So here’s a small list of terms:

INDIAN TERMS : CANADIAN TERMS

Petrol Pump : Gas Station

Petrol for my car : Gas for my car

Washroom : Bathroom

Signals : Lights

eleven thirty (11:30) : Half past (the person has to guess if its 11 or 12 or 1)

One very interesting and funny incident happened with me. I was embarrassed to death.

Our Indesign professor asked us to make a magazine on Bike. now if you are a Canadian you would have come up with ideas that relate to BIKE…and if you are a Indian, you would have come up with ideas of a magazine on Motorbike. For is Bikes mean Bicycles. I very proudly presented my idea to the professor only to see him laugh at me.

But after doing research on this topic, I realised CSR is much beyond what I perceive it to be. It is all about ethics, thanking your publics, caring about the society but in a self-less manner. One question that popped in my mind when I realised the TRUE meaning of CSR is that, if its a self-less act, what is it that would motivate them towards doing something like this. What I found is that, there are many awards that are given to brands who act ethical and think about the Society.

The following is a short synopsis of my Report.

I DO Business, I Progress

I DO Business, We Progress

Which of the two sentences sound good to you? I am sure it’s not the former one. Well, this is exactly how most of the companies think, be it small medium enterprise or a multi national. As the companies grow and progress they realise their dependability on society, the importance of their employees, the shareholders who invest money and the customers who buy their products and services. These are nothing but the factors that let them sustain and directly or indirectly form a backbone of the company. Can anyone ever imagine standing or sitting upright without their backbone? We sit and stand tall because we have a support to do so. And this is what exactly Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) means.

To put it simple, CSR is a tool by which companies thank their publics for helping them grow and survive. Some call it as corporate/ business responsibility, while others term it as corporate/ business citizenship. The term community relationship best explains CSR: having some relationship with the community .

In one of the articles, Corporate Social Responsibility, on Wikipedia(2007), the credits of CSR is given to some of the notable writers; Ida Tarbell being one of them. She exposed the Standard Oil Company’s story in her The History of the Standard Oil Company in 1904. Similarly, Upton Sinclair in 1906 wrote The Jungle which dealt with conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry. These provoked the need for Acts such as Pure Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act by the United States Congress. These could be seen as the early start of CSR. It also states that the term CSR came into common use in early 1970′s. By 20^th century the number of companies working towards societal benefits started rising.

Today CSR is an integral part of the companies operations and its evidence is seen from the various areas towards which they are directed to, viz community and society, employees, customers, environment, stakeholders, shareholders and suppliers. Many large companies now issue a corporate social responsibility report along with their annual report that evaluates companies on the basis of various CSR standards. One of the most commonly used standards is triple bottom line , which measures the organizations success on basis of economic, environmental and social factors.

Today, Awards such as: (click on any of the awards to read about it in details)

• Ethics in Action
• Ceres and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
• Asian Corporate Social Responsibility etc

are been awarded to businesses and business leaders who are building new corporate models, organizations and individuals who exemplify good corporate citizenship by making corporate social responsibility a key aspect of their daily operations.

Some companies/brands are more socially responsible than others. This is the only probable reasons why many want to work with Microsoft or FedEx. The 1982 Tylenol scare best demonstrates the company’s responsibility towards society。The brand immediately recalled all the bottles of Tylenol, knowing that only a few out of the trillions of bottles were tampered with。 Practically every company act responsible, towards the society and its employees, but what varies is the degree at which they are conduced.

Personally I believe in thanking everyone who help me survive, be it my maid or my landlord or even my school teachers who helped me be what I am today and that without them I wouldn’t have seen this far. There is always a sense of mutual benefit that makes me do all this. All I want to say from this is that, me being just another individual do the thanking business, then how can organizations or company not do?

Attch：This is the Video I made to explain CSR to the class

This one is my all time best projects I have done so far, and I really enjoyed doing it.

To introduce you to this project, this was done by my group and me in the year 2006, when I was still in BMM and still in Mumbai.

Objective: To conduct a massive Market analysis on any topic of our choice and based on the finding come up with a PR campaign that would lead to ACTION.

Topic: the topic that we thought about was SSC board. For those who don’t know much/ anything about SSC board, it is a State schooling board in India. Every state/ province in India have their own board that is governed and controlled by offcourse the state/ provincial government. Other than the state board, India has CBSC, ICSC and IB. I did my schooling in SSC board and so did my group mates. Unfortunately SSC has the worst standard of education compared to the rest boards, but still approximately 52% of total students still are registered with SSC board. We wanted to know why is it that people still prefer SSC boards over the BETTER boards? IF parents and students were unhappy with the educations system, what changes they would want to see? What was their perception about the other boards?

Methodology: We came up with 9 page closed ended questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided in 4 sections.

• SEC Grade: to understand the general Socio Economic Class of the parents from this particular board.
• Media Habits: to know the media choice of the people as to what encourages them to buy something.
• Administration: to know what are the reason why they opt for SSC board over other boards.
• Schooling and Examination: to know what the current examination and schooling patterns are and what would be the ideal pattern for most of the people.

Since it was an indepth market research we interviewed our Target audience (SSC Student’s parents and teachers).

Sampling: Inorder to get a result that would represent the the entire universe, we thought of interviewing 300 people. And the time frame was one week.

Results: Analysing the survey, we realised that parents definitely wanted to see  changes in the way their child/children are studying. They were unhappy with the examination patterns, the admission process, and most importantly with the content of the textbooks and the syllabus. The only reason why they would not get their children studying in other board is that they thought SSC board is a cheaper substitute. But the BOTTOM Line was that they needed to see some CHANGES in the schooling and examination patterns.

Next Step: we formed a NGO that would represent the voice of general public. But we also realised that we could just be a FORCE that would lead to an ACTION, but not the ACTION at first place. Inorder to see changes in the SSC board we had to provoke the parents to demand for changes. To do the same we came up with a brochure that gave statistics about the SSC boards, and also some of the important findings from the survey. Asked them for the support. We targeted this brochures to all the parents of students in SSC Board.

since it was a informal project and we could just had to come up with a marketing piece, we learned so much about the SSC board, and people’s frustration towards the existing patterns. We learned the correct and the appropriate way of conducting market research and analysis.

Attch: The posters and the brochure we came up with.

We as students were given a challenge of organising an event for the Children Aid Society. Every year students of CCPR (Corporate Communications and Public Relations) are given a chance to prove the teachers and others that though students, we have the capabilities to deal with the real people and real situation.

so like every year we organised a gift exchange event for Christmas 2007. The event was in association with IABC (everyone who understand the field of Communications understand what IABC is).

We were divided in groups and every group was assigned different task. Though we all belonged to some group, we ended up working with and supporting each and every groups of the class. Right from the name of the event, the theme, the venue, the media and promotion, the evaluation, logistics, et al, was all done by almost every members of the class. it was one of the best experiences I ever had in my first semester. And the end of the event when you know that because of the team effort, the dedication, amazing co ordination and support we put the Christmas smiles on so many small faces.

What I Learned?

• The actual event organising experience. I have done my bachelors degree in Mumbai, everything we did as project was fictitious. Here everything is real, so was the event. Working in groups, with groups, meeting deadlines, seeing everything taking shape right from the scratch, co ordinating, compelled thinking (even while I was sleeping I used to think about the event), making contingency plan, foreseeing mishaps, presentation, convincing people, clear and forced communication that seems to be smooth,

• Contingency plan is a MUST when you organise any event. Nothing will always go right, or the way you want it to be. some mishaps, some mismanagement is ought to compel you to think on the spot and make changes at the last moment.

• If you have great team member you are lucky and if you don’t you are even more lucky. You get the oppurtunity to lead a team, be team leader, be responsible, take action, think continuously, be double creative, talk to the other group, co ordinate with them, be a liaison between your and the other groups. This all put together equals to LEARNING.

• Evaluations is the most important part of the event planning. Seeing that every group is on the right track, working towards attaining their objectives, if there is any communication gap between various group members or even between various groups. And then evaluating the success of the event. Giving people some incentives for evaluating the event

And did I tell you this PROJECT gave me an opportunity to lead my team. As a team leader (especially a leader who had heavy accent, team members take sometime to understand what I have to say) I learned a lots.

• I learned how to communicate with people from different culture, different mindsets, different accents, different,
• Co ordinating with the other team leader.
• Being the spokesperson for the team.
• Being responsible for every actions taken by the group.
• Keeping internal publics happy first, which in turns make the external happy.

Attch: Some pictures from the event.

The challenges were:

1. working with the students who knew nothing about the role of PR. They thought PR were no but some magicians who could in no time could help increase the sale of their books
2. The day we started the project, the book had NO NAME, neither was it ready. We knew what the chapters in the books going to be
3. It was a competition. We were supposed to be presenting in fromt of various hosts, judges guests, classmates and college professors
4. time and money/ finance were the biggest constraints. We were supposed to print posters, brochures and anyother marketing pieces with our own money, tough we were working and creating publicity for someone else

But somehow the group did really well in putting together the marketing piece, presentation. I am uploading some of the posters designed and made my me, the powerpoint presentations and the name tags that we came up with. I guess these three (yes even the name tag) gets your presentation to another level. We actually thought we were a part of some real agency and representing a book written or edited by us. AT the end of the presentation our client/host came upto me and told, “Hey, you guys were too good. I would doubt the results and judges if you don’t win.” and yes, we didn’t win, but the lines our client/host told me would always be etched in my mind and will always push me to work harder everyday and on every project hence forth.

Learnings from this project:

1. How a house including wall Paints, flooring, and anyother home fitting could lead to global warming (no I am not kidding I really realised that house could be made GREEN if you really want to).
2. working with people who don’t know what a PRO can do or is supposed to do, needs lots of patience. The process of work starts with making them understand what is the difference between a magician and a Public Relations Specialist.
3. you might have too many creative ideas, but remembering that your client has no/restricted money and then narrowing down to ideas that are most creative and least expensive but yet convey the message to the target publics.
4. even if you are not the winner, the client appriciating your hardwork and congratulating you for the amazing and spectacular presentation.

Attached : Posters.

blueprint001.pdf

blueprint1.pdf

poster21.pdf

poster2final.pdf

posterfinal.pdf

Concept: Green house keychain on a book clearly communicates the main theme of the book and only at one glance puts across the theme and the reason of the poster.