Ca-Ching: Disney Unleashes Millions in CSR Brand Value©

Intangible, immaterial, illusory, abstract, illusive, chimerical… words used to describe CSR’s contribution to corporate profitability and value (or at least the contribution of non- Big Four – water, carbon, material use, and energy – related contributions).

Cynics can use whatever term they want (and be wrong) and the proof is in the pudding which got demonstrably thicker this past week when the Walt Disney Company announced plans to license a Mickey Mouse logo for food products meeting nutritional criteria with healthy levels of calories, saturated fat, sodium and sugar.

Nothing against Bugs or Phineas, but who the heck wouldn’t want the world’s most well recognized brand – Mickey –smiling over their product, particularly as obesity issues have emerged as an emerging social issue star of the early 21^st century and because the food you are exposed to as a kid are the foods you stick with later in life (http://www.earlysprouts.org/references.content.print.htm).

Granted, Disney has a brand franchise like almost no other, so most companies couldn’t pull something like this off.  Disney has also laid some pretty impressive CSR supply chain tracks down before them, building institutional CSR sophistication to protect their brand in the face of inevitable and often unforgiving CSR market scrutiny (Sidebar: it sometimes seems companies attempting to do good in exchange for profit is more intensely analyzed and criticized those just wanting to make money while doing no end of bad… Go figure).

Our understanding of CSR Brand Value^© generation is still limited but this I know: Mickey promoting healthy eating is radical step forward in the evolution employing brand for good and millions of kids and families could benefit.

Abstract this is not. Chimeric even less. Well done Disney, may you get the many millions you deserve for a CSR Brand Value^© strategy though of well outside the box.