PURPLE INDEX
MSLGROUP
How well are the Fortune Global 100
communicating their initiatives and
engaging people around PurPle ?
Executive Summary: Purpose, Participation & Performance
MSLGROUP’S PURPLE INDEX: Benchmarking Purpose, Participation & Performance
Background: In 2012, MSLGROUP launched PurPle, a new global offering aimed at helping business leaders drive
positive impacts on the business and society by catalyzing collaborative social innovation and grassroots change
movements. The specialty combines the agency’s CSR, Cause Marketing, Sustainability, Citizenship and Philanthropy
expertise and over 100+ experts around the globe to deliver best-in-class strategy, approaches, ideas and execution
in the broad corporate purpose areas of health, environment, education, and human potential.
PurPle Index: In early 2013, the PurPle team at MSLGROUP embarked on an undertaking to rank the Fortune 100
companies in these purpose areas based on the level of participation/social engagement in their purpose
communications and initiatives. In addition, the team wanted to correlate this level of participation to the
companies’ overall performance and bottom line.
Methodology: Each company was evaluated and scored on a number of aspects including successful storytelling of
their purpose and how engaging the content was on their social networks. Was the content inspiring? Did the
content have a strong call-to-action? Does the company crowd-source, curate and aggregate content on their
platforms?
Executive Summary: Purpose, Participation & Performance
Overall Findings: We found that the top performing Fortune global 100 companies use visual storytelling and direct
engagement strategies and tactics to ensure their messaging around citizenship initiatives is amplified. The top
performers consider engagement to be essential in maintaining or changing perceptions about the company. The
citizenship initiatives are global in nature with a number of companies focussing on improving living conditions in
developing regions. The lowest performing Fortune global 100 companies do not recognize the importance of
engagement and do not have a presence on social platforms. Their communication is predominantly one way and used
only to disseminate information.
• Purpose: (1) Wal-Mart, (2) Citigroup, (3) GE, (4) P&G, (5) Toshiba
• Environment: (1) GE, (2) IBM, (3) Toshiba, (4) Honda, (5) BASF
• Education: (1) Wells Fargo, (2) Sony, (3) P&G, (4) ING, (5) HP
• Health (1) GE, (2) CVS Caremark, (3) McKesson, (4) Siemens, (5) P&G
• Human Potential: (1) HP, (2) Siemens, (3) IBM, (4) Toshiba, (5) Citigroup
In addition to a strong and clearly defined Purpose and an effective use of social networks to drive strong participation
in their purpose; when compared to Fortune’s list of Most Profitable Companies 10 (ten) of the top performing
companies on the PurPle Index are also on Fortune's list: BP, Chevron, Citigroup, Ford, GE, Nestle, P&G, Samsung,
Walmart, Wells Fargo. The complete list and best-in-class PurPle examples can be found in the pages to follow.
What is the PurPle Index ? MSLGROUP’s PurPle offering and a MSLGROUP proprietary tool The Social Hive Index combine to give
us the PurPle Index. The PurPle Index measures relative engagement for global Fortune 100 around
each company’s shared purpose and the four PurPle opportunity areas.
The PurPle index uses a combination of automatically updated social data, qualitative research waves, and our proprietary normalization algorithm to create a single score between 1 and 100.
SOCIAL DATA PROPRIETARY ALGORITHM
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
One time, annual, or quarterly
qualitative research waves on
storytelling and engagement around a
topic.
Proprietary normalization algorithm to
convert social data and qualitative
scores into a single score between 1
and 100.
Daily updated social data from
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Kred,
Klout, Peerindex and SEOMoz.
The Methodology
PurPle Index: Results – Overall Purpose and Individual Themes
Source : Purpleindex.mslgroup.com, Dated 8th February 2012
LEADING INITIATIVES DRIVING
ENGAGEMENT These initiatives drive engagement as stand-alone properties as well as creating content that
engages users on regular social properties of brands.
Environment : Platforms, Partnerships and Games Environmental initiatives directly involving audiences or stakeholders bring greater engagement on social platforms for the Fortune Global 100. Some examples :
PLATFORMS
GE Ecomagination, Panasonic Eco-Ideas and
Think Blue by VW are co-creation and
collaborative social innovation platforms
while Nestle Water challenge and Samsung
village are blogs for sharing, solving, ideating
and discussing environment challenges.
CHANGE GAMES
Chevron is promoting a energy awareness game Energyville built by The Ecnomist Group. This game allows people to understand the sources of Eneergy availabl an the multiple emand fators that ome into play for any energy producer.
PARTNERSHIPS
Partnering directly with change agents is also
popular with leading PurPle companies to
spread awareness or innovate about the
environment. HP partnered Energy star and
Shell partnered Envirofit for grass root level
change movements.
Image : Ecomagination.com, http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/OnLiberianMedium/message/42115, Energyville.com
Education : Teachers, Tech, Partnerships & Awards Education is supported in multiple ways by the Fortune global 100. The top PurPle initiatives
driving engagement are :
TEACHER ENGAGEMENT
Engaging, providing resources through platforms and training are some of the leading initiatives for engaging directly with teachers. Telefonica, Total, BNP Paribas and BMW have created platforms providing access to educational resources. GE, Nestle and Exxon provide platforms for teacher training.
PARTNERSHIPS AND AWARDS
A popular PurPle initiative is to create direct partnerships and engage with directly with change drivers. This ranges from creating financial aid, scholarships to setting up and running schools. Awards, contests and competitions are run to unearth, reward and celebrate outstanding students.
TEHNOLOGY ENABLED CLASSROOMS
Bringing modern education to large audiences supported and pioneered by the Fortune Global 100. Samsung’s Internet school program for K-12 countries in Africa and Panasonic with Kids witness news and are examples of such programs.
Image : Total solar expert, Samsung K-12 schools initiative, P&G Hope schools stats
Health : Crowdsourcing, Partnerships and Apps Health an nutrition related initiatives range from problem identification and idea generation to
partnering NGO’s, vaccination drives and empowering individual healthcare.
CROWSOURCING
Co-Creation platforms – These health focused
platforms bring together large audiences or
domain thought leaders to discuss issues,
ideas and create innovations. GE with
Ecomagination and Siemens Healthworks
collective are the leading examples.
MOBILE APPLICATIONS
Mobile apps have been built to empower
individuals caring for themselves. Some are
built to support off location healthcare to
connect healthcare professionals and
patients. Samsung, Siemens and GE have all
launch similar apps.
PARTNERSHIPS
Organisations partner with grass-roots change agents to help improve lives and living conditions of people. For example Walmart has partnered Human Vitality for a healthier food program and P&G has partnered UNICEF for a vaccination drive.
Image : healthymagination.com, P&G partnership, http://www.mobilechannels.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=453:smartphone-health-apps-big-opportunity-&catid=54:appsbusiness&Itemid=81
Human Potential : Incubators, Micro-finance & Knowledge Supporting and encouraging human enterprise is another area of focus for the leading PurPle
companies in the Fortune global 100. Some key types of initiatives are showcased
INCUBATORS
Telefonica, BASF and Siemens are all
running incubators for science or social
enterprises. These provide some funding,
guidance and basic infrastructure to help
innovators and startups.
KNOWLEGDE PLATFORMS
A number of the organisations have created
knowledge and awareness programs to share
their learning and expertise. Financial
companies are helping people organise
personal finances and make prudent personal
financial decisions.
MICRO-FINANCE & PARTNERSHIPS
Partnering with Micro-finance institutions to empower grass-roots level entrepreneurship is a popular human potential initiative. Citi, BASF, Chevron, BNP Paribas and Tesco have all created miro-finance partnerships.
Image : Thenextweb.com, Kiva.com, Grameen foundation logo, Shell Livewire.co.uk