Branding, social responsibility need
not be on separate tracks
Branding and corporate social responsibility have been on parallel, but separate tracks in Bangladesh. However, considering branding and social responsibility as separate activities not only misses the point, it is missed opportunity. In a 360-degree world, where everything counts, branding activity and corporate behaviour are already intertwined in the minds of the stakeholders and consumers – and they should be, writes Salman Haider
GREAT brands meet or exceed consumer expectations. This has always been true. As the marketplace has got more sophisticated and competitive, marketers have realised that what motivates people to buy products is far more complex today. It is not just function, efficacy, or availability. Nor is it simply price or positioning. It is a host of contacts, impressions and emotional connections, along with function, that drive consumer behaviour. This is called 360-degree branding. In our experience, everything that touches the consumer creates the brand: from style and design to packaging, news coverage, delivery trucks and service experience. Everything from hearsay to history counts. To market in Bangladesh, in fact, is to enter a social contract. What’s new is that this social contract is rapidly moving beyond the promise to make good things and provide reliable service.
Nowadays, customer expectations encompass other areas of corporate responsibility, such as safety and health issues, environmental practices, and labour relations. Clearly, this moves brand building beyond just typical marketing. It entails taking responsibility for the way your entire business affects society, and understanding, in turn, that the fate of your brand can depend on people who may not use your products or services at all – stakeholders as diverse as government officials and regulators, analysts and editors, non-governmental organisations and activists, community and religious leaders. Recognising that a meaningful, coherent and cost-effective corporate social responsibility programme is a branding exercise may be entirely new in Bangladesh.
Branding and CSR have been on parallel, but separate tracks in Bangladesh. There are explanations for this. Many executives in the region equate branding with selling. They are understandably, and often rightly, reluctant to trumpet good works or exploit marketing programmes with social agendas. Moreover, much corporate philanthropy has traditionally been associated with company founders and generally based on the sort of close-knit relationships that characterise Bangladesh’s family-controlled corporations. Considering branding and social responsibility as separate activities not only misses the point, it is missed opportunity. In a 360-degree world, where everything counts, branding activity and corporate behaviour are already intertwined in the minds of the stakeholders and consumers – and they should be.
In 2005 the Executive Times and the Standard Chartered Bank initiated CSR Award. Many companies, both local and multinational, have come forward to get the Award. Today, the companies are more aggressive towards CSR to establish brand image for sustainable business growth. Companies are facing the challenges of adapting effectively to the changing environment in the context of globalisation and, in particular, in the export sector. Although consumer rights movement, enforcement of government regulations and a structured view regarding the economic importance of CSR are not yet so widespread in the corporate world in Bangladesh, companies have gradually attaching more importance to CSR in the local market as well. They are increasingly aware that CSR can be of direct economic value. Companies can contribute to social and environmental objectives, through integrating CSR as a strategic investment into their core business strategy, management instruments and operations. This is an investment, not a cost, much like quality management. So, business organisations can thereby have an inclusive financial, commercial and social approach, leading to a long-term strategy minimising risks linked to uncertainty.
The benefits of CSR include building a positive image and encouraging social involvement of employees, which in turn develops a sense of loyalty to the company. CSR activities help bond employees as a team, and with the organisation, which in turn helps create a dedicated workforce that is proud of its employer. However, one of the biggest advantages of such activities is the development of internal branding among employees. ‘Employees feel a sense of pride when they are involved in such activities which in turn help in retaining them. Similarly, such activities also in a small way contribute towards image building,’ says Bharti Das Gupta, adviser, Social Initiatives and Managing Trustee of Catalyst for Social Action, Kale Consultants. Besides, with hectic work schedules, these activities help in de-stressing many employees and help in developing more evolved and conscientious human beings.
In fact, CSR means different things to different people. However, certain ideas are becoming commonly accepted. One is that CSR is not about philanthropy or charitable work. It refers to something much more fundamental. It is about how companies take responsibility for their actions in the world at large. Conventional CSR watchdogs include labour unions, consumer groups, environmentalists, NGOs and all ‘stakeholders’ watching over their interest as opposed to ‘stockholders’ only. In essence, CSR is positive rapport with society. In a Bangladesh context, several multinational companies and local companies practise CSR. Most of the business concerns in Bangladesh do not rate high in practising CSR unless being pressured by the foreign buyers in case of export oriented business.
CSR in Bangladesh can also contribute a lot to community development. The corporate house can develop the community by creating employment, providing primary education, contribution to infrastructure development like roads and highways and addressing environmental concerns. This is more relevant for a country like Bangladesh where the government interventions in these fields being augmented by corporate alliance can go a long way in developing the economy, society and environment.
Salman Haider is an assistant vice-president and brand manager of the IFIC Bank Limited
Russia’s energy drive
leaves US reeling
The past week’s flow of events in places as far apart as Prague, Hokkaido, Tbilisi, Harare, Tehran and the Arctic underscored that after a brief respite, the rivalries over energy security have revived with a ferocity that can rock the equilibrium of overall US-Russia relations, writes MK Bhadrakumar
LAST week, the gloves finally came off the Dmitry Medvedev presidency in Russia. It had to happen sooner or later, but few would have expected this soon. It was crystal clear US President George W Bush administered a diplomatic snub to Medvedev on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit meeting at Hokkaido, Japan.
Bush characterised him patronisingly as a ‘sharp guy’ soon after they met in Hokkaido on July 9, but that was after making sure Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proceeded to Prague and signed a deal just the previous day to install a US radar system as part of its missile defence system in Central Europe.
If Medvedev’s core mission in Hokkaido was to underscore Russia’s growing role in the world arena as a power with which the West has to contend, Bush acted as if he couldn’t care. The US was also plainly dismissive of Medvedev’s proposal at the G-8 for a pan-European security system that would include Russia. Medvedev expressed his ‘dismay’ on hearing about the Prague deal. As if to rub in the snub, Rice proceeded from Prague to Bulgaria, where the US has for the first time established a military base, and then on to Georgia to discuss its plans of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
While in Tbilisi, she called for international mediation to stop violence spilling over in Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abhkazia, which have been sources of rising tensions, with Georgia accusing Russia of trying to annex the regions. To carry matters further, the US began a joint military exercise with Georgia codenamed Immediate Response 2008, near Tbilisi, which will continue through the month of July.
The exercise, financed by the Pentagon and planned by the US Armed Forces Eastern Command, is intended as a warning to Russia that Georgia is America’s project and Washington wouldn’t hesitate to do some heavy lifting to safeguard the ‘Rose Revolution’.
On the face of it, such hubris is illogical and unnecessary since the West should have every reason not to embarrass Medvedev. The West has been propagating in recent months that the youthful Russian president is a potential independent decision-maker in the Kremlin with whom it could do business – unlike his predecessor, Vladimir Putin.
Western flattery
Reflecting US thinking, Carnegie Moscow Centre scholar Dmitri Trenin wrote recently that the West noted ‘Medvedev’s quick-wittedness, his calm style of conducting talks, and his clear desire to show that he is the one who is the real master of Russian diplomacy ... There are much greater grounds for expecting that Dmitry Medvedev ... will slowly but steadily concentrate powers in his own hands.’
Clearly, what has been going on for the past few months on the East-West stage is one of those pantomimes that the West and Russia are equally adept at playing. But the US seems to have concluded that all the Western flattery about him hasn’t really gone to Medvedev’s head and he has merely been demonstrating his own skill in dramatics. Actually, nothing much has changed in Russia. The polls show Putin, now premier, is still seen by Russians as their ‘supreme leader’, with a popularity rating coasting above 70 per cent – with Medvedev stuck at 47 per cent – and the truth might be somewhere near what a Moscow commentator recently sized up, namely, that Medvedev is a co-pilot in the cockpit in which Putin remains the captain.
Besides, Medvedev would know that even if he wished to be the European moderniser and G-8 club member that the West wanted him to be, he would find himself hopelessly at odds with his country. According to a poll last week by a Russian television network, the symbol of renewal of present-day Russia turns out to be none other than Josef Stalin. By a substantial margin, Stalin left behind two colourful Vladimirs – the singer Vladimir Vysotsky and the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin – and a host of other perennial Russian heroes like Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Pushkin.
The Putin legacy
Indeed, when Medvedev signed last Saturday a new foreign policy strategy for Russia, it came to light that for the first time the prime minister has been put in the driving seat to implement foreign policy measures – hitherto a presidential prerogative – which also shows that the Kremlin will pursue the line set by Putin in his eight-year presidency. The vague and somewhat incomprehensible expectations that there might be of some kind of ‘liberalisation’ in Medvedev’s foreign policy have proved to be unfounded.
But Moscow hasn’t taken lightly the US snub. In an address to Russian envoys in Moscow on Tuesday, Medvedev unambiguously stated his intention to continue Putin’s foreign policy course, criticising the US moves on missile defence deployment, the West’s failure to ratify the revised Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Kosovo’s independence, etc. He said, ‘We strongly affirm that the deployment of elements of the global missile defence in Eastern Europe only exacerbates the situation ... we will be forced to respond to it in kind ...
‘This is linked to Russian-American agreements on strategic stability. Obviously, this common heritage will not be able to survive if one party is permitted to selectively destroy individual elements of this strategic regime. We cannot agree to that.’
According to the noted German expert on Russia, Alexander Rahr, last week’s Russian veto on the United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Zimbabwe was also a response to the US move on missile defence. ‘China’s opposition is easy to understand as it has many economic interests in Zimbabwe. Russia has none. Russia’s veto is a response to the missile shield, to Abkhazia and to many other things ... Russia is trying to show that America cannot decide everything,’ Rahr said.
The Russian veto generated a new American theme song that Medvedev isn’t calling the shots in the Kremlin and might have got slapped down on Zimbabwe. But Moscow brushed aside the suggestion. The foreign ministry issued a statement calling the draft resolution on Zimbabwe ‘a dangerous precedent ... illegitimate and dangerous, leading towards unbalancing the whole UN system’. The statement rebuked Washington and London, saying, ‘Russia took into account the fact that the situation in Zimbabwe does not pose a threat to regional, let alone international peace and security and does not warrant adoption of sanctions against that country.’
Again, on Monday, Moscow announced that for the first time since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian warships were resuming patrol of the Arctic waters. In effect, Medvedev signalled he was maintaining the course of expanded military patrols begun by Putin. Why such a sudden quickening of the tempo in US-Russian relations? The answer might be found on an entirely different plane – energy security.
The root cause of tension
What emerges is that if anything, Medvedev is pursuing Russia’s energy diplomacy more robustly than Putin. Soon after taking over in the Kremlin in May, Medvedev ordered the expeditious completion of the first stage of the Eastern Siberia Pacific Oil Pipeline by end-2009. The ESPO has a vital role in Moscow’s efforts to balance its oil export strategy between Europe and Asia-Pacific. Moscow hopes to target Asia-Pacific as the export destination for one-third of its oil exports by 2020, as compared to 3 per cent currently.
In early July, Medvedev undertook a diplomatic tour of the Caspian region, covering Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. In Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, he made a stunning offer that Russia was prepared to buy Azerbaijan’s entire gas output at market prices. In Ashgabat, he shored up Turkmenistan’s commitment to the modernisation of the Central Asia-Centre Pipeline and the construction of a new littoral Caspian pipeline.
Medvedev succeeded in prevailing over competing European and US rivals in the struggle for Turkmen gas. He further ensured that oil and gas from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan will not bypass Russia. But what has truly incensed the Bush administration are Gazprom’s dramatic inroads into Africa.
Russian giant Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, has announced plans to build a pipeline across the Mediterranean to pump Libyan gas to Europe. This is the final lap of a Kremlin strategy that involves Gazprom handling the entire output of Libya’s gas, oil and liquefied natural gas designated for export to Europe and the US.
Look at Gazprom’s terse announcement in Moscow on July 9, ‘The Libyan side positively evaluated Gazprom’s proposal to buy all future volumes of gas, oil and liquefied natural gas assigned for export at competitive prices.’ Now, Washington gingerly allowed the re-entry into the ‘international community’ by Muammar Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution in Libya, on the basis of clear understanding. Western statesmen from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to French President Nikolas Sarkozy and former Italian premier Romano Prodi queued up to climb the window of business opportunity opened by the Bush administration. And then Putin visits Tripoli in April, less than a month before he left office, and the two erstwhile colonels decided to jointly handle all of Libya’s energy resources.
And Gazprom seeks to buy exploration licenses in Nigeria and proposes to build a pipeline from there to Algeria, and with Algeria, Gazprom is developing a proposal on ‘joint’ marketing of gas in Europe. US officials have gone ballistic. ‘The monopolistic Gazprom is behaving like a monopolist does. It tries to gain control of the market as much as possible and to stifle competition. And that’s clearly what is going on,’ thundered Matthew Bryza, US deputy assistant secretary of state for Eurasian affairs. ‘The Kremlin wants Gazprom to be a dominant force in global energy, and the dominant force in global gas. Tying up gas resources in Central Asia and Africa is part of that,’ he added. The plan is for Gazprom to dominate ‘in every corner of the planet’, he alleged.
Bryza’s outburst is understandable. The good work he did lies now in ruins. Washington was relieved to see the back of Putin’s presidency, but it now transpires that Gazprom may have only stepped up the pace of overtures under Medvedev’s astute guidance. Besides, with its new assets in Africa, Gazprom will soon be knocking for access to the US market through supplies of LNG. The European and international companies which have been traditionally present in the African market will be compelled to play a role alongside Gazprom.
Washington hit back by ensuring that Russian companies are left out in the cold from the 30 contracts for lucrative oil deals that Baghdad is awarding. It is a big blow for Russia. In February, Moscow had written off $12 billion or 93 per cent of Iraq’s debt to Russia in a move that was widely seen as aimed to help Russian oil company LUKoil regain the Saddam Hussein-era rights to develop Iraq’s giant West Qurna-2 oil field. But under US pressure, the Iraqi government is now awarding West Qurna-2 to the US’s Chevron.
The Kremlin didn’t show any anger, but coincidence or not, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller suddenly arrived in Tehran on Monday and discussed with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad the setting up of an organisation of gas-producing countries. No doubt, with the Russian foothold in Libya (which has estimated natural gas reserves of 1.47 trillion cubic metres), in coordination with Algeria (which currently supplies over 10 per cent of Europe’s gas supplies), Qatar (with proven natural gas reserves of 25.8 trillion cubic metres) and Iran (which has the world’s second-largest reserves after Russia), the time for a ‘Gas OPEC’ is approaching.
The Iranian leader also suggested to Miller a market-sharing arrangement so that Russia and Iran could ‘collectively meet the demands of Europe, India and China in the gas sector’. During the visit, an agreement was signed on the development of Iran’s oil and gas fields by Russian companies; on Russian participation in the transfer of Iran’s Caspian Sea crude oil to the Oman Sea; cooperation in the development of Iran’s fabulous North Azadegan oil field; and, possible participation of Gazprom in the planned Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Evidently, Moscow took a deliberate decision to press ahead with Iran in energy cooperation in the full glare of world publicity in complete disregard of US displeasure. Tehran loved it.
To quote a US expert, ‘Russia’s strategic interest in Iran implicitly underscores the futility of hopes that Moscow would cooperate with Washington in imposing meaningful sanctions on Iran. While Western European companies are moving out of Iran or suspending agreements for fear of US sanctions (which penalise investments of more than $20 million a year in Iran’s oil and gas sector), Gazprom is enlarging the already existing foothold.’
Conceivably, the danger of losing out on the last energy frontier to Russia (and China) could be a factor in Washington’s policy shift on Iran talks. Washington calls the u-turn ‘a strong signal to the Iranian government that the United States is committed to diplomacy’. But according to The New York Times, Rice has decided to ‘test Iran’s willingness to consider an international package of incentives meant to coax Iran into making concessions on its nuclear programme’. What we do not know is how close the Bush administration may be for involvement in Iran’s energy sector, which is an element in the so-called ‘international package of incentives’. (Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney headed, was a very active player in Iran.)
Washington miscalculates
By now it must be obvious to the Bush administration that the youthful-looking, post-communist lawyer-president who took over from Putin has lost no time drilling a hole through the entire US strategy to weaken Gazprom’s grip over the supply of gas to Europe. The sense of fury is imaginable. But then Washington has only itself to blame. Medvedev’s career as an energy czar is an open book like Cheney’s – or Rice’s. From 2000, he headed Gazprom. Now he controls Gazprom from the Kremlin.
Few took note that when he formally bid farewell to the Gazprom board of directors at a ceremony in Moscow on May 27, Medvedev took immense personal pride in pointing out that during his eight-year stewardship, Gazprom’s capitalisation skyrocketed by a factor of 46, and one fifth of Russia’s budget is today derived from Gazprom’s activities. He concluded, ‘I want to say in my turn that we will have the chance to see each other and discuss things in working meetings. So, nothing is coming to an end. It’s only the beginning.’
In sum, the past week’s flow of events in places as far apart as Prague, Hokkaido, Tbilisi, Harare, Tehran and the Arctic underscored that after a brief respite, the rivalries over energy security have revived with a ferocity that can rock the equilibrium of overall US-Russia relations. The situation will likely be exacerbated in the coming period. The geopolitics of energy security are a highly sensitive subject for the Bush administration, whose profound links with Big Oil are legion. It is a tremendous loss of face for the Bush-Cheney-Rice combine that Moscow is outwitting the US on the energy front.
The strong possibility is that the Bush administration will press the pedal on multiple fronts on the Eurasian geopolitical landscape and create a fait accompli of US-Russian mutual antagonism for Senator Barack Obama, should he become president. The haste behind the Prague deal on missile defence smacks of such thinking. Almost certainly, Rice will press for a decision on the plan of action in respect of Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership of NATO at the meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers in December. The question, ‘Who is the boss in Russia?’ doesn’t really seem to matter anymore.
Asia Times Online/HK, July 19, 2008. Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
Resignation of the attorney general
The attorney general’s resignation, once again, brings home the inadequacies and accumulated problems underlying this nationally important office. The problems are well known and include such maladies as political influence on the office by successive regimes, a generally low level of efficiency of the staff, chronic fund and logistical constraints, uncoordinated and disjointed fashion of day-to-day operations, and bureaucratic interference, especially by the concerned ministry.
From an analysis of the newspaper reports, the recent resignation seems to have been prompted, in the main, by the last one of the above factors.
Indeed, ministerial interference, both overt and covert, has long been a formidable challenge for efficient
and professional functioning of the Attorney General’s office.
We were expecting things to improve and move to a relatively positive direction after the recent ‘reforms’ in the institutional arrangements. It now seems our
expectations have dashed to the dust, and the bureaucratic power and interference in this country remains as daunting as ever!
Dr Niaz Ahmed Khan
Professor, Department of Development Studies, DU
A reluctant walker
MH Khan portrayed Dr Fakhruddin as a reluctant walker (July 17). He was far too harsh. Given the circumstances and the challenges, Fakhruddin and his government have accomplished far more than anyone had ever dared. They were always limited from day one by incessant calls for early elections.
Their ideas and plans were obvious to us all — implementation was the problem. The political parties obstructed achievement of better results. Those baying for early elections will have their day soon enough.
We look forward to the opinions of Dr
Fakhruddin’s critics when our politicians return in all their splendour.
Ezajur Rahman
Kuwait
Happy birthday, Mandela!
Only great men live in history. Nelson Mandela is a living proof. And it is because of the noble principles and honesty he believed in and practised throughout.
I wish him great health and lots of happiness. Thank you Mandela for what you have done to the humanity. Shahana
Via SMS
* * *
A truly great statesman; many world leaders could and should learn from him. He thinks before he speaks and he only comments when he has something truly worthwhile to say. He also recognises the importance of arbitration and mediation.
But, above all, let’s not forget that the ANC was once branded as a ‘terrorist organisation’ and many in the world regarded Mandela as a ‘terrorist’ in his early days. Which proves that, over time, as the truth becomes known public perceptions change.
Raihan Haq
Via SMS, Dhaka University
* * *
In every generation there are but a handful of men and women who have the courage to carry the hopes of millions with their bare hands through adversity, challenge, and unrelenting attacks, never for one moment letting those fragile hopes fall to the ground. Mandela has been one of them.
Atiqul Alam Chowdhury
Dhaka
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a. Arafat released for two months: May fly to Bangkok tomorrow for treatment (New Age, July 18)
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