James Gregory of CoreBrand Discusses the Growing Impact of Companies' Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives on Brand Value

NEW YORK, May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- CoreBrand, a leading brand strategy and communications firm, and creator of the Corporate Branding Index®, which provides continuous benchmarking data, insights and corporate brand valuation for over 1,000 companies, across 54 industries, recently showcased its method of measuring the overall impact of companies' corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts on corporate brand value at The Internationalist 100 Conference "Brand Growth in a Socially Transparent World" in New York, NY in May 2012.

"The S&P 500 indicates that the percentage of a company's market value represented by intangible assets has grown from 17 percent in 1975 to 81 percent in 2009, yet these assets remain largely unaccounted for when determining the market value of a corporate brand," said James R. Gregory, founder and CEO of CoreBrand. "Our Corporate Branding Index® provides us with a qualitative approach to understanding a corporates brand's strength and evaluating all the individual contributing factors, including corporate communications, sector affiliations, market cap and CSR."

Companies' CSR initiatives are evaluated on the strengths and concerns related to a range of dimensions. The CSR score allows CoreBrand to assess the CSR initiatives of individual companies vs. peers and measure the impact that CSR can have on business performance. Furthermore, CoreBrand can evaluate CSR scores over time to track performance and calculate return on investment.

"As the importance of implementing effective CSR initiatives continues to grow and further impacts the overall brand experience, it is important for management to understand that these initiatives can greatly improve a company's overall reputation, perception of management and investment potential," added Mr. Gregory. "Our ongoing tracking system helps companies to better estimate the future potential return of corporate branding initiatives for budgeting purposes and evaluate the eventual return on investment."

Mr. Gregory will also be discussing the connection between CSR and brand equity at Sustainable Brands '12 on June 5th in San Diego, CA, with a presentation entitled "The Value of Brand Alignment in the Age of Transparency."

About CoreBrand
CoreBrand, an independent branding firm based out of New York, is the only firm that links brand identity to financial performance through data and analysis. CoreBrand helps organizations understand, build, express and measure their brands. Thanks in part to its unique CoreBrand®Analysis, the company is able to gauge the impact of a brand initiative upon the success of an organization.  CoreBrand is the creator of Corporate Branding Index®, a 20 year old index that provides continuous benchmarking data, insights and corporate brand valuation for over 1,000 companies, across 54 industries. To learn more about CoreBrand please visit http://www.corebrand.com.

SOURCE CoreBrand