Change Will Come

I recently read an article published by booz & co called Values vs. Value. The underlying theme of the article was the debunking of the ethical consumer. The authors Timothy Devinney, Pat Auger and Giana M. Eckhardt make a strong argument, and I found their article informative and probing. The article eluded to the proven fact that many consumers over-preach on what they would actually do when it comes to ethical consumerism. Many say they will buy responsibly, but when they get to the register, they don’t follow through. At Fosfo, we realize this is true, but believe it can be fixed.
This article asked a very good question of ethical consumers: Do we practice what we preach? Do we verbally commit to these crusades without thinking about having the resources to complete them? Indeed, this is true in many aspects of our lives, but particularly in our ethical consumerism. At Fosfo, we work to make buying responsible products easier for people. Is there no point? This article seems to suggest that this idea of corporate responsibility is only for the future, when it is fully developed. Should we stop and wait for that day? I believe that the number of people in the article who pledge to buy smart but don’t practice it simply need the tools. Not everyone is willing to go and above and beyond the call for the cause, and that is fine. The passion of those who see the future of ethical consumerism will pave the way for these half-in-half-out folks.
I believe, at our core, we wish to make a difference in as many ways as we can. Is it easy? No. In fact, with the toughest changes come some of the biggest obstacles. Ethical consumerism is still a very young and underdeveloped movement. Many people say they want to pursue it, however, with limited resources to achieve such a goal, it is hard to fully commit. Does that mean the desire isn’t there or that people who set out to try and enact change are “fake”? Absolutely not. The change will come.

-Mick Newkumet

Sneak Peek: New Color Scheme!

We just love sharing sneak peeks.  Mainly because it’s fun to say “sneak peek” as much as possible in a given day.  So check out this sneak peek of our new color scheme!

Our team is inspired by the idea of Fosfo as a movement to illuminate business behavior.  Our new name and logo allude to a “phosphorescent blue light” motif, which led us to a palette of bold colors including phosphorescent blue, black, orange and violet, with a light blue and gray for accents.  Your thoughts and feedback are always welcome.

Our new color scheme will appear on our website, social media, brochures and other materials.  With our new name, logo and color scheme, the core creative elements of our re-branding process are now complete.

Here’s a big shout out to our volunteer graphic designer, Grace Mathews, for the time and energy she has poured into these projects over the last few months. Grace, we salute you!

 

Fosfo's New Color Scheme

Shared Value: CSR Re-branded?

This is a great article about CSR and its impact.  Originally written by Carol Pierson Holding and posted on CSRHUB’s blog.

“Harvard Business Review’s cover story this month, “Creating Shared Value,” should be a celebration of how far CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) has taken us. Just look at how much closer we are to accepting CSR as a core competitive strategy. As fans of authors Michael Porter and Mark Kramer know, these two have been proponents of CSR for years, pushing the field forward with new ideas like “Strategic Philanthropy” and now, “Shared Value.” Most impressive about their latest article is its place on the cover of this conservative business journal.

Two years after Harvard Business School ran an alumni conference on the future of capitalism (which eerily coincided with Lehman’s collapse and market’s 900+ point drop), that institution’s journal leads with this article, subtitled “How to reinvent capitalism — and unleash a wave of innovation and growth.” Finally, the argument about whether CSR is key to our future or just window dressing seems to be put to rest.

I applaud the authors. But why, aside from promoting their consulting business, would they insist that CSR is discredited and should be replaced by Shared Value? They misstate CSR’s mission as “doing good” when in fact it is “doing well by doing good,” which is the same as their concept of Shared Value. In fact, until recently, they were huge supporters of CSR. In their 2006 article, “Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility,” they pointed out flaws in CSR but weighed in heavily in its support.

Whether you call it Shared Value, CSR, ESG, or Corporate Citizenship, or Sustainability, or Corporate Responsibility, or Triple Bottom Line or any of the other terms people use, we are all pushing the same agenda—to do well by doing good. And the term “CSR” is well known and accepted in business.

It has been written about extensively in the business press. Most controversially, it has appeared twice on the cover of The Economist. First, to dismiss it per Milton Friedman’s “The business of business is business,” then a second time, in support of the concept. CSR has a set of metrics in place through the 20+ year old SRI ratings, a self-reporting structure in GRI, and a requirement in many companies’ RFP’s for a CSR report. Insurance, risk assessment, accounting bodies including FASB and many other industries and institutions all have “CSR” or “Sustainability” efforts underway. Porter/Kramer do a great service in lifting the issue to the front page of business, but why would we want to abandon all the progress made under the CSR rubric?

With CSR finally accepted as a core business strategy, Porter/Kramer now jump into the fray not with ideas of how to move more companies into the “Doing well to do good” camp, but with arguments about why their new name and model is better than CSR. Worse, even though they have several branding pros on the staff of their consulting firm, they dismiss the value of communications in support of CSR as mere promotion, ignoring the importance of communication in changing consumer behavior. Many of the companies Porter/Kramer cite as examples of Shared Value have used their brand to change consumer behavior for the better (think ads and promotion for GE Energy Smart CFL light bulbs). Yet Porter/Kramer fail to mention this.

Watching TV last week, I came across a great example of CSR communications’ power to increase sales while saving the planet.  The EPA confirms that in many cities, “The personal automobile is the single greatest polluter.” A key component to reducing these emissions will be the Electric Vehicle. Current ads for the Chevy Volt, the leading American-made Electric Vehicle (EV), are clearly good for Chevy’s brand reputation. But dismissing the ads as mere promotion misses the more important story: the advertising reduces fear of the EV by showing how easy it is to recharge, thereby persuading more consumers to buy EVs.  If this is CSR, I’ll take it over Shared Value any day.“

Carol Pierson Holding is a writer and an environmentalist; her articles on CSR can be found on her website at  http://www.holding.com/Index%20links/articles.html.

Our First Fossembly: Party in DC!

Change corporate behavior – and have fun too!

We’re throwing our first-ever “Fossembly” in Washington, DC. It’s a social movement, interactive game and private bar party all rolled into one awesome event! Meet other conscious consumers with a passion for illuminating corporate social and environmental behavior. Play innovative team games to win free drinks and other prizes. And join us for special treats afterwards at a nearby bar! Grassroots, games and good times.

Are you interested? Take just a few seconds to sign up – be sure to check the box for Washington, DC!

But wait, there’s a catch. Only 20 lucky folks will be randomly selected to attend the Fossembly. So sign up by December 1 for your chance to win an invitation!

Sneak Preview Of Our New Brand: Fosfo

Introducing our new brand… fosfo! We’re sharing a sneak preview with you now, as we’ll be converting our website address, logo, color scheme and other goodies to the new brand in the weeks ahead. Check out the draft logo shown here and let us know what you think! We’ll be refining that too. Huge kudos to our volunteer designers, whose dedication and creativity made this exciting transition possible! 

What about Citizens Market? Citizens Market will remain the formal legal name of our nonprofit organization, while Fosfo will increasingly become our public face, through our website, social media pages, mobile phone applications and so on. We know many of you are fond of the name “Citizens Market,” and we are too! “Citizens Market” sums up our mission neatly, expressing the idea that citizen-consumers can and should drive the marketplace. But “Citizens Market” is a mouthful of two fairly long, dry, abstract words. Not much punch or sizzle there! We decided we need a bold, memorable, evocative brand to more effectively engage people and build our community. 

Why Fosfo? Our team put a lot of thought and energy into this. Ultimately we decided that our brand should reflect a core motif of “light,” which is aligned with the main themes of our organization:

• Consumer ethics and enlightenment 
• Corporate transparency 
• Aggregation of many small parts (photons / reviews) into a transcendental whole (light / scores) 
• Speed, convenience and technology 

We then created a new brand name – “fosfo” – that allows us to build on ideas, words, colors and images associated with light, specifically phosphorescence. The word “fos” is Greek for “light.” 

We’re already finding it much easier – and much more fun – to engage our stakeholders with our new name. For example, we can use the metaphor of light to describe our crowdsourced review model as lots of bits of light that collectively illuminate and transform corporate behavior. We can convert bland, abstract terms like “Company Score,” “Peer Rating” and “Contributor Score” into our own fresh vocabulary: “foscore,” “fosfluence”, “fotons” and so forth. With tongue firmly embedded in cheek, we can rib our users as “fosfolks” and recognize our core information contributors as “The Fosse.” 

Our work here is serious. Climate change, corporate lobbying, child labor and all the other social and environmental issues we cover are no laughing matter. But we simply can’t afford to take ourselves too seriously. In order to change corporate behavior, we need to build a critical mass of consumers using our tools. And in order to engage consumers, we need to build a critical mass of information on our website. In order to engage people to join our community and share information on corporate behavior, we need to be bold, lively and even playful. It may always be a struggle to strike the right balance in our tone; we look forward to hearing your thoughts about it! 

Stay tuned as we roll out the new brand in the weeks ahead….

Prizes for the Socially Conscious

We’d love some help brainstorming some low-budget micro-prizes that we can distribute at our first party for our information contributors.  The party will involve games where teams compete to write reviews of corporate behavior, followed by a group outing to a local bar.

We have some great ideas already.  For example, each time you write a review you can take a couple shots at our nerf basketball hoop to win a free drink at the bar afterwards.  But we’d like to add some more imaginative prizes, especially prizes that are (a) aligned with our community’s interests in environmental protection and social justice and (b) under $20.  Perhaps fresh-baked cookies.  Or a gift certificate for organic snacks at a nearby market.  Or a small donation in your name to a charity like Kiva or Oxfam.  Or a trophy for your team until the next party competition.  Or… ?

Can you think of other ideas?  Have you received a memorable small gift lately?  What sort of prize would interest you?

- Stephane

Expanding Our Space

Today Citizens Market expanded into a larger office on our floor to make room for a new intern arriving this week.  It’s amazing how an extra person and extra space can change the office atmosphere!  I constructed a new bookshelf to display our little library on crowdsourcing, corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship.  I finally unpacked those boxes that were sulking in the corner.  I brought in some art from home to spruce up the walls.  And best of all, I ordered a little basketball net to make sure we don’t get too serious around here.  I figure each time we complete a milestone we can shoot for beer.  Or cheese.

We have room for one more intern here, so please pass the word to any college or graduate students who may be interested in joining our team.  We’re recruiting for a Community Development Intern or a Fundraising / Development Intern.

I look forward to the company!

Small Change? It Adds Up. (A Rebuttal to Malcolm Gladwell)

In a recent article titled “Small Change” in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell argues against the hype about social media for social change.  His article is packed with interesting observations, but his conclusions are ultimately flawed.

I’m sympathetic to Gladwell’s two main points as he sets up the article:

Meaningful social change is driven by “strong-tie” networks, such as the network of black churches that mobilized sit-ins in the 1960′s.  ”Weak-tie” networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, cannot achieve meaningful social change alone.

At Fosfo we’ve always been interested in developing both “strong-tie” and “weak-tie” networks to recruit people to share information about corporate social and environmental behavior on our site.  In fact, we recently shifted our strategy towards building a foundation of face-to-face networks through events and partnerships, which can then be enhanced with social media tools.  We take our cues from successful online networks such as Yelp! and the Obama campaign, which were launched through carefully organized events and meetings.

“If you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy.”

Gladwell’s point here rings true for us too, at least in part.  We envision a diverse, independent, emergent network of people sharing crowdsourced content about corporate behavior, which will engage consumers and ultimately change financial incentives for companies.  But that vision depends on an organized hierarchy: our team.  It will take sustained effort to prepare fertile ground for that network of crowdsourced contributors to emerge.  We need to develop tools, partners and a core community.  In order to achieve a movement with a life of its own, we need to organize now.

So Gladwell is right to emphasize the importance of “strong-tie” networks and hierarchies in launching social change movements.  But what begins as a “strong-tie” network driven by a hierarchy might become an even larger and stronger “weak-tie” network with nobody at the reins at all.  If anyone should appreciate the potential for an organized effort to reach a tipping point with emergent behavior, it ought to be Gladwell!  Consider this excerpt from Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point”:

“The Power of Context says you don’t have to solve the big problems to solve crime.  You can prevent crimes just by scrubbing off graffiti and arresting fare-beaters: crime epidemics have Tipping Points every bit as simple and straightforward as syphilis in Baltimore or a fashion trend like Hush Puppies.”  (p. 151, “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell)

Gladwell’s logic about small efforts and big payoffs is persuasive in “The Tipping Point,” but this logic is at odds with a bizarre circular argument he adopts in his New Yorker article: because “high-risk activism… is a “strong-tie” phenomenon,” it therefore follows that meaningful social activism must somehow be high risk.  He takes a wrong turn here, pooh-poohing social media as a lighthearted pretender to “real” social change merely because social media tends to be low risk.  Gladwell describes a successful online campaign to register money for bone marrow transplants, but dismisses this as an example “that doesn’t require that you confront socially entrenched norms and practices.”  He claims that “Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to  do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.”

An otherwise compelling article thus ends with a shaky, condescending conclusion:

“The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient.  They are not a natural enemy of the status quo.  If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you.  But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.”

I don’t doubt the risks incurred by activists in the civil rights movement, nor do I doubt that high-risk activism is still necessary for some causes.  But I don’t see why all meaningful social activism must necessarily be risky.  Social media may be a low risk, “weak tie” phenomenon as Gladwell claims, but social media still has enormous potential to enhance “strong-tie” networks and thereby enable deeper social change.

Sometimes a little effort by a lot of people – perhaps enabled by social media – can make a massive difference in the status quo.  The challenge may not be in the risk or hardship incurred by people, but in developing an environment in which people can more easily effect change.  In the United States today we are fortunate that the act of voting requires little effort and virtually no risk, thanks in large part to the innovations of our country’s Founders.  But while voting may be easy, it certainly still matters.

At Fosfo, our theory of change is that organizing a lot of consumers to make marginal differences in their shopping patterns will have a profound impact on the private sector and society at large.  For example, consumers interested in the issue of lobbying could use a mobile phone to scan product barcodes and – holding other factors such as price or quality equal – easily avoid brands owned by companies with nefarious lobbying practices.  At scale, this behavior would reverse the financial incentives for some companies to exert undue influence on government policies.  As with other social and environmental issues we cover on our website, we face a “powerful and organized establishment” with market-driven interests that are unlikely to change meaningfully until we change the underlying market itself.  Once we develop our tools, partners and core community, however, it will be easy for consumers to empower themselves with information, adjust their market behavior and ultimately change corporate behavior.

As Gladwell says, we’ll need “strong-tie” networks and an organized hierarchy to succeed.  But we shouldn’t dismiss social media and low risk actions.  Instead, we should harness them.  Our community would expect no less.

My Stats

One of our favorite new features is My Stats, where your Contributor Score climbs each time you rate a company or receive a “thumbs up” for a persuasive review. Earn a new Level and your ratings will have more influence on a company’s score!  

(My Stats is part of your profile, so you need to Sign In to check it out.)

What do you think of My Stats?  How can we make it more engaging?

Citizens Market Launches Crowdsourced Model for Ethical Consumption

Our team is very excited to share a big new release with you! Citizens Market has launched features for community participation on our website.  Now anyone can rate a company or rate someone else’s review! It’s a big milestone for us, and we think it’s the beginning of a movement to empower all of us – as citizen-consumers – to ensure our marketplace reflects our values. Please come have a look, tell us what you think, and help us spread the word!

Here’s a little tasting menu of what our volunteer developers and designers have cooked up:

• Sign In or Sign Up first to unlock the features below.
• Rate a Company. We invite anyone to rate a company on a social or environmental issue. You don’t have to be an expert! Perhaps you’ve noticed a company’s recycling habits or marketing behavior. Or perhaps you’ve read about a company in the media. You can also browse a collection of sources to find an issue or company that matter to you. (Currently 100 companies are available for you to rate. And soon you’ll be able to add a company yourself.)
• Browse Reviews. Your “thumbs up” on a persuasive review will instantly increase that review’s impact on a company score. In other words, our community determines who to trust.
• My Stats. Each time you rate a company or receive a “thumbs up,” your Contributor Score climbs towards a new Level of influence on a company’s score.
• My Priorities. How important is each social and environmental issue to you? Set your personal priorities now, and soon the company scores you see will be customized accordingly.

We’d love to hear your feedback! Please be blunt and use the red “Feedback” button on the left side of our website.

And if you share our passion for changing corporate behavior, please follow us or post a word about us on Facebook or Twitter. Or simply share this blog with friends to help us spread the word about our launch. Thanks!