Unmesh Brahme: Sustaining Companies and Communities through Corporate Social Responsibility

Unmesh Brahme is the Senior Vice President for Corporate Sustainability for HSBC India and a 2009 Yale World Fellow. He is a corporate strategist with over fifteen years of experience in sustainability, community development, advertising, and marketing, working for an array of organizations including OXFAM, the World Bank, and Ogilvy & Mather.

As the Senior Vice President for Corporate Sustainability for HSBC India, Mr. Brahme was called to transform the bank’s previous strategy for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). CSR connects the company and the community in order to mutually benefit both parties. To make CSR centerstage in HSBC’s operating dynamics, he utilized his communications skills to get various stakeholders on board. By starting an employee volunteering program, he engaged HSBC employees to understand why it was important for HSBC to be involved in the community and the environment in addition to business. This program created a groundswell of support for subsequent initiatives after employees understood that intentions to effect social change can also benefits the bank.

Mr. Brahme believes that �corporates should be original and innovative,� because merely giving money to a charity does not require any thought. He started the �Future First� program to specifically benefit street children, one of the most disadvantaged groups globally. It is a bank-led global program that began in three countries, and it has now expanded to over 40 countries, where it improves the lives of over 130,000 children. HSBC employees were involved with this project early on, as they participated in a contest to name the program. HSBC employees are now the coordinators for Future First in every country, working in conjunction with NGOs. The intense involvement of HSBC with this program is a successful example of corporate social responsibility as it associates the company with a program critically important to the community.

He has also created financial literacy programs to reach out to marginalized populations, such as the HSBC supported Mann Deshi Business School, which teaches rural women financial literacy in order to help them become entrepreneurs. It greatly improves their lives in the long term, and the bank also benefits because the risk of lending is lower when the borrowers are financially literate. Mr. Brahme is still intensely associated with this project, visiting often to conduct field evaluations and to hold strategy meetings on how to take the project forward from strength to strength.

The CSR issues that HSBC considers most important to address are financial inclusion, education, and the environment. All of these issues allow HSBC to ensure that communities belong to the mainstream economy and can benefit from financial solutions. CSR benefits everyone, including HSBC. A key aspect of the concept is linking CSR with the product or core competency of the company, such as with the Castrol marketing campaign that Mr. Brahme directed when he worked for Ogilvy and Mather. Mr. Brahme is committed to Corporate Social Responsibility because it is about sustained development and growth, which is already in a company’s best interests. It is not a charitable act but works on a triple bottom line approach of people, profits, and planet. It is important to embed CSR deep into the fabric of an institution so that it becomes part of the natural operational strategies of the organization.

During his time at Ogilvy & Mather, Mr. Brahme created and designed the first ever caused related marketing and social investment campaign in rural India for Castrol, a British petroleum company which manufactures products including tractor oil. This campaign won the Gold Award at the Asian Brand Marketing Effectiveness Awards in 2002/3. It connected Castrol to an issue close to the hearts of its customers- the issue of water. Drought is a terrible problem in rural India, and so by helping the farmers with issues relating to water, Castrol connected its image to drought solutions. Farmers are the biggest base for Castrol’s CRB Plus lubricant, which is tractor engine oil. This cause related marketing campaign focused on issues critically important to the consumer base. Mr. Brahme began by investing Castrol’s marketing budget into creating water demonstration plots for farmers in four states of India which established various water harvesting pilots. By promoting a �friction-free life,� with water harvesting, Castrol created a link to a �friction-free life� in the same manner that its lubricant product creates a friction-free engine. Castrol shops also served as distribution centres for information about water conservation, providing leaflets and flyers for farmers. Farmers appreciated the community investment and Castrol became their most preferred brand. Corporate sustainability is important to both the customers and the company, because if farmers are not farming due to drought, then they will not be purchasing Castrol oil because their tractors will not be running.

The Castrol campaign posed many challenges which were exciting to overcome, such as the difficulty of communicating information about water conservation in rural areas. Television and newspapers are not always popular or reliable ways of communication there, so Castrol trained folk artists in their message and created a traveling folk performance show which demonstrated the need for water conservation, as well as Castrol’s role in the issue. This also boosted a dying art form, training a traditional cultural medium in an �edutainment� format. Thousands of villagers attended these performances, and the pre and post impact assessments showed that Castrol had jumped to the highest levels of brand recall and saliency compared to any other marketing campaign for a similar product category. The unique way of advertising on the ground and making the product relevant to the people made the drought campaign a complete success.

Mr. Brahme’s background with Oxfam allowed him to gain a greater understanding of working with people as a medium for communication. With Oxfam, he worked in tribal areas, trying to understand their problems and design appropriate solutions from the anthropological and biodiversity perspective. He helped build the management capacities of NGOs working in tribal areas. He later joined Ogilvy and Mather because it was the only agency at that point which was keen to develop centre of excellence in Corporate Social Responsibility, which he helped create. He developed a �cause association� for many brands which was communicated through media innovation as well as through his work on the ground.

Mr. Brahme is a member of the Global Board of Net Impact, which is a U.S. based organization which wants to create an understanding of corporate sustainability issues in business schools and college campuses. He joined the board to help the organization grow internationally, and his goal is to create an Indian model which can then be used in other emerging South Asian economies. He serves as an international strategist helping to make it a global brand.

Mr. Brahme feels fortunate to have a career that allows him to effect change in a sustainable manner. He hopes that the CSR models utilized at HSBC and Ogilvy and Mather will inspire other companies to also concentrate on the community and the environment in their business practices, which will ultimately benefit everyone.