The sustainability challenge: move away from language and toward experience.

By Emily Drew

Angry Birds and Cinepuzzle. Those are the favorite games of Judah Schiller, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, whose San Francisco office got rid of the board room years ago and replaced it with a game room, complete with Xbox Kinect. “We have our best meetings in the game room,” Schiller and his colleagues told me at Sustainable Brands ’11 this week.

Schiller’s own love for gaming led Saatchi S to a study released this week called, “Engagement Unleashed: Gamification for Business, Brands, and Loyalty.”

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People are inherently good, and Panera’s new social model proves it.

By Emily Drew

One in six Americans live in “food insecure” homes. This means one in six Americans is seriously hungry, likely under-nourished or malnourished and doesn’t know when he/she will have their next meal.

When Panera Bread Founder and CEO Ronald Shaich learned this, he thought about how Panera Bread opens two restaurants every week, employs 60,000 people, and he knew Panera’s resources could have impact on America’s hunger problem. He personally set out to help, pitched his board (with a lot of respect and credibility under his belt), created a foundation and the result is a new kind of chain restaurant: pay-what-you-can Paneras. 

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Employees will be valuing CSR credibility more and more.

By Dr. John Izzo

There is growing evidence consumers care about CSR when it comes to whom they buy from and survey evidence suggests employees like to work for companies that are good citizens. As someone who has spent over 20 years advising companies on their brand image and how to create highly engaged workforces, I am often asked by my clients if CSR really matters to employees. Even though surveys show employees rank it as a high factor for choosing an employer, it is almost never cited as the reason people leave companies, nor is it often cited as a prime reason for taking new employment. It raises an interesting and important question: How important is CSR to workers?

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