INTA: Brands for a better society

Intellectual property plays a critical role in corporate social responsibility (CSR). For brand professionals to effectively contribute to their company’s CSR, they need to understand how this relationship works and ensure that the relationship is successful. Likewise, as a global community of brand owners and professionals, we also need to address issues that undermine this relationship, including anti-IP sentiment and brand restrictions.

Most brands today now prioritise giving back as an essential part of their operations and CSR has become a key component of their core values and corporate strategies. One reason for this is that consumers have come to expect this of brands. Edelman’s 2018 Earned Brand study, which examines consumer-brand relationships based on feedback from 40,000 respondents across eight markets globally, identified 64% of consumers as belief-driven, a staggering 13% jump from the previous year.

In a similar study published by Cone Communications in 2017, 70% of the respondents said they will spend more on brands supporting causes they care about. This represents a paradigm shift in the relationship between brand and consumer: Purchasing behavior is influenced less by how the company promotes its product and more by a brand’s willingness to live by its values and put purpose before profit.

A matter of trust

At the heart of the consumer-brand relationship is trust, which is also where IP comes in. The Edelman Earned Brand study also notes that the “media is now the least-trusted institution in the world, with half of people disengaged from mainstream outlets,” “government is seen as parochial and partisan, unable to make a difference on the issues that matter” and “consumers are [now] turning to brands as their champions.”