CSRHub Blog Research on ESG metrics and comments on sustainability best practice

Brand Finance has recently released its analysis of the brand strength for the world’s 500 top banks.  This annual review uses Brand Finance’s royalty relief methodology to estimate how much of a bank’s market value derives from its brand assets.

Over the past few years, we have studied the relationship between brand strength and sustainability.  With help from both Brand Finance and other partners and data sources in the brand measurement space, we’ve determined there is a stable and reasonably strong correlation (between 10% and 30% depending on the source, time, period and type of data) between our data and these gages of corporate success.

Therefore, we were not surprised to see that those banks who had big increases in brand strength also had big increases in sustainability performance and vice versa.  The chart below shows companies who had a two step change in brand strength (e.g., from A to AA- or from AAA to AA+) on the horizontal axis compared to those who had a multi-point change in their overall CSRHub rating.  The top right and bottom right corners show banks where brand and sustainability score changes agree.

There are always outliers in any analysis.  So the presence of one bank (Intesa Sanpaolo) in the top left box didn’t bother us too much.  However, there were four names in the bottom right box, that had brand strength increases but sustainability strength declines.

A quick analysis shows that the driver for the change in perceived sustainability performance for these banks was governance issues—an area we’d previously showed did not have much affect on brand.  These four banks showed relatively little change on the community, employee and environment issues that are most tied to brand.

We look forward to working with more data from Brand Finance as they populate the rest of this year’s league tables.  Our partnership with Brand Finance allows them to share details of our ratings with their clients.  I’m sure that there will be many banks—and other companies—who will be interested to see how improving their sustainability performance could affect their brand values.

Search a company on CSRHub and see their sustainability performance.

Bahar Gidwani is CEO and Co-founder of CSRHub.  He has built and run large technology-based businesses for many years. Bahar holds a CFA, worked on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and with McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to a number of major companies and currently serves on the board of several software and Web companies. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy. He plays bridge, races sailboats, and is based in New York City.

CSRHub provides access to the world’s largest corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information.  It covers over 16,800 companies from 135 industries in 133 countries. By aggregating and normalizing the information from 500 data sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links millions of rating elements back to their source. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices, and seek ways to improve corporate sustainability performance.

By Jennifer Saunders and Bahar Gidwani

Many aspects of a company’s performance affect its brand value. Marketing spend, distribution strength, and product quality all have proven effects. This study indicates that a company’s perceived sustainability performance may be another important factor.

In 2013, CSRHub showed that its measures of perceived corporate sustainability performance had a 28% correlation with Brand Finance’s Brand Strength Indicator (BSI). CSRHub recently published an update that showed this correlation continues to persist for financial companies. This study extends our analysis to include three other independent brand ranking systems:

• RepTrak Pulse Score.  The Reputation Institute’s RepTrak model examines the relationship between the emotional connection, or “Pulse” score, a “measure of the degree of Admiration, Trust, Good Feeling and Overall Esteem that a company stakeholder holds.”
• Interbrand’s Best Global Brands list.  Interbrand provides an analysis and picture of how your brand is contributing to business results today. Interbrand publishes annually a “Best Global Brands” list of the 100 brands it considers most powerful.
• CoreBrand’s CBI.  Tenet Partners’ CoreBrand Analytics group  generates an annual Corporate Branding Index (CBI) that measures and quantifies the impact of investment in the corporate brand and how brands perform against peers both across and within industries.

We compared data from these sources with CSRHub ratings and brand strength data from our long time data source in the branding area, Brand Finance. CSRHub provides sustainability information on more than 14,000 companies in 127 countries. CSRHub’s ratings and metrics are drawn from more than 380 sustainability data sources.Our research found that the scores from all four leading brand ranking systems correlated with at least one of CSRHub’s sustainability measures. Further, we found consistent results across the four systems that may help brand managers better understand how to coordinate with and support their company’s sustainability programs. In particular, we found a positive correlation between brand and Compensation & Benefits and Environment Policy & Reporting strength. Success in these areas seems tied to better brand rankings.

To see the complete details and next steps, download the full report here.

About the Authors

Jennifer Saunders holds a degree in chemical engineering from Melbourne University, a postgraduate diploma in management from the Melbourne Business School, and certificates in sustainability reporting and stakeholder networks approaches to socio-political risk. She worked for design and manufacturing multinationals for 15 years. Her main focus was on engaging cross-functionally to collect and analyse design performance data, report on sustainability metrics, optimize processes and manage supply chain projects. She recently re-located from Australia to the Pacific Northwest where she has further fostered her career to focus on sustainability working with CSRHub.

Bahar Gidwani is CEO and Co-founder of CSRHub.  He has built and run large technology-based businesses for many years. Bahar holds a CFA, worked on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and with McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to a number of major companies and currently serves on the board of several software and Web companies. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy. Bahar is a member of the SASB Advisory Board.  He plays bridge, races sailboats, and is based in New York City.

About CSRHub

CSRHub provides access to the world’s largest corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information.  It covers over 14,000 companies from 135 industries in 127 countries. By aggregating and normalizing the information from 380 data sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links millions of rating elements back to their source. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices, and seek ways to improve corporate sustainability performance.

Sustainable Seattle Good Business Workshop.

Imagine if you knew more about corporate social responsibility. What are CSR Raters evaluating? What are new CSR trends? This workshop will help you understand how to improve your Sustainability Report. You may want to work on your environmental performance, increasing brand value, connecting with customers, engaging employees, or accelerating a culture of continuous improvement. These topics will be discussed and analyzed during the workshop.

The workshop is hosted by Sustainable Seattle and led by Seattle's-own Russell Barton and Cynthia Figge. They combine their experience as "internal" strategic advisors to CSR reporting for you. They've consulted with many of North America's most well-known companies and also bring their perspective of being "external" raters.

Date and Time: Thursday, March 21, 2013 6-8 pm

Location

Bainbridge Graduate Institute

220 Second Ave. South Suite 400, Seattle, WA 98104

Map

Registration*

Early Bird (regular): $20

Early Bird (member**): $15

Early Bird ends Friday, March 15th at 11:55pm.

Individual (regular): $25

Individual (member**): $20

Student $15

*Registration includes appetizer buffet, nonalcoholic drinks, and dessert.

** Members will be sent a promotional code, email members@sustainableseattle.org for inquiries.

Panelists

Russell Barton, PhD

Partner and Co-Founder, EKOS International

Russell Barton has for over 20 years served as a lead consultant to the top North American management teams including Boeing, Darigold, Milliken (Baldrige winner), Nike, SmithKline Beecham, and Weyerhaeuser. From 1986-1994, he was one of four Managing Partners of Deltapoint. He has led 12 Executive Study Missions: 10 to Japan and two to Europe. Russell is a member of the original group of trainers who have helped bring The Natural Step to the United States. He is co-author of the book, Mapping the Journey: Case Studies in Implementing Sustainable Development Strategies. He holds a Ph.D. and MA in Organizational Psychology, from the University of Oregon.

Cynthia Figge

Partner and Co-Founder, EKOS International

COO and Co-Founder, CSRHub

Cynthia Figge is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement. Cynthia has worked with major organizations including BNSF, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Dow Jones, and REI to help craft sustainability strategy integrated with business. She was an Officer of LIN Broadcasting/McCaw Cellular leading new services development, and started a new “Greenfield” mill with Weyerhaeuser. She serves as Advisor to media and technology companies, and served as President of the Board of Sustainable Seattle. Cynthia has an MBA from Harvard Business School.