the pace, the new ways to communicate were invented. One such invention was “the postal services.” The postal services helped in sending messages at the long distances and also helped a great deal in delivering messages to the paid employees of various industries.

Telegraph services were appreciated to a great extent because it was a direct mode of communication. But, with an increase in industrialization, there came a desire to communicate with a more extensive set of audience and describe how one industry is performing, what are its ways for employee welfare and economic growth. This gave birth to “the newspapers” and “the radio.” These two revolutionized the way communication happened till date. The revolution that these inventions brought about was unparalleled. However, these were still restricted to the geographical boundaries and the humans being so ambitious, some inventions came in the decades that followed. Newspapers and radio widened the net of information to a great extent, and people, in general, became a lot informed, a lot learned, and gave them the power to become think for a better future.

With the desire to send messages to the foreign land, there came “the telegraph.” Telegraph was a limited word message that could be sent with the help of clicks, tones, etc. Telegraph helped in sending coded messages to far land enabled people living in different areas to receive vital information. The 1st telegraph message was posted in 1844.

With the desire to scale new heights and the zeal for continuous improvements, Graham Bell invented “The Telephone” in 1876. Till now, telegraph transmitted messages through clicks and tones, but with a thought to hear a human voice while communicating, the clicks and sounds were given a form of social audio. Initially, it was developed for the local calls, but later, it was developed for commercial use and also for both national and international conversations. The landline services began by the 1900s. The telephone has been the most reliable source of communication to date.

Communication and its channels have been pre-computer era and post computer era. All the mediums to date have pre-computer age and in this era, before the computers were invented, there was one of the significant inventions that are the most reliable source of information and entertainment. The earliest broadcasts were during WWII, where the stills were in black and white.

The era of computers began in around the mid-20th century. Computers came in the 1950s and were followed by the introduction of the “World Wide Web (www)” in 1991. The introduction of the World Wide Web led to the influx of information, and everything was available with the click of a key on the keyboard. This gave a whole new dimension to the term “communication.” Emails were introduced with the birth of Yahoo! In 1994, which was followed by other platforms like Hotmail and Gmail or Google mail. All this made conversations faster and also made the world a much smaller place to live in. Time zones vanished, and emails could be sent and received during any time of the day. Life became fascinating…..!!!!

“Walk the Talk”…the phrase sounds exciting, but this was one challenge that wasn’t met with to date. We have been communicating being in one place and could not walk while we were talking. This sounded an impossible task, but the ambitious human mind achieved what was once unthinkable. We call it “Mobile phone,” and in today’s age, it rests in the hands of every human being. The mobile fulfilled the dream of “Walk the Talk” and then came “SMS or Short Messaging Service” where messages could be sent from one person to another in a fraction of second in any part of the world. The 1st message was posted on 3rd December 1992. Today, it is 9 trillion SMS per year sector in mobile telephony.

The late 20th century was named “the modern age” where it was all about computers and the internet. It was at this time, emails, yahoo, and SMS were invented. It was at this time, the world was opening up its horizons and learning about new ways to converse and to learn to experiment. But the first decade of the 21st century was revolutionized with the digital world. It was the witness to the beginning of “the digital age.” The proliferation of smartphones leads to the development of apps. These apps made every bit of activity available in seconds and at the convenience of the user. This enabled the user to comprehend every bit of news and information and weigh its pros and cons to fit into the individual needs. WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. enables us to post pictures, upload videos, write views, and the sky is the limit….. With the digital age… eternity seems small.

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

Since the dawn of time, humans have shown the need to communicate. We developed various mediums of communication to enable us to work faster and achieve quicker. The development of these mediums improved the way we remain connected to our workspace.

Over the decades, communication has evolved in response to overcoming the obstacles in the workplace. From the top-down approach during the industrial revolution, we have reached the digital age where one can make itself heard through a variety of platforms and let the world know about a new innovation or make the world aware of the distress happening in any part of the globe. In this digital age, the gap between the corporates and the stakeholders have blurred completely, and corporate communications have seen a radical shift. Let’s understand the journey that the field of corporate communications has undertaken over the decades:

The industrial revolution saw the communication channel is only one way, i.e., the top-down approach. During this time, management used to pass orders, and both the junior management and the workers were to abide by the same. There wasn’t any mechanism to listen to the grievances of the workers. This, perhaps, became one of the biggest reasons for dissatisfaction amongst the employees and also became a significant trigger point to give rise to the trade unions. These trade unions were initially formed to bridge the gap between the management and the employees and to help the employees find solutions to their grievances. These unions were initially successful in their objectives. Still, soon there were a lot of differences that developed between the management and associations, and so the administration chose the direct way of communicating with its people.

The management employee direct engagement was a great way to bridge the gap between the two parties, but it had significant disadvantages also. In all this, the focus still remained the company first and employees second. There was no way where employees could share their apathy to the top management. However, the invention of telephones and computers made communication easier within the organization (with the phones came intercoms). The employees were now better equipped to share their ideas, discuss their issues, and get them solved. With computers, an initiative that various managements undertook was to publish the recognition of the employees. This was a huge morale booster for the people within the organization and helped the management grow leaps and bounds.

Corporate Communications is about maintaining a balance between the internal and the external stakeholders. While, during the industrial revolution, internal communications were all about the top-bottom approach, the external stakeholders and the communication channel with them was also one direction approach only. During that period, companies used to hire the P.R. agencies, and those agencies used to handle all the activities of the respective companies. These PR agencies used to manage all the activities ranging from media releases to client identification; from media management relationships to company customer engagement to a relationship with the government agencies or the law enforcement bodies etc.. With such a vast range of tasks, these agencies sometimes were unable to measure the dissatisfaction/ disagreement (with the company product or services)/ consumer complaints; making the entire process a futile exercise, and the efforts of the companies were not appropriately communicated to all these external stakeholders.

With the invention of computers, there was a better approach to communicate with the external parties, and the gap between the two was somehow bridged. However, it’s the digital age that has brought about a radical shift in the way the companies now view the role of “Corporate Communications.” In today’s digital age, communications have been taken seriously, and companies dedicate a separate department for the same. Now, we plan how, what, when, where, why, for whom the information needs to be communicated and what medium needs to be approached for the same. The digital age has enabled corporate communications to take a front seat in the company’s board room, and marketing plans are devised after the communication strategy is decided extensively.

With the pace at which the digitization is growing, the future of corporate communications will be more targeted, interactive, effective, and informative. It has the potential to shape culture, enable better decisions, and significantly move the needle on building an engaged workforce. For all this to build up successfully, companies need to recognize the unique needs of each communication category and specialized communication tools will have the greatest impact and return on investment.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

If society is to adequately address the issue of climate change, the solutions must come from the market and, more specifically, from the corporate sector. The market is the most powerful organizing institution on earth, and corporations are the most powerful organizations within it. Without business, there will be no solutions. With that as the starting point, communication of the importance of climate change within the market must mobilize business leaders and stakeholders. The idea is that climate change must be presented as a market shift if it is to be recognized as a business issue that will gain the attention of business leaders.

Companies are currently wrestling with the dual-threat and opportunity climate change creates, communicating a plan of action almost remains almost as difficult as taking actions. Companies that excel in integrating sustainability and social impact into their businesses, somehow fail in communicating to the world at large about their good work. Communicating well on sustainability actions can serve as both a multiplier for achieving sustainability goals and a competitive edge to stand out. Surely, communications can make or break a company’s sustainability strategy.

So, what is needed to keep in mind about communicating about the climate, its impact, and the actions we are taking????

Let’s study………………

THE TOYOTA WAY : A Case Study

The success of any organization is attributed to the health of its stakeholders associated with it directly or indirectly. When an organization measures the quantum of its success, it studies the growth of its stakeholders- BUT there is one particular parameter that is still neglected by most of the major organizations- THE ENVIRONMENT.

Environmental health and environmental sustainability are some of the significant stakeholders in today’s global scenario. Companies have started brainstorming in this direction and think out of the box to include the environment as their significant stakeholder and to make it a “corporate culture.” Some companies focus on eliminating plastic bags, while others focus on a greener supply chain. There are multiple ways to measure the health of the newest stakeholder and let it prosper along with organizational prosperity.

When we think about environmental sustainability, AUTOMOBILE SECTOR is one of the few sectors that impact ecological health directly or indirectly. Automobiles have always been talked about in terms of pollution, CO2 emissions, etc.. yet it remains to be a vital part of human lives. Various steps have been taken from time to time by different automobile companies to cut down on pollution levels, but a large area remains unexplored.

Companies like BMW and TOYOTA MOTORS have taken significant steps to include the environment as a part of their business strategy and have scaled unprecedented heights……it remains to be seen how these companies fair in the decades to come.

Having mentioned the automobile sector, there is this one Company that has made environmental sustainability; it’s the way of working and call it “THE TOYOTA WAY.”

So what’s “The Toyota Way”??

Let’s explore…

ABOUT TOYOTA

In 2016, TOYOTA was named as the number 1 Green Brand… Ecofriendly not only in terms of products but also has planet friendly manufacturing practices.

The above success has been a result of adopting the environment and its care and protection as a part of business strategy. This has been a result of hard work that the Company has put in since in inception.

Headquartered in the city of Toyota in Aichi, Japan, Toyota Motor Corporation is a multinational automobile manufacturing company that has been ranked amongst the largest automakers in the world. A leader in automotive production, Toyota was founded as an automobile division of a large textile business house, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Japan, in 1933. Kiichiro Toyoda-founder of Toyota was a brilliant innovator of is time got his inspiration for stepping into automobiles from his business trips to Europe and the USA. These trips introduced him to the world of the automobile industry in the 1920s. In the year 1935, Toyota’s first cars A1 and G1 built, and within a couple of years, “Toyota Motor Corporation” came into being in the year 1937.

Acquiring the 40% market share in the domestic automobile car market and establishing its dominance in Japan, Toyota went international and started exploring the unexplored automobile markets in the late 1950s. Toyota began its global journey in the year 1957, where it introduced its Crown range to the US market. The US market proved to be a successful stint for the manufacturer, encouraging the manufacturer to step further and enter the European market in the year 1963. By the mid-1960s, Toyota has gained a high status that helped a great deal to challenge domestic car manufacturers. Having delivered its 10th million cars to a buyer in Germany in the year 2000, the car major achieved a humongous target of 200 million cars of production by the year 2012. Presently, with its production and distribution network spread worldwide, Toyota ensures providing its customers with best-manufactured cars and services, boosting its global sales curve.

TOYOTA AND HYBRID CARS

Hybrid cars and its history that are like an overnight sensation stretch back over 100 years. It may seem that Hybrid cars as a recent phenomenon, the technology has been around ever since the creation of an automobile.

The first Hybrid car was built by an engineer Ferdinand Porsche in the year 1889. Being such an old phenomenon, the hybrid technology could not gain momentum due to high prices and the inability of the car manufacturer with the rechargeable points. The concept became gone forgotten phenomenon until the 1960s-1970s when the United States reinstated the importance of cleaner air and also due to the oil crisis occurrence. It was during this time that Toyota Motors took the cues from the vast opportunity available in front of them and came up with TOYOTA PRIUS is 1997 in Japan. With the enormous emphasis on environmental awareness, PRIUS became a huge success overnight. With the overwhelming success of PRIUS in the Japanese market, TOYOTA launched the car in Australia, the United States, Europe, and Asia, and in the year 2000 and TOYOTA could witness some encouraging success trends in these continents.

The Company launched various versions of the car in the subsequent years with improved technology, design, and efficiency levels.

In the years to come, TOYOTA managed to carve a niche for itself where a considerable number of celebrities were endorsing this new age phenomenon and were called the “PRIUS PATRIOTS.” A compact and lighter in weight car that can deliver better fuel economy reduced emissions and low costs that were manufactured and researched to fulfill the overall mission of contributing towards the environment and protecting the environment from carbon emissions made the success of Toyota PRIUS a story to be narrated in the years to come.

However, Toyota’s success in the automobile sector has been unimaginable, its ability to make the use of an opportunity that was once forgotten has been a ladder that many still need to step on. The hybrid car has been a result of the Company’s hard work, its unique ability to convert its manufacturing processes greener and eco-friendly, and its dedication to delivering on its corporate social responsibility, which they proudly call as “The Toyota Way.”

So, what is this Toyota way and how it works deep within the organization that makes it a green company with a global vision of being the pioneer……..

Let’s discuss these in detail…

TOYOTA: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Being the leading car manufacturing Company in the world, TOYOTA continuously aims at maintaining its position amongst its competitors, and continue to lead with the current pace, the Company follows Corporate Social Responsibility which it calls “Contribution towards Sustainable Development.”

Since in today’s system, consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the environment and environmental protection activities. Today, a consumer wants to associate itself with the brands that are eco-friendly and aims at making ecological control as a part of its business strategy. It is this thought that made Toyota not only work hard towards maintaining its green system around its manufacturing units and but also do a lot of research and development in areas that help minimize the pollution by its cars and its manufacturing processes. Thus, the concept of sustainable development made Toyota strategize its policies at every level so that the environment can be protected at the maximum possible level.

Hybrid cars made Toyota a front runner in achieving its objective of the sustainable environment, and this has been one of the most successful Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives by the Company. The launch of Prius in 1997 in Japan revolutionized car manufacturing in the world. It is viewed as the most fuel-efficient and environment-friendly car by consumers across the globe. This high level of reputation has to lead the Company to attain high levels of production and profitability. The Company holds the record of selling the most number of Hybrid cars in the world and stands unbeatable till date with 67% of the market share in its kitty and accounting for nearly 14% revenues coming from an initiative that is an environmental pro and at the same time extremely profitable.

THE INITIATIVES

The launch of Toyota PRIUS has brought a significant amount of success for the Company and was labeled as the flag bearer of alternate energies car. But, the Company has been subjected to criticism for its usage of batteries in these hybrid cars. These batteries contained in the nickel-metal hydride (Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage 2007) that was particularly harmful at the assembly line itself. The use of particular metal uses to cause damage to the environment. To minimize the impact of the same, the company R&D a species of flower called “Merchant” in 2009. This plant species is the offset from the CO2 that is released during the assembly operations of the Prius car itself. These flowers were derived from the “Cheery Sage” and “Gardenia,” which helps to absorb nitrogen oxide to reduce the heat from the atmosphere. These two flowers are particularly helpful in performing specific functions of absorbing the harmful gases (Cherry Sage) and also by reducing the temperatures of the surroundings by creating water vapor in the air (Gardenia). The invention helped the Company to focus on the production of the car since it could find a greener way to reduce the emissions at its assembly line process.

To further make a sustainable environment a part of its business strategy and adopt the concept at the lowest level itself…..the Company used the idea of reducing, reuse, and recycle at its manufacturing levels. In achieving this, the Company involves both its consumers and dealers and ensures that it uses the recyclable products that further can be reused multiple times. This can be explained like:

It is a well-known fact that cars are manufactured from plastics, and these plastics don’t get recycled easily. To solve this significant problem….the Company created a unique plastic called “Super Olefin Polymer” to manufacture the bumper and other parts. This plastic can be recycled many times and can be used for making various parts of the car.

Further, to add to its commitment to all its stakeholders in creating a greener society and achieving sustainable development for the Company, it involved both its consumers and dealers in reusing these recyclable plastics. For this, the Company heavily promoted a green strategy: in this, each battery has a phone number that ensures that the battery goes back to the Company itself. To further ensure that this practice is followed strictly, it started paying its dealers $200 for each returned battery.

A clean and green environment is achieved when every aspect is taken care of by any manufacturing unit. One such issue is waste management…. and in this regard, the Company created a waste collection system ensuring all the used parts of the cars are being collected from various parts of the countries and are being sent back for the recycling process. This particular process has been hugely successful in the European markets.

At the manufacturing level itself…, the water is recycled and reused after it is once used for washing purposes (since the water used on the cars is of premium quality and is away from any dirt and pollutants). For this, large water treatment plants are installed at the units and water after washing the car is re-treated and is used across all these manufacturing units. This helps in the usage of water at the maximum level and conserving it at the same time.

Toyota’s initiatives extend to the level of its supply chain management, where it ensures that suppliers are adopting the greenways of producing their products and also encouraging their vendors to take greener ways to procure/provide raw materials thus, guaranteeing a tier-2 clean environment reality and making it a success.

Other than these initiatives, there are numerous ways in which the Company ensures its involvement in social welfare activities like planting trees and conserving them, blood donations, traffic management, girl child development, etc. etc. These initiatives not only involve society at large but also builds up to an image of an organization that believes in environmental preservation (in all forms). We shall discuss how Toyota has managed to communicate about its eco-friendly Company in the coming paragraph…

An important point to be taken into account is that the Company makes an attempt to involve not only its employees in these initiatives but their other stakeholders like customers, dealers, etc. thus, creating an overall impact on the entire eco-system.

THE CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

The hybrid technology gave a head-start to the Company across the globe. Toyota had the edge over its competitors in terms of technology, production, and assembly lines. The Company cemented its success on the global platform with the communication strategy that it adopted, keeping in mind the audience and the economies of the counties. Adding to this, the Company wisely used the concept of image, identity, culture, and vision in its corporate communication strategy to achieve its global vision. TOYOTA wanted to be perceived as a “caring citizen” or, in other words, as a “globally responsible” company that is focused on developing a better society through its products and services. Also, it possessed an in-depth Information technology focus that helped the organization in monitoring a safer and healthier environment.

Keeping in mind its global vision of a cleaner and greener environment, Toyota launched “PRIUS” in 1997. Toyota has a unique strategy in mind for communicating its car, and instead of the same, the Company adopted different policies for both internal and external stakeholders. For its employees, the Company took a mix of old and new strategies. Communication mediums like bulletins and seminars were adopted that could help its employees understand what companies aim to achieve at, it, on the other hand, passed a new communication tool of screening movies- this was used to educate its employees about the initiatives that it had taken already and also the ones that it plans to initiate in the future. At a broader level… the Company participated in various environmental projects that got initiated either by the government or some NGO’s already associated with the cause. This helped them much in establishing themselves as a socially dynamic organization and communicated positively to society at large.

Another vital tool that Toyota used as a communication medium was called “Formula1,” where both the internal and the external stakeholders were present. The main intention was to make everyone give a common platform where they can exchange ideas and talk and watch the business strategy unfolding.

The above were some of the macro-level initiatives that Toyota had undertaken to communicate its vision to its stakeholders. There have been specific micro-level communication initiatives as well that were adopted. These partly were region-specific, i.e., the respective country’s political, social, economic view, and slightly were global strategies. I will discuss the region-specific communication mix in the paragraphs to come; as a part of a comprehensive communication strategy, the Company used a new communication tool called “themed messages.”

Themed messages were considered powerful tools because these messages helped the Company to position itself ahead of its competitors in terms of the message communicated. Another advantage that Toyota envisioned was the competitors were unable to copy the advertising strategy. Clearly, a smart move to stay ahead. Toyota used two different themed messages to communicate about their strategic moves. First was the preemptive message, which emphasized its global vision of the Company is an environmentally friendly company. The second was the symbolic message: “the car leaf logo.” The idea was to demonstrate the Company’s efforts to reduce the impact of its products and services on the environment.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph,…..the preemptive communication message suggested superiority amongst the competitors and ensured that they could not copy it. This effort mainly made them “leader in Green Manufacturing.” The characteristic style of communication helped in creating brand association through image-making, thus, ensuring that the consumers could associate themselves with a brand that equals to clean and green environment and also emphatic towards society.

All these were the efforts to structure the communication strategy in one direction. However, the Company revamped its corporate communication efforts from time to time. It combined its advertising and public relations department into one integrated group. Also, it decentralized its communication department. It now functions according to geographically separated subsidiaries and is directly linked to the company HQ. These made it easier to communicate as per the regions, yet keeping the global image intact.

Till now, I have talked about how climate change has influenced the functioning of any organization. Instead of the same, I studied how a car manufacturer took advantage of an unexplored opportunity and became a world leader with its efforts and various structural changes. I wanted to know how these efforts influenced its sales numbers. So, I am taking the launch of PRIUS in the UK market and how it’s a success story in an already very competitive market.

THE UK MARKET

The UK car market was almost owned by foreign-dominated players. The market has matured and has reached a new peak in terms of value and volume of cars sold. The market was dominated by foreign players and a single car dealership. To enter such a market, the Company hired “Oakly & Oakley” to prepare a communication plan for 3 years. It also assigned a budget of £9 million for the same.

The strategy was to differentiate between individual consumers and corporate customers. Despite the success in the Japanese and the US market, the Company wanted to carefully enter the European market. To maximize its reach, the Company segregated the target audience into two broad groups. The first one was of the consumers (or the individual buyers); the other segment was those of the customers (companies that bought for rentals or fleets). The customers or, in other words, the B2B part was a little lucrative because of intense competition, and thus, the focus on the private car segment (or the B2C segment) became a center of attention.

Being the first of its kind in the car segment, Prius was placed as a family small or middle segment car and had very little competition with Honda Insight, which was positioned as a sports car. Having analyzed the customer base, the Company worked on its marketing and communication strategy to design the campaign that can attract the maximum number of the consumer base. The details are as follows:

Demographic details: Educated well-informed adults that fall in the age bracket of 30-50 years. These adults can be married with responsibilities holding occupations in medium or higher managerial levels. However, the ethnicity of these individuals was not much important; these decision-makers so possess higher disposable income.

Psychographic details: With the given demographics, the population was divided into three categories:

• The Early Adopters: those who are keen on the latest technologies. The communication medium chosen for such were a group of people was the car magazines, trade press, weird, sky TV, BBC Three, and Discovery Chanel. These are heavy internet users with high-level cinema-goer and little radio understanding.
• Environmental Friendly: These are people that environmentally conscious and understand the impact of mechanization. These are a set of people who are socially aware but are more hesitant to try any new technology. The media channels used for such group Quality Daily Newspapers, National Geographic Channels. These are internet users and watch channels like BBC one/two etc.
• The Value-Conscious: this is a set of people that are looking for an ideal combination of high fuel economy and low maintenance. These are occasional internet users watch channels like BBC One/Two, Hunter, etc.

The three groups have been exposed to almost similar kind of outdoor activities and mostly need one or two motivational factors to make a purchase.

Geographic details: the target buyer more likely is to come from the urban parts of the country where problems like pollution and congestion were dominating already.

Understanding the basics of the target audience, Prius was heavily promoted in the UK market. It was advertised and assisted with the key theme of “fuel economy.” This ensured that a powerful message was sent to the audience aimed at stirring the sentiments of the viewers. Television ads were created where the theme was about a car that sleek, cool, hi-tech, smart cars that, at the same time, are environment friendly and affordable (Arens 2002). Newspaper advertisements were created where along with the super cool and sleek car performance, efficiency, and safety were the essential elements that were created (Fletch & Harper 2009). In addition to this, email advertising was also created as it was cost-effective and also was full of graphics and vibrant color slogans. (Belch, 2001).

Toyota Prius was a revolutionary product with unique features and a new technology that was unknown to the UK market. Therefore, an ingenious market communication campaign was designed to develop high levels of perception and awareness about hybrid technology. Fuel economy and efficiency, along with smart design, were central in the marketing campaign. Sales offers were provided to consumers to boost sales. A multifaceted and multidirectional strategy was designed, and advertising, direct marketing, and public relations were decided as the crucial tools for communication. Advertisements were run on television, radio, and newspapers (leading newspapers like Guardian & Telegraph were selected). Free briefs were conducted to create awareness. Educational seminars were also heavily promoted to educate the audience about hybrid technology. Test drives were made a part of the marketing campaign, and testimonies were made public to enlist the benefits. Direct marketing was also done through emails that were collected at the market analysis stage, and emails sent to individual customers so that they can understand the technology and its benefits.

Also, a specific website was dedicated to Toyota Prius to update the customers about the prices, seminars, and the marketing campaign.

With such a sophisticated yet direct marketing campaign, Prius sales zoomed and reached unprecedented levels of success. However, certain initial hick-ups happened with Toyota, and it had to recall all of its cars. Still, within 3 months, Toyota could resolve the issue and create an advertising campaign that focused on assuring the new, improved solutions. This helped in sales that were record high with 7,895 units in 2004 in comparison to 779 units in 2003.

There are many examples of such unprecedented success stories where companies made the environment a part of their business strategy and communicated the same to the highest and lowest levels of its stakeholders. I chose Toyota, as the automobile sector has always been subjected to criticism in terms of environmental pollution. But, the way the Company incorporated the environment as a significant stakeholder and devised a business strategy to fulfill its responsibility towards the same is commendable.

Climate change is generating a host of new strategic challenges and opportunities for business organizations. It has lead to a shift in competitive and regulatory environments both directly and indirectly; through the world wide political efforts to constrain the carbon emissions and directly through bio-physical impacts such as extreme weather conditions.

Companies, are under more pressure to act and react on the global danger of climate change and are required to do a lot more than earlier times. Global organizations are at a threshold where they are expected to minimize their negative impact on climate change and treat the phenomenon as the business problem rather than the corporate social responsibility. Having said so, it is extremely important to understand that there is no one common way to curb this issue. Every industry and every organization has to devise a special set of efforts that can fit in and can help in achieving the results.

Devising a unique set of strategies is not the only solution and the companies have to also develop a communication mechanism where it can educate and communicate all the stakeholders about the strategies that they are adopting and how does that impact them in a positive way. Both these aspects (of devising out strategies and developing a communication mechanism) depend largely on the resources available to sustain the value chain. It is also crucial that the companies remain vulnerable towards their human resources infrastructures and other supply chains.

Another important point to be taken into account is, if the businesses understand their impact of climate change then why there is no supporting research found in major journals and business columns? Also, why is that the companies not devising long term strategies that can put them in the forefront of curbing the threat? Why is there is no corporate communications mechanisms where the company is communicating to all its stakeholders and world at large about the efforts it is undertaking?

Serious questions….. In following paragraphs, I will try to reason with facts and opinions on these issues.

I feel following may be the driving forces behind the above key questions

• The variability in the climate like floods/extreme heat/ volcanoes etc., have been fairly regional. These adversities affect a relatively small part of the region (country/countries) and thus, it becomes difficult to measure and comprehend the impact of the same at the global level. An organization that has made its presence felt at the global level finds it difficult as to how should it devise out its strategy at the central level and implement at the global level considering that the supply chains vary as per the regions.
• The occurrence of the adversities and the extent of destruction from the same will always be different from those that have already occurred in the past. In other words, there is no pretext to follow regarding the climatic adversity since all have been different from those that have occurred in past. However, lessons can be learnt from all the occurrences in the past but, the response of the governments and the organizations needs to be different. There are two major reasons for such kind of responses:

1. Change in the Earth’s temperature: This is one of the major reasons wherein between the two calamities, the temperature on Earth could have changed and thus, the actions that were suitable and appropriate for the first time may not hold good the next time. Reaction to any calamity depends largely on the temperature around us.
2. Change in Human Behavior: This is also an important factor where there is a shift in human response between the two calamities leading to more devastating or may be less serious natural disaster.

• Another important factor is the already existing business models that serve as the basis for running a business. These business models are based on basic assumption that the social and economic environment will flourish regardless of change in climate or may be change in the political scenarios. Being biased about the organizational science and the fear of understanding the negative impacts of climate change on the new policies, new strategies, new organizational systems, new communication strategies leads to virtually no or very less mention in the top journals.

There could be a variety of other factors as well but according to me these are some of the relevant ones that largely affects the organizational inability to adopt a policy that makes it competitive and socially responsible at the global level at the same time.

The business implications of climate change could be much worse than it is expected or it is much milder than what we are anticipating. The climate will continue to warm and as already discussed, it is important that we start taking this as a business strategy. However, adopting Climate Change as the long term structural change, the companies site huge uncertainties (cost-benefit analysis for short and medium term) for making a policy structures both at the national and at the international levels and also, preparing a mechanism for communicating the same in a unified manner to all the stakeholders that ultimately leads to achieving the MISSION & VISION.

Understanding this argument from organizations point of view, it becomes imperative that every organization whether large or small/ national or global begin to take or start the process of decision making that consider various levels of uncertainties in their businesses, that are in line with the long term trajectory of climate change policies and also, are robust and flexible enough to withstand the inevitable changes in their business processes.

I have always focused on establishing the phenomenon of climate change as the business strategy and also to create reforms where companies can communicate its initiatives and practices to all its stakeholders in a unified way. To establish climate change as a business strategy and to adopt a robust communication system that covers the length and breath of any organization is very challenging and requires alternations and modifications at the various levels.

My primary motive is to study the impact of climate change on organizations and on the strategies that are adopted or might be adopted in the future businesses to develop a strong corporate communication network. It is again and again said that adopting climate change as a business strategy and developing a communication system is a very difficult task; so I want to understand why these two are so difficult or looks to be an uphill task. Let’s understand why adopting as a business strategy is difficult:

• It is important for any organization to broaden their horizons in terms of time zones (short term, medium term or long term) and have to create policies and strategies that it can follow for a fairly long period of time. The impacts of climate change are pretty long term and so it is important that organizations need to assess their corporate risks and the strategy processes more than medium or short term time frame.This is difficult since the strategies are generally adopted keeping in mind the consumer attitudes, political scenarios, legal regulations, advertising and publicity campaigns etc. Taking all this into account and analysis for the climate change, it is necessary that organizations draft policies and strategies that hold value for a fairly long period of time.

• The capital investments that the organizations make also plays a significant role while adopting a new strategy. Any organization that intends to grow its business needs to invest and the investment can be in the form of upgradation in the product line or upgrading the equipment or investing in a new project or investing in fixed assets etc. etc. As a strategic part, if the climate change and its impact is not considered in these decisions, it will prove to be expensive affair for any organization in the long run.
• Another important aspect is to develop corporate information system i.e., to have a set of people that has the knowledge and expertise about the climate change. To integrate climate change into the business strategy, it is important to emphasize how much time and effort is being investing any new technology or new technologies that are environmental friendly and at the same time are profitable for the business. This would mean that adopting a new technology or a new methodology into the system; the respective organization not only understands its financial implications of its decision but also takes into account the operational implications of the same so that they can achieve the targeted results.
• The success or failure strongly depends on how strategically and impactful an organization communicates its initiatives to all its stakeholders. This means developing a strong corporate communications holds the key since the world today is all about communicating as what we are doing and how we are doing at the same time.

Whether we communicate internally through company portal or company magazines or we communicate externally through trade journals, company website, conferences or seminars (now webinars) or through social media or through various agencies that are related to the field of business….the key is to communicate and state the polices strategies and initiatives in great details with the public at large.

Keeping all these in mind while formulating a business strategy takes a lot of time, effort and knowledge at the same time so that the business strategies helps in attaining the desired goals.

Communicating climate change is increasingly getting complicated and when the communication is about adopting the same as a business strategy, it becomes even more troublesome. The companies across the industries recognize the dual threat and opportunity climate change creates and communicating the same (both internally & externally) with the same plan of action remains an uphill task to achieve. Companies that excel on integrating sustainability and social impact into their businesses, however, fails when it comes to communicating about their work in that respective field.

Achieving the two aspects of integrating climate change as business strategy and maintaining the robust corporate communication set up not only makes the company competitively stand out but also makes it as a force multiplier for achieving sustainability goals. Having discussed as to why it is a difficult task to make climate change a business strategy in the previous paragraphs… let’s now understand why having a strong corporate communication mechanism is an aweful difficult task as well. Difficult yet achievable…

• The no “one-size-fits-all” approach makes it necessary for the organization while communicating about the strategies and its benefits. It is necessary that the companies must take into account as to whom are they targeting: the end consumer, the employees, the stakeholders, the government or legal systems or the experts that work in the respective field on the daily basis. To further make the corporate communications effective, it is imperative that the medium/ channel with which it is communicated is chosen wisely. This enables the message being communicated effectively and the response of the audience is receptive.
• Climate change is a very hazy concept and to communicate effectively with the right of audience, it is necessary that companies communicate the impact/ (s) of actions/ inactions with the help of live examples. For example: the negative impact that floods/ droughts bring to farmers or the fishermen is well known and it then becomes necessary for the company to explain the steps it is taking as an initiative to minimize the effects on the farmers or the fishermen. These live examples can be in the form of short stories that are explained either with the help of pictures or some advertisement that has graphics and words both. This will help in getting the audience involved in the initiatives and stand with the company in the mission of minimizing the effect of climate change. Let’s take an example: TIMBERLAND (famous footwear brand) asked its consumers to put their best foot forward (tagline for the initiative) for the outdoors that they explore. The brand encourages the users to visit the cities (via trek) that it is making “green” (with the reduced carbon emissions) and encouraging renewable source of energies and also supporting nature-driven solutions for climate mitigation. This way company has made its efforts tangible and has also involved its end users in their efforts to sustain climate.
• It is necessary to have a two-way dialogue as far as the adopting climate change strategy and its impact is concerned. The dialogue between the two parties helps in a healthy discussions, thus, incorporating ideas and suggesting and making the entire network authentic and more responsive.
• An important aspect for an authentic corporate communication set up is relying and communicating with science-based facts only for a strong and a powerful message. For an organization that is already working towards environmental sustainability and want to or is already communicating to all its stakeholders; backing its marketing claims and sustainability related decisions or policies with real and relevant impact on figures must be a standard practice. This ensures a huge level of transparency and credibility amongst its target audience. An example to this is:“WE WORK” (an American commercial real-estate company) made a decision of cutting down on the consumption of meat completely on all its corporate events. The company received a lot of flak from its members and its staff regarding the decision. However, the company was considered a stand out in the environmental sustainability when it explained to everyone that the decision is based on the scientific research that observed the impact on the environment gets reduced drastically (by more than 445 million pounds of CO2) when the same is done collectively. Further, the company also explained the positive impact on saving of gallons of water in preparing of meat and lastly saving a large number of animal life.
• A leader walks the talk and it works…. Any target audience gets convinced when the message is conveyed to them by the leader of the organization. A leader who initiates the change when speaks up, it becomes reliable, relevant, transparent and believable. Hence, it is extremely necessary for the leader to speak about the initiatives that its organization takes and leads with an example to achieve all that it intends to.

To my understanding, these are some of the factors that makes it easier for any organization to develop a sound corporate communication set up and adopt climate change as a business strategy. Also, at any given point in time, it is extremely important for any organization to be vulnerable enough and acknowledge the areas where there it lacks and sees the scope of improvement. To be able to discuss and communicate that are needed to fix the shortcomings with equal ease (as the success stories) will help win the trust of the society at large and environmental sustainability can become a reality.

Our climate is changing!!!!!

Climate Change is simply, the greatest collective challenge we face as a human family.

Climate change is a global, man-made and complex threat, putting millions of lives and ecosystems at threat. With a rapid rate at which the Earth is warming up, it is necessary that a collective global approach is adopted to tackle this threat.Further, a fundamental transformation in our societies is required in the field of energy, nutrition and resources.

Climate Change: Meaning

In simple words: it is a global phenomena of climate transformation that can be characterized by the changes which can be observed and felt in our day-to-day lives. These changes are a result of numerous natural factors and a variety of human factors that are now disturbing the overall ecosystem of the planet, thus, putting the future existence of mankind under threat. This is a general understanding about the Climate Change, there is a more technical definition that sums up the phenomenon in a more appropriate manner. According to NASA: “Climate Change is a broad range of global phenomena created predominantly by burning of fossil fuels which add heat trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomenon includes the increased temperature trends described by global warming, but also encompass changes such as sea-level rise; ice-mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain glaciers worldwide; shifts in flower/plant blooming; and extreme weather events.”

It is always mentioned in all our conversations, articles, write-ups, essays etc that the change in climate has been occurring since centuries and has been a result of a variety of factors. Lets take a closer look as to what all affects the change in the climate and since when and how the concept of climate change caught the attention of various scientists, other agencies and the corporate that it became an area of brainstorming.

To know as to when the study of the change in the climate started and how it caught the attention of the people at various stages, it is first necessary to know what are the reasons behind the change in the climate since ages.

Causes: a look closer

Climate change is a paradoxical subject. With the changing environment and the global warming on the rise, the political and public response to this global threat is relatively weak. One of the major factors that influence the rapid change in the environment is the burning of fossil fuels namely coal, gas, oil etc by the humans. This has been continuing for several centuries now and results in emission of the “Green house gasses” that trap the heat in the Earth’s atmosphere resulting in a phenomenon called “The Green House Effect”.

However, apart from the Human factors (shall discuss later again), there are many other factors that influence the threat of Climate Change. Understanding them would make the picture a lot more clear. These are:

a. Sun: its strength

One of the factors that influences the hotter or the colder Earth is the energy that is released from the Sun. Since, the energy output of the Sun is not constant and varies every time, there is a variation in the Earth’s atmosphere.

b. Natural Causes

Apart from Sun there are a number of other natural factors that influence the Climate Change on the planet. These are beyond the human control. Lets understand them:

• Continental Drift: Our planet appears very different what is used to be a million of years ago. It used to be a huge land mass where everything was joint and connected. Nothing had drifted apart. The one huge landmass had the vegetation and flowers that used to grow in the similar kind of environment. This landmass, over the centuries have splited and have become the present day continents and have impacted the climate dramatically (everything from the oceans to the winds have changed ever since then.).
• Volcanoes: Volcanoes also play a significant role in the change of the climate. When a volcano erupts, it throws out large volumes of various gases, water vapour , dust and ash with it. These stay in the atmosphere for a relatively long period of time.Though the volcano lasts for a couple of days, the effects are adverse and stay for long, thus, changing the overall climate along with it. This can be substantiated with an example:The year of 1816 is often referred to as “the year without summer”; several weather related disruptions occurred in New England and in western Europe along with the killing summer frosts in the United States and Canada. The strange happenings were attributed to a major eruption of Tambore Volcano in Indonesia in 1815. The above example clearly testifies the effect of volcanoes on climate, thus, changing the balance overall for a very long period of time.
• Earth’s Tilt: Earth is tilted away from the sun. Its orbit is somewhat elliptical, which means that the distance between the Earth and the Sun varies over the course of a year. If there is any change in the tilt, it leads to change in the climatic conditions making it severe or devastating.
• Ocean Currents: Oceans make an important component of the climatic system. They cover about 71% of the Earth and absorb about twice the Sun’s radiation as compared to the atmosphere or the land surface. The ocean currants have been known for changing the directions (slow or fast) leading to the climate change to a large extent. An example that is believed to be the most suited for this is the end of the last Ice Age (due to ocean currants) about 14000 years ago.

c. Human Causes

As mentioned earlier, climate change and the human activities are directly connected. Deforestation, burning of fossil fuels etc make a direct impact on the climate and leads to the changes from time to time. Burning of fossil fuels has been a major activity since the age of “Industrial Revolution”. The gases that are released with the burning of fuels stay in the atmosphere and leads to a warmer climate system and can bring change to such an extent that would be irreparable and irreversible.

Climate Change and Global Warming: History and Introduction

Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. There have been several cycles of global advance and retreat that has lead to the abrupt end of the last ice age several centuries ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era. However, these changes attribute to a mix of variables in the natural causes (as discussed earlier) over a period of time.

Climate of the planet has been getting warmer with each passing century and it is getting warmer at an alarming rate. The ability of the green house gases to trap the heat and transfer the same to the atmosphere has been demonstrated since the 19th century. It is, however, notable that the current changes in the climate and the global warming effects has been a result of human activities.

It, therefore, becomes necessary to understand since when, the humans started noticing these changes in their environment and since when we as a family, started taking a stock of the changes that became visible due to the destruction caused by us (the human family).

The history of the scientific discovery of climate change began in early 19th century with some minimal changes that were noticeable by the scientists. By the end of the 19th century, there were first evidences available of the emission of green house gases and further, were the arguments that these gases can alter the climate. In the 1930’s Thomas Edison (pioneer in electrical technologies), voiced his concerns over the climate change the immediate need for the renewable energy. However by the time it was late 20th century (late nineties) the effect of global warming became visible and increasingly convincing.

It is during this period of late nineties, with the levels of pollution and global warming reaching to the unprecedented levels, the United Nations formed “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” in 1988 with the objective that it will provide regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and will suggest future risks and options for mitigation and adaption.

With the formation of IPCC in 1988, baby steps were taken in the direction of controlling the global warming the reducing the effects of green house gases emissions. A lot in the same direction was required and at a much larger level, at a global level. With the thought, the US government formed a treaty named UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) which was opened for signatures by the various countries at the June 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) which is also known as- The Rio Earth Summit and the finally The UNFCC came into force on 21st March 1994.

The objective has been to meet regularly to take a stock of developments in the field of climate change and also to devise new measures to control the same at a much larger level. The aim has been to bring all the stakeholders…the governments, scientists, environmentalists, diplomats, industrialists…. all under one platform that there can be collective brain storming on the subject and collective decision can be taken.

The first conference of the UN Climate Change was in held in Berlin in 1995 and the body has met every year ever since then. The objective has always been to bring joint measures for improvement of global warming and change in ecosystem by bringing in various initiatives from time to time. Weather it was “the Kyoto Protocol” that was adopted in 1997 with the aim of reducing the green house gas emissions by all the industrialized countries by 6-8% between the first budget period of climate change i.e., from the period between the year 2008-to the year 2012 OR “The Paris Agreement” in the year 2015 where the declaration was issued to govern the measures taken to reduce the pollution and global warming levels. This declaration came into force in November 2016 OR the agreements that had been in place in all the rest of the years about the controlling measures.

The aim of all the conferences has been to adopt and execute ways and means for a collective effort in reducing the global emission of green house gases so that the planet is a better place to live in the centuries to come.

Having a brief understanding as to how the climate changes became visible and what are the various factors that are responsible for the same, it is very evident that a lot of work is to be done in this area and also, a lot of reforms are required to be brought in so that the industries can participate in reducing these emissions. BUT with this thought comes a very obvious question that what is expected out of industries?? What role can industries can play in reducing carbon emissions and start working with various forms of renewable energies?? How have these industries across the globe dealt with this issue of climate change?? How over a period of time have they changed there policies (organizational and communication) so that they can fulfill both there global and corporate social responsibility?? How have these industries (new and existing since long) strategized over all these centuries to communicate and sustain this global threat???

Interesting questions: LETS STUDY!!!!!!!!!!!

The difference between management and leadership is COMMUNICATIONS” -Winsten Churchill

Communications: a fundamental to the existence of the humans and the organizations. It is an act of explaining the meaning a piece of information both by the verbal and the non verbal methods. To be able to be effective in communications it is necessary that the organizations must adopt a variety of tools and a clear vision that helps its people to design and strategize its policies and communicate them to the various stakeholders.

Corporate Communications is an evolving area within the ever increasing puzzle of global growth. Corporate Communications as an important element of the organizational structure does not possess a very ancient legacy. The concept came into being in late 19th century or in early 20th century following the pace of industrial revolution. However, the aim in the earlier century was to improve towards the image and positioning of the brands and the organizations itself; its larger role was that of maintaining the Public Relations.

The role that largely was restricted towards maintaining the political scenario, started to take a shift and it became more focused towards the organisations and more importantly towards its individuals with the invention of “GLOBALIZATION”. At this time, the organizations started to venture in different parts of the world requiring a more sophisticated communication strategy keeping in mind the culture, values, beliefs, rules etc of the respective countries. This has to be collaborated with the overall VISION of the company so that the aim is not compromised upon.

The onset of the 21st century brought with it the revolution called “The Internet” and the information was digitized. Everything in this new century is available on the internet. Communication, which till now was a one way process (from top to bottom), became the “Conversation” by the end of the second decade of the century. The stakeholders that were only receiving information till now became the “audience” and started participating in the communication process. In today’s age, the biggest challenge a company faces is to maintain transparency, provide information at the regular basis so that it can keep its audience engaged and retain the brand recall in their minds. The even bigger challenge is to decide how much information is relevant and what is the medium that is most suited to communicate a particular kind of information i.e., to decide about the channel.

The digitization has made the information availability much easier and much faster and the arrival of social media has made the companies think out of the box and find out new tools to communicate with today’s customers. Relevance has become the corporate communications center of gravity and being digital has become the new way of life. The various social and digital platforms makes consumer “the king” and thus, ensures that the companies monitor the information constantly and strategize in a pro-active manner to sustain the ever evolving world.

Digitization, strong media presence and the real-times issues rich environment makes the communication process an uphill task for the organizations. The growth of the social media and plethora of information available has brought with it mistrust (due to fake news) amongst the consumers. The organisations have to muster the art of communicating the social responsibilities (that it undertakes) so that it can remain relevant and authentic and are able to retain the customers (both internal and external) ensuring the global sustainability.

This is one small world where every activity and every industry is interconnected.Global presence is the need of the hour and expanding one’s business activities is a part of the mission of any organization.In this global digitally connected world, the companies need to constantly monitor what happens in other parts of the world so that they can strategize effectively in view of maximizing its reach to the global audience. The strong internet presence and the information in the real time poses an immense amount of threat for the companies to sustain and retain its base. So, what happens when this global, digital one world gets a “Pandemic”? How are the organizations dealing with the “first ever pandemic” of the new age world?

It seems in today’s time, every thing is revolving around this one phenomenon called “Covid-19, The Pandemic”. The world is under a lockdown….every economy is struggling to revive itself and get unaffected with this deadly phenomenon and so are the organizations across the globe. Communicating in this age of uncertainty and fear has become a topic to brainstorm upon. Communication at this hour requires unprecedented empathy and strong leadership to bring back the trust,lower the anxiety and sustain in the global platform. The organizations are devising ways and means to communicate with their internal and external stakeholders. The task has become a lot more difficult and complex than what it already has been in an environment that was flooded with opportunities or in a more appropriate way….pre covid world.

In this new world, I would call it a “Covid-19 world”; the companies are making the contingency plans with some new and some old phenomenons. However, the old phenomenon like maintaining a direct base with the customers and communicating clearly the company strategy during the time of crises still hold importance; there are new concepts like creating a crises management teams (that can take a stalk of the situation overall and can tell how adversely or positively the company is affected) and communicate regularly with its customers (both internal and external) and state the facts (how-so-ever good or bad) at the regular intervals on the various mediums ….are a few such that have gained the attention of the leaders across the globe.

An emphatic, clear and precise communication strategy can help win the trust and the loyalty of the various stakeholders associated with the company. Transparency helps to build the brand value at the time of crises and helps in establishing a clear vision as to how the company will (or focus) to emerge after the fallout.

This Covid-19 world has now changed in many ways….ways we live now, buy our groceries, defining our new luxuries, defining our new new. World in this covid-19 has changed and will continue to change. It has changed the way we used to work and will keep on reinventing itself further. We, now have to learn to adapt to the new work cultures, new ways to communicate and new ways to devise our strategies to accomplish our vision. This world is entirely different from the world where the concept of “Corporate Communication” came into being. This world is all about living in an environment that is all about social distancing and a world that is working to restructure itself from the scratch. In the earlier strategies, it was all about staying connected to the audience directly (eliminating all mediums for in between) and communicating the policy directly, through the conferences, press meets etc. With the concept of social distancing, it is now about video conferencing and communicating every single aspect of the organisation digitally.

With so much changing so rapidly around us, will we be able to hold on to the strong communication ethics that we have established and developed over all these decades?? OR are we entering an era where an entire new constitution with regards to communicating within the world is required?????????

TIME TO THINK

EARTH,the only planet in the solar system that can harbor life, is exposed

to various species, flora and fauna. Amongst all these, the most fascinating species is that of mankind (The HUMAN BEING).

The reason that makes the mankind so interesting is its ability to think and comprehend. The human brain is a power house that can make unthinkable as attainable and unachievable as withing the reach of every person possible.

It is this power of the human brain that has led the planet undergo various changes in its ecosystem from time to time.A lot of such changes are positive but most of them have been hazardous. We, the humans have played with the mother EARTH in every given way over the centuries. From the stone age, we, have evolved to the current digital and the satellite age. This power to think and make our lives comfortable and luxurious, we have experimented from time to time on various creatures/objects/chemicals in our laboratories and attained the results. Some of these results have been positive for both the mankind and the planet but a have been disastrous.

One such experiment that has proved to be fatal has been the current emergency that has engulfed the world. We call it “CORONA VIRUS” or the COVID-19. It has been labelled as the “pandemic”

This pandemic has brought the world to a standstill. We are all locked inside our houses and have been barred from any movement or activity outside our houses. There’s transport, no factories are functioning. Everything has just stopped or everything has just become quiet. We, have been caught up with a fear, “the fear of survival”.

Since, the human activity has halted or closed completely; mother nature has geared up and is doing the needful. EARTH is on the path of recovery and it is slowly achieving all that was once considered “Unattainable” or “Unimaginable”.

But as it is said: “EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED WHEN ITS ABOUT NATURE”

There’s a recovery mode and I would like to term it as “THE MAKEOVER”. The planet is in a makeover phase and it has been blossoming glamorously. Its looks fresh and ready to take on the mankind for the centuries to come.

It breathes fresh every second of the day and runs fresh water every second where even a tiny fish is visible clearly. The species that have disappeared from their natural habitats have returned back and the ozone layer that was depleting fast is now recovering slowly due to less pollution across the globe.

Of the many examples of the recovering nature, I want to point out two examples from two different parts of the world. The first one is from Punjab, India where a snow capped mountain range called ‘The Dhauladhar’ is visible from 160 kms in Jalandhar (Punjab) that has not been seen by the locals for over three decades. It was a sight to behold and something that would have happened once in the lifetime of the locals. The magic happened due to less pollution.

The second example is from Italy, where the water has been cleaner than ever. In those clean water the fishes are back, the dolphins dances and the swans adorns the canals in way that can catch anyone’s imagination. Truly a spectacle it must be.

These are only two examples and am sure there must 100 of such examples. Such examples only teach us only one lesson- i.e., to compassionate towards the planet. It teaches that the nature blossoms like a flower if become a compassionate species. We take care of our planet and let it bloom to its maximum so that we can enjoy the gifts that it has to offer for the centuries to come. “AMEN”

PRACHI