You are Head of Marketing for an investment firm. In response to growing demand in the market for ethical investments, the firm is launching a new investment initiative, called ‘Invest in Good’ which allows customers to invest in ethical projects. The projects are all 'certified' as having no involvement with the tobacco, pornography, arms or gambling industries, nor using supply chains involving child labour or using loopholes to avoid tax.

The firm has built up a sizeable PR campaign around ‘Invest in Good’. It is seen as a positive step within an industry which is trying to turn its reputation around, and senior leaders within the firm think that launching this initiative will be an excellent way to win back customer trust and position your firm as an industry leader in ethical investments.

Your marketing team has organised a high-profile launch event for ‘Invest in Good’. You have invited around 250 people – a mixture of existing and potential customers (many of whom have expressed an interest in ethical investments in the past), VIPs and about 20 members of the press. The journalists are from a mix of high-profile national papers and trade journals, as well as a number of specialist independent ethics bloggers whose blogs have large numbers of subscribers.
The venue uses branded coffee, provided by a supply chain which has been in the media recently for avoiding tax

The venue which your firm normally uses is not large enough to host this number of guests, so your team have booked a larger venue near to your office. It’s an impressive meeting space which is guaranteed to make an impact. As your firm has not used the venue before, and the event is much larger than the ones your team usually organise, you have decided personally to take charge of the event on the day.

On the morning of the launch event, you arrive at the venue and are kept busy overseeing the distribution of promotional material, setting up the presentation and sorting out last-minute problems. As a result, you do not get around to checking the reception area until the last minute. When you do manage to find the time to do a final check, you discover that the venue uses branded coffee, provided by a supply chain which has been in the media recently for avoiding tax. In fact, there is a rally in London this week protesting against this particular chain. The coffee and tea refreshments have already been paid for, and have been laid out in reception ready for your guests. Branding of the coffee chain is clearly visible – all the mugs, carafes, tea labels and even the box the tea is laid out in are stamped with the logo. Guest registration for the event starts in ten minutes.

 You identify four possible courses of action. Which do you choose?

• Get the venue to replace all the branded cups with plain ones, pour the coffee into plain carafes and cut the labels off the tea bags, but still use the tea and coffee.
• Rush out to the nearest shop and buy Fairtrade tea and coffee. Get the venue to replace what they have already set out with the Fairtrade products. Put a sign up that all of the tea and coffee used is certified Fairtrade.
• Print out a petition page which says “Enjoy this coffee? Sign this petition to ensure the company who supplies it pays their tax” and tell your guests you will supply the petition to the group arranging the rally later in the week.
• Hope that no-one will notice. If someone does complain, you will simply explain to them that the refreshments were provided by the venue, and that you were not given a choice over the supplier.

The CISI verdictThe dilemma was published in the Review digital edition, with members invited to register their favoured response from the four options and leave supporting comments in a survey on the CISI website.

Unfortunately, no respondents commented on the dilemma, so the thought processes which went into choosing one option over the other are not obvious. However, some deductions are set out below:

Over half the respondents (57%) chose to replace the refreshments with Fairtrade products from the nearest shop. This option reflects a common ‘gut-reaction’ that many of us might have – to quickly replace the offending products with something more acceptable. However, this is the only option which actually involves throwing away the tea and coffee and creating waste, which in itself is not a very environmentally conscious approach. Additionally, buying Fairtrade is something of a red herring, as there was nothing to suggest that the products which were already set out were not Fairtrade. The issue here centres on whether or not your company will associate itself with a supplier that avoids tax – something which is against the ethos of your ‘Invest in Good’ product – not whether or not the refreshments provided carry the Fairtrade logo.

Although recent research by the Institute of Business Ethics suggests that corporate tax avoidance is the number one issue that the public wants companies to address, it has also been suggested that this might not have much actual impact on consumer spending. A Financial Times article published in June this year noted that while it is easy for disgruntled consumers to steer clear of coffee shops that offend them, for most people the taste of the coffee and convenience are more important factors. Accordingly, option D (hope that no-one will notice) is not, in fact, such an unreasonable approach – even though only 6% of respondents voted for this option.

Nevertheless, it would still be prudent to address the issue rather than just ignore it, given the context of the event. The only option which actually provides both the host and the delegates with an opportunity to be the force for change (which is what the event is about) is option C – which a third of respondents (33%) voted for. Providing a petition for your guests to sign does draw attention to the fact that the coffee they are drinking has been supplied by a company which does not pay its fair share of tax but, considering your guests are attending the event because they share the aims of your new product, they may appreciate being given the opportunity to voice their opinion. A petition by investors encouraging the company to change its ways could have a bigger impact than merely avoiding their products which, in this case, you have already purchased.

Accordingly, Option C is the CISI preferred option in this scenario. 

Conversely, the option which could be considered to be the worst of the four available is option A, which only 3% of respondents voted for. Removing the branding from the products may be a quick and easy fix, however, it is also the option which is the least honest, open and transparent.

CISI’s latest 'Grey matters' has been published in the September edition of the Review, both in print and online, and we should be pleased to receive your comments in support of the course of action which you chose.