All Briefs

Increasing recognition of the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities on portfolio value is driving institutional investors engagement with companies on ESG.

Brands of all sizes and in all industries are increasingly being impacted by America’s divisive political, social and cultural storms. This new reality makes the roles of communications leaders like CCOs and CMOs as strategic decision makers, planners and guardians of a brand’s goodwill more vital—and more challenging—than ever before.

I teach classes for the Rutgers Business School Executive Education, so I cross paths with savvy digital marketers on a constant basis. I have been asking them the same question for the last three years, “If people are really getting creeped out by the way marketers are sneaking around with their data, how come no one has started a business around data privacy?” And I never really got an answer that I understood. Not once.

Recent settlements in two cases appear to have been heavily influenced by the Investors Bancorp decision in ways that do not bode well for directors who determine their own compensation under shareholder-approved plans that do not limit their discretion to amounts that would not make it worthwhile for the plaintiffs’ lawyers to sue, or could be protected by the business judgment rule.

Boards, CEOs, and CFOs need to dramatically raise the bar, demanding better risk and internal audit processes and better metrics to measure the real value-add from internal audit and risk spending. A new approach to assurance, “Strategy and Value Oversight” and specific end result metrics are proposed, metrics capable of helping companies create and preserve long-term value and meet escalating expectations of powerful institutional investors, regulators, and others.

As the Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board (SNCR) prepares for its annual dinner and gala celebrating the 2018 Excellence in New Communications Awards, we’re happy to share this year’s winning case studies in a special edition of "SNCR 2020: Exploring New Communications Tools and Technologies."

Earlier this year, The Conference Board and Mission Measurement announced a new partnership to benchmark social outcomes data. Using Mission Measurement’s Impact Genome Project® (IGP), the two organizations will collect and analyze data on the social outcomes of corporations’ charitable contributions. Companies are now invited to participate in the IGP and to share their impact measurement data.

Our March 2018 Consumer Confidence Survey shows evidence that e-commerce continues to grow among U.S. consumers of most age and income groups.