Promotion or Purpose: How CSR Activities Boost Brand Visibility

Promotion or Purpose: How CSR Activities Boost Brand Visibility

In 2022, over 20,000 participants lined up for the Bengaluru Midnight Marathon, sponsored by the Infosys Foundation and organised by the Rotary Bangalore IT Corridor, to raise funds for causes related to health, education, and social welfare.

However, beyond these fundraisers was a carefully crafted strategy that leverages Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities into the marketing campaigns of large Business-to-Business (B2B) organisations. B2B organisations are increasingly utilizing CSR activities as a means to promote brand visibility.

This is carried out through sponsorships, social media campaigns, and the general integration of marketing strategies and campaigns with CSR initiatives primarily meant for societal benefit.

The escalating rate of these instances raises the question of whether these are committed acts of welfare or just newer marketing dimensions for organizations to explore?

The Importance of CSR Today
Business has remained as the most trusted institution in the APAC region compared to governments, NGOs, and the media, thereby showcasing why CSR is pivotal to building reputable organisations (Edelman, 2025).

Alongside this, younger generations, specifically millennials and Gen Z, hold businesses to a rather high standard when it comes to values, beliefs, societal initiatives or CSR in general, therefore bringing a collective belief that businesses need to make positive impacts on society not only for societal welfare but to also build an upholding reputation of their brand within the minds of younger individuals (Chand, 2025).

With the growth of social media usage all over the world, organisations have come to realise that information regarding their CSR activities spreads faster and wider, giving them an additional incentive to commit to organising these initiatives.

How Organisations Use CSR for Brand Visibility
B2B organisations, therefore, use CSR as a stage to propagate their brand through newsfeeds and public events, providing them with rare visibility within the public. Infosys Springboard, TCS World 10K Marathon, and Wipro Earthian are examples of organisations utilizing CSR to promote their brand.

Wipro Earthian specifically has a history of using social media to promote their events and challenges, while the TCS Marathons draw thousands of individuals, media coverage, influencer engagement, and most importantly, TCS logo visibility.

Undoubtedly, organisations would want to showcase their contributions to society. However, recently, we have witnessed over-the-top media and influencer coverage regarding these initiatives.

Since B2B organisations don’t directly interact with their end-consumer, what is their motivation behind such persistent media communication?

The Role of CSR in Society
Well, CSR not only helps associate a brand with positive values, but it also helps build trust within society, as people are more likely to support brands that regularly give back to society.  When companies like Infosys support rural education, or Wipro promotes sustainable education, it projects care, strong values as well as integrity on behalf of the brand.

It is much easier to trust such a brand than one that only projects its mainstream image. In the B2B environment, where product differentiation is rather minimal, it is the values that a brand represents that set them apart within the competitive nature of its market.

By consistently showcasing their CSR efforts, companies align themselves with causes that the public and their stakeholders value.

When amplified through social media, these narratives help reinforce the identity of the brand as one that is responsible and empathetic towards the struggles faced by the common citizen of this country.

Finding a Balance between Purpose and Promotion
The downside to these strategies is that they tread a thin line between committed social welfare and performative branding efforts. Organisations must strive to find a balance between the two factors, as weighing too heavily on the initiatives themselves may lead to lost opportunities for promotion.

On the other hand, emphasizing the promotion of CSR activities portrays a performative or ineffective environment. Audiences are growing ever more wary of tokenism, and authenticity is a globally sought-after factor, making fulfilled promises the need of the hour.

Recently, audiences have increasingly criticised the BCCI and TATA Group for their ‘Green Dot Ball’ initiative in the Indian Premier League (IPL). An initiative that pledged to plant 500 trees for every dot ball in an IPL match went largely unnoticed for several seasons.

Audiences however, were quick to understand that there existed a serious lack of transparency and official record regarding the plantations.

There were also several discrepancies between public statements and action, the continual communication of this initiative on IPL broadcasts prompted the public to demand accountability for completing the initiative, leaving a lasting negative impression on BCCI and the organisers of the tournament for using a sustainability initiative to grow their reach and influence within an already large community.

The Duality of CSR Initiatives
CSR can serve dual purposes, that is, both impact and strategic visibility. Today’s consumers show strong support for brands that champion real, impactful causes. There have already been several cases of brands losing customer bases due to failure in supporting social causes and norms.

Nike and Amazon received tremendous backlash due to links to forced and inhumane labour conditions; the collective actions against these influential brands triggered a wave of changes within their respective working environments.

Even within the B2B sphere, where there exists no direct connection to the public, organisations are pressured out of large business commitments due to various social issues.

For example, TC Energy, a large Canadian energy organisation, pulled out of a project to build an oil pipeline that would stretch the entire length of Canada. Communities in Quebec (Eastern Canada) led the resistance against this project, which was eventually cancelled in 2017 (Yager, 2018). As a result, TC Energy’s reputation was destroyed.

A few years later, it eventually decided to shift its focus to natural gas and energy storage, a move welcomed by the environmental community in Canada.

These examples showcase how younger generations and societies can collectively ensure that the operations of a business are moral by holding the organisation accountable for conducting its CSR activities.

Conclusion

CSR-led branding is the new norm in strategic marketing; it is no longer an add-on to goodwill, but a strategic necessity.  Organisations and brands are continually showcasing their CSR initiatives on various platforms.

The larger public continues to share collective beliefs on organisations that present authentic coverage of their initiatives.

As expectations grow and scrutiny sharpens,  B2B organisations will continue to yearn for visibility, but it must be earned through ethical, moral and meaningful actions that benefit society, as newer generations don’t just understand what brands say, but what they stand for.

In a marketplace that’s drowning in noise, companies are finally realising that doing good for society is the best form of marketing.

Author: Ethan George, Undergraduate Student, FLAME University.