Corporate Social Responsibility: An Innovative Strategy for Brand Awareness

Driving the brand of any company needs consistent and close attention to alternative brand propositions. Marketing is not simple but a complex strategy to meet all of the clients’ needs and exceed them. It is more than price, product, promotion and placement. Once more, if you are in the service industry (which oddly people in education sometimes forget), we need to excel as people; we are more of the brand than anything else.  

Today, with so much information at our fingertips it can be hard to differentiate ourselves from the pack and this is why alternative brand propositions are important to rise above the competition. Things like corporate social programs, appealing design and niche specialty programs (to name only a few) can really bring a competitive edge in a very competitive industry.  These elements can really give purpose to a brand and marketing campaigns.

One example of a campaign that differentiated and strengthened the brand internationally was my corporate social responsibility campaign called Educate for Change. It is runs on the simple premiss that to give back to educational NGOs within the target country/market by giving a dollar a day for every student from that country back to the NGO.

Our first campaign targeted Brazil. We teamed up with Casa do Zezinho, an NGO located "triangle of death" in the favellas of Sao Paulo. Casa do Zezinho educates children during the day when their parents are out working and then becomes an adult school at night helping the parents get educated and teach them skills that will allow them to better provide for their family. Each time I have gone to the "triangle of death", I have been overwhelmed by the poverty and even more so by the hearts of the volunteers providing a safe haven for the children of the favellas.

Our first MoU agreement with Casa do Zezinho was a big success

The Issue: Brazil had been a good market for us. We had visited many times and we had a good number of students but we still felt the brand needed to strengthen and really reflect the people who worked at the school. My personal issue was I was tired of seeing so many Canadian schools take from markets like Brazil. First they take the money out of the country with tuition and expenses and then through immigration, Canada takes the intelligence as the student never returns. The ramification for the countries we promote immigration through education is not a postitive one.

Personally going to the "triangle of death" and Casa do Zezinho was life altering.

Also, I like to feel good about what I do and I think the Canadian education sector can do better and should practice better business practices. Can you imagine the change we could create if every school had an Educate for Change program?

The Benefits and results: the biggest beneficiaries were obviously the children. They recieved many well needed supplies for their studies. On the home front the biggest benefit was one that statistics can't measure: the sense of pride the staff had in the project. It was great for moral. We felt good about what we were doing and we were different from the other schools. We had a sense of purpose and pride.

Our market share did grow in Brazil with an increase of over 30%. By 2019 it became one of our biggest markets. The program became so successful we followed up by adding an Educate for Change program in the north of Thailand helping refugee children from Myanmar (a country dear to my heart) get an education as they have no rights to a classroom as foreigners in Thailand. We also helped young entrepreneurs in Santiago, Panama who needed basic classroom essentials to learn to be better businesspeople for a better future. All projects have been a complete success to date. In fact, when receiving a rather large government contract from the government of Panama, they cited this program as one of the deciding factors to award us the contract.

Giving pays, question is why are not more Canadian schools running a CSR program?