How to tell an effective social good story

May 20, 2024

The rewards of communicating your company’s commitments to ESG, CSR, DEI, and sustainability—what our agency calls “social good storytelling”—are becoming widely recognized.

I’m not just talking about the official environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports that many companies now publish annually. Though these are a fundamental part of your social good story, they’re typically focused on shareholders and other financial stakeholders—people literally invested in the economic payoffs of your ESG strategies.

But when it comes to creating value for your company, consider more than dollars and cents. It’s important to authentically communicate your social good strategy to audiences beyond the boardroom.

That includes the people inside your company—your employees—who should be helping achieve your ESG goals. And it extends to your customers on the outside, who are more likely to choose companies that demonstrate their impacts on both people and the planet.

After all, research shows that 86% of people prefer to support or work for companies that care about the same issues they do. People want to align themselves with brands that drive social good. A compelling social good story—told in the right ways and right channels—is an effective way to convince them you’re the right fit.

Our agency specializes in storytelling, and we’ve seen firsthand how powerful social good messaging can be when it’s relevant, meaningful, and credible to our clients’ internal and external audiences. Here are a few ways to create and communicate a social good story that resonates both inside your organization and out—helping build trust, loyalty, and competitive advantage.

1. Craft—and share—a genuine social good vision.

Inside: Involve employees in goal-setting.

Whether you call it ESG or CSR, whether you’re focused on your diversity strategy or the sustainability of your supply chain, a genuine social good vision starts with collective ambition. By involving employees in setting your goals, you can foster a sense of ownership and commitment from the ground up.

For example, Salesforce uses online platforms to both crowdsource ideas and educate employees about sustainability initiatives. That not only leads to actionable projects that contribute to the company’s ESG goals, but also promotes a sense of personal responsibility—and enthusiasm—for achieving them.

Outside: Invite your customers to participate.

Conveying your social good vision for your customers can inspire greater trust and brand loyalty—but involving them in achieving that vision creates even stronger bonds. Invite them to join in your company’s initiatives, and share real-world stories that breathe life into the numerical measures of their impact.

Starbucks is doing this successfully by engaging customers in its vision to launch 10,000 “Greener Stores” by 2025. The company publishes stories about its progress on its website and social channels, and encourages customers to participate in sustainability efforts such as bringing their own reusable cups.

2. Build your social good story—then keep it consistent.

Inside: Give your people a playbook.

A strong social good story can have many elements, but in our experience it’s most effective when it includes these four essential building blocks:

- A messaging framework focused on the most important things to say about your approach to social good—ensuring clarity and consistency across all your communications.
- A distinctive voice that sets the tone for your social good communications and helps people relate to them personally.
- A mission statement that describes your ultimate goal and how you will reach it; this provides a rationale for all your social good efforts.
- A manifesto that wraps your mission in meaning and emotion; it can become a rallying cry to inspire employees, generate excitement, and ignite action.

Once you’ve defined these crucial story elements, create a playbook that puts them all in one place, with guidance for using them and examples of how they should come together in different types of social good communications and channels.

Outside: Thread the narrative needle.

Your playbook should become the source for everything your people need to understand and articulate your company’s social good stance. Use it to ensure there is a consistent narrative thread running throughout all your external-facing social good messaging, from your ESG report to your Instagram posts.

This shows you have a clear, cohesive strategy guiding your initiatives—one that’s authentic to your brand and relevant to your customers.

3. Integrate social good into your corporate culture.

Inside: Make social good a core company value.

Embedding social good principles into your company’s core values sends a strong message about your authentic commitment to them—but it requires more than lip service. Demonstrating real action is key.

A central part of our social good storytelling process is assessing our clients’ current values and how their social good commitments ladder up to them. For one global consumer brand, we examined how DEI is woven into their cultural values that guide their employees’ actions, and created statements that interpreted each value through a DEI lens. Each statement was supported by real-world examples of that value in action, helping their employees understand the central role DEI plays at the company.

Outside: Showcase your social good in action.

That project also had an external impact: It gave employees practical ways to incorporate DEI in their customer-facing activities. By empowering their people to communicate their commitment to DEI in their retail interactions, through their diverse range of product designs and sizes, and in the inclusive themes and images featured in their advertising, the company was able to send a loud, clear, and authentic message to their customers and the public.

Creating and telling an effective social good story isn’t a task to be checked off your to-do list.

It should be an ongoing effort to weave social good principles into the fabric of your company’s identity—and a continuing conversation with your employees and your customers. That will help ensure that your story resonates deeply, both within your organization and beyond.

We can help you create and tell your most authentic social good story—in ways that are meaningful to all your audiences. Get in touch and let’s talk.