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May 2008 - Strategy Magazine
Special report

Water, water everywhere

by Carey Toane
page 16

Blue is the new green. Wondering how brands might approach water conservation, we chose the hot-button issue as a test case to look at the strategies being adopted as brands embark on new CSR initiatives - or decide how to communicate existing efforts - knowing what they know now about greenwash backlash and eco-messaging clutter.

Getting the house in order: RBC Blue Water Project

Royal Bank of Canada has pledged $50 million over the next 10 years to global, regional and community-based initiatives that tackle water conservation - the largest charitable commitment in its history.

Announced last October, the RBC Blue Water project has already pledged $10 million to Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté's One Drop Foundation, which works with Oxfam on water conservation and awareness projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and $500,000 to Tides Canada Foundation's Great Bear Rainforest campaign to fund conservation management and sustainable economic development in B.C.

Over the next few months, the advisory panel, staffed by water experts and community leaders from across North America, will develop criteria for various grants, with applications for leadership grants open as of Earth Day.

After developing an in-depth Environmental Blueprint for stakeholders in 2006, RBC director of corporate responsibility Lynn Patterson felt that, rather than trying to be all things to all people, RBC could do more good on two key issues: diversity and the environment.

"We needed a topic around which our entire company could rally," she says. "Everybody's looking at their paper and energy use right now. We wanted to find something that people aren't thinking about right now."

The links between FIs and investing might be clear, but the links between RBC's brand and water are not, Patterson acknowledges.

"When we first started talking about water, the whole world wasn't talking about water," she says. "We loved the idea because RBC is a Canadian-based company and we have more fresh water than almost any other nation in the world. We're also a water-squandering nation. We saw this big crisis coming and wanted to be making a difference at the front end of it."

RBC partnered with Unilever and the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade on a survey of Canadians' concerns about water. The result? We aren't concerned, which makes the need for awareness-building more pressing. But aside from a few newspaper ads at launch and on World Water Day in March, activities have not been consumer-facing - yet.

"We have started conversations with our clients about the issue," says Maya Russell of RBC brand marketing. "But we want to feel confident that RBC employees understand the issue. We want it to be more than a corporate brand alignment; we want RBC as a corporate community to care about the cause and to embrace it as well."

So for now, RBC, whose CSR cred includes launching an environmental lending policy in 1991, is focusing on spreading the word about Blue Water among its 70,000 employees worldwide before taking it to the public.

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