Branding as an Incentive for Social Responsibility

This paper considers the contribution that trade marks and the brands that they signify can make to improving standards of corporate social responsibility (or “CSR”). It considers the argument that firms engaging in good CSR practices can use their engagement to generate and deploy reputational capital and that this improves their capacity to survive and prosper over time. The contribution of branding also reflects its importance to marketing and the importance of marketing to the development of firms.This paper accepts that trade marks have significant shortcomings as a positive influence on CSR in this respect, but argues that their influence can nevertheless be important and, moreover, can increase the effectiveness of other legal mechanisms.