Social Impact Entertainment: You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure
Media plays an important role in creating lasting and engaging social impact.
As the head of Corporate Social Responsibility for the Social Impact Entertainment Society, I have the opportunity to work within a global think tank of experts dedicated to developing media designed to result in positive social change. The question is often how do we measure the impact media is having on the target audience? Much of the reason we built Hero Bridge on an app platform with our own XChange media library was the control we had over the intersection of inspiration and activation. What we found is remarkable and truly provides us “direct evidence of lives touched.”
Our findings are useful for the companies and organizations that often support XChange content. Here’s what we’ve learned thus far. As organizations increasingly report their progress on social responsibility through story, cause-content creators are relied upon to develop powerful stories that inspire or educate an audience of specific stakeholders. To achieve this, creators must have a firm understanding of the technical aspects of sound and valid CSR reporting. This is largely due to the fact that branded communication tends to be held to a higher level of public scrutiny, and as we have seen in recent years, the consequences of a disingenuous story can be disastrous. Therefore, the metrics associated with reporting CSR are in a sense the story guardrails creating a delicate balance between impassioned artistic creation and communicating an authentic story grounded in fact and evidence. The best CSR stories do both.
What Content Creators need to know about Social Impact and Responsibility
One of the most common concerns of organizations when it comes to reporting social responsibility is whether they are using an industry standard metric for measuring impacts that validates the organization’s efforts. The choices are vast ranging from self-governed goal reporting, to accounting for multiple bottom lines, to legal frameworks that bake mission into their corporate charter. No matter which an organization chooses, sound metrics of progress must also accompany. With an empowered consumer class willing to vote on social issues through their decision to purchase or cancel a product of service, platitudes and lofty corporate mission statements no longer cut the muster in the digital age of mass communication. Organizations find themselves in a world that increasingly demands high production value and a well told story with bullet-proof validity and authenticity. Therefore, metrics matter.
Metrics of Reporting and Storytelling are Two Sides of the Same Coin
There is an age old business maxim ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’ that usually applied to the business as usual. However, this statement takes on new meaning in a world where consumers and employees are actively concerned and aware of their favorite brands’ stand on issues important to them. Add to this a global array of 24/7 digital media platforms that consume more of our waking hours every year, (cite) organizations are keenly aware that they must express their ‘purpose’ through objective and validated storytelling that both informs and entertains. This is a mandatory part of doing business in the twenty-first century. Like so many other aspects of the mediasphere, content is king/queen.
The history of corporate and organization social responsibility has in fact been progressing for decades toward this moment, now accelerated in the backdrop of major social change. Organizations now seek creative producers, storytellers and cause marketers to impactfully bring their reports to life, a far cry from the once simple function of posting a glossy CSR pdf report on the organization’s website. Businesses and nonprofits have recognized the value of building trust with stakeholders, and nothing builds trust in the human mind better than a well told and authentic story.
Therefore, reporting can be described as a two side coin. On the one side are the metrics the organization chooses to use to measure its own performance and impacts on the world. This is the framework from which stories will be mined for media treatment. The other side of the coin are the metrics of social impact entertainment (SIE) and whether the story is reaching the right audience, effectively and authentically communicates the organization’s purpose, goals and progress. For example, when storytelling for cause, it is important to establish whether awareness, advocacy, education or social behavior change is the goal. Entertainment value is not sufficient. The skilled cause creator must be aware of the methods used to determine whether the entertainment effected change, or was simple platitude?
In the Digital Age CSR and SIE are Completely Intertwined
Nobel Prize Economist Amartya Sen’s book The Idea of Justice, stood for the premise that ‘well informed stakeholders make well informed decisions.’ When he wrote the book in 2009, we were only just entering the digital data-enabled world where stakeholders could so readily inform themselves. In the case of CSR and SIE, the stakeholder Sen refers to is an audience that ranges from the board of directors, donors, employees, consumers, regulators or society at large.
A good recent example of the demand for CSR-SIE metric is the BLM movement (cite), consumers are unimpressed by company statements of support and dedication to diversity, but also want to see specific action and reporting of progress. This raises the stakes for organizations to not only be thoughtful about their position, purpose and practices (ie. CSR) but also their dedication to heartfelt, long term communication of progress, stories and outcomes. (ie. SIE)
Setting the Metrics of Success
We are all living through a historic moment where the practices, ethics and beliefs of organizations are more relevant and in-demand than in any time during the industrial age. Cause is no longer an option, it is a requirement. Therefore, organizations must frankly take positions, admit weaknesses where they must, both internal and systemic, and follow their words with action on social issues. With creative departments who are usually limited to marketing tactics, and CSR officers only concerned with program management, outside SIE creative collaboration is becoming an increasing norm.
Woke” consumers are completely responsible for this more enlightened economic ethic, and organizations must seek out experts who understand the critical standards and measurements required for communicating CSR through SIE. It is from these standards that organizations and cause creators can collaborate to structure powerful stories to instill trust and committed values in this new age of transparency. This is not a static thing, and is the increased level of trust demanded by each successive generation of consumer, donor and employee. Essentially, the conventional corporate ethic that puts shareholder profit over all else, is officially extinct.
Digital Storytelling There is No Distance Between Inspiration and Activation
Once the creator and organization have chosen the standard of measurement, it must then determine what story to tell and to whom. Just like CSR metrics, the social impact of the story should have its own measurement of success or failure. This is nothing new for cause marketers who use the data generated from social media and streamer campaigns to determine the efficacy of the content and the relationship the organization has had on sales of goods and services; public perception of the brand.
Connecting the story to an actual cause that can be acted upon is a great way of creating a tail that proves entertainment can be an agent of change and better outcomes.
Multiplatform distribution and the data it inherently collects can offer a myriad of ways to report back to organizations the success of a media campaign or the social behavior change the SIE story has had on an audience. This data feedback is a value addition to the savvy cause content creator who understands that at the end of the day organizations desire a statement of their “return on investment” in media through proof of impact - maybe even long term, and periodic updates that create a basket of content around the story that audiences can explore, interact and have a sense of relationship.
Examples of impact:
https://justcapital.com/news/companies-that-have-taken-bold-stands-on-social-issues/
Quality SIE, particularly for effective CSR/DEI communication of impact should have all five of these elements in the development and execution of content:
1.) Focus on the Story: Tell the best story you can to reach your audience. This is where an eye for how a story will convey requires the mind of a filmmaker, guided by what message and audience is the target of the story. Building with the end in mind is part of the "story mining" process. Good authentic storytelling.
2) Know Your Issue: Understand the real world of your story and determine your intended impact from the start. This is where "getting it right from the beginning" is so important and easy to overlook when caught up in telling a story. The story mechanics, and particularly identifying the impact you intend (awareness, advocacy, activation, trust, social behavior change) need to be developed thoroughly.
3) Find the best partners: Identify and partner with leading organizations and people working on your issue. This "authenticity" requirement is a main driver behind the current trend of branded content that tells the story of nonprofits working at the heart of, and making an impact on, a chosen target issue. Further, SIES can take some of the mystery out of this process due to its aggregation of a variety of experts who can circle around the strategic development of a powerful story and develop the metrics of impact from the start. A great example of this would be our SBCC experts who can be engaged to advise best practices that make SIE more cognitively effective and inspirational.
4) Think about distribution differently: This one is worth repeating because it is by far the most overlooked aspect of creating content. What good is the greatest story never told. And what if the audience you want your issue to reach is unaware because a weak channel of distribution was employed. The age of multiplatform digital distribution allows for strategic builds of quality audiences, and the ability to collect the feedback metrics that measure the impact. Creation of a distribution plan that activates the relevant shareholders, stakeholders and communities of action is critical to an SIE campaign.
5) Evaluate, learn and share. Metrics matter more than ever. Part of SIE is the ability to access what you have done and pass on key findings. A recent consumer-perception study on support of BLM by corporations overwhelmingly found that consumers not only want to know what a company's position is on BLM, but also want the evidence of support and the impact that the support has had on the issue. The consumer is increasingly data savvy, meaning SIE-CSR/DEI must likewise have the built-in ability to collect and report data of impact back to the stakeholders. This is where the incorporation of "inspiration-to-activation" cross-platform microsites or other calls-to-action can be built into the distribution plan and can give a company the ability to collect and report findings that their SIE actually "moved the needle" of change.
