I am a big fan of H&M. It’s not just because I like the fresh design, but to a large extent because I had researched the company’s sustainability goals and activities and I was impressed with its efforts. (I have detailed them pretty extensively in this blog post here.) Now proving their drive for sustainability once again, the global fashion brand has launched a new initiative called H&M Conscious Foundation. In this post I would like to introduce it to you and urge you to join the sustainability movement together with H&M.

The H&M Conscious Foundation is a global non-profit foundation with the mission to “reach beyond H&M´s value chain, and contribute to positive long-term change for people and communities where H&M operates.” After consulting global experts in the field, including for example Sir Richard Branson (whom I am a big fan of too), H&M developed a list of five most immediate global challenges: safeguarding natural resources, strengthening women, reduction of poverty through self-employment, clean water and education.

Of those five,

Remember my recent blog post about how people do not trust brand messages? There I was explaining that for brands to earn the trust of consumers, they need to develop an authentic and transparent two-way dialogue, which includes honest sharing of information and the more active inclusion of ordinary people into business operations.

A new research by Edelman called brandshare digs into this and other matters and manages to give some interesting insights into the evolving relationship between consumers and brands.

Before I move on to the research results, I just want to say that I love the motto of the new study: “an ethos and framework that puts people at the centre of your brand.” Indeed, people are becoming more closely involved and are dictating more strongly brand decisions. The motto also reminds me of Brian Solis’ latest Conversation Prism, where “You” is in the middle, i.e. in the centre.

So, what did brandshare find?

I’ve spoken about the relationship between journalists and PR professionals in previous blog posts (here and here). The truth is, they both depend on each other, but it seems that one of the groups has a rather negative attitude towards the other one, namely journalists towards PR specialists. So, you can’t really say that’s a healthy relationship, right? Well, a recent research by Twelve Thirty Eight sheds some light on the reasons.

PR consultancy Twelve Thirty Eight e-mailed two thousand correspondents and editors to find out what they thought about the so called “sell-in” calls from PR pros. The consultancy asked only one question: “Have you ever been talked into reporting on something that you had decided to ignore following a call from a PR person?“ The result: 97.9 % said “No”.

The other day I came across a blog post by a fellow Bulgarian blogger delving into a pretty crazy idea – a magazine without advertisements. Sounds rather unrealistic, right? Well, you’d be a surprised! Such a magazine does exists, and it’s even on sale on Craigslist for the price of $4,447,847.53! Read on while I explain why such a dizzying number.

Designer Joseph G. Davies started a personal project he named Ad-Blocked Vogue, where he literally “blocked” all ads in the September issue of the US Vogue. He cut out all the pages with advertisements in the magazine and those he couldn’t cut, he blanked over with a fat marker. The result: out of the 902 total pages, 280 were full-pages ads and 45 double-page spreads. The image below says it all…

A new study by Fishburn Hedges and Jigsaw Research reveals that almost two-thirds of the public believes brands say one thing through their marketing and communications, but in reality do another. Quoting PR Week, “64% of the public did not believe that companies' marketing and comms were backed up by the way they behaved and interacted with customers.” Interestingly, only 15% of people would trust a company again after a crisis if a senior executive had offered an apology or an explanation. What’s more, 52% do not believe corporate stories if they are only transmitted via advertising or communications; 20% even said they didn’t believe brand stories at all. Ouch!

Surprised? I am not.

As I highlighted in my recent blog post with 44 social media and sustainability facts and figures, ordinary people simply don’t trust traditional company communications and messages and have a lot less faith in corporate figures, even CEOs.

But what can brands do to change this?