Socializing Social Responsibility

There is a growing trend to socialize social responsibility, that is, corporations invite people to join a community that reflects a topic or issue supporting a cause in which the company also plays a supporting role but generates good will for them alone.

Take a look at what Pepsi is doing at http://www.refresheverything.com/ or Aviva at http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/.

How effect these efforts are, only time will tell but they are already working to some degree because people are talking about them. How do I know? I first saw reference to Aviva`s social responsibility efforts on Facebook - someone had tagged it as a favourite or recommended it. And I first saw mention about Pepsi`s social responsibility on LinkedIn in the `Those in the Media`discussion group where someone mentioned a blog post about Pepsi dropping its superbowl ads for the social activity site: http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/the-pepsi-refresh-project-social-campaign/.

Certainly if the goal is to generate discussion then these initiatives are working. And if you haven`t already, its time to join the conversation and consider socializing online for whatever you want to communicate.