Walkthons, an excellent tool of CSR

Yesterday, I was reading an article on the sunday newspaper about the walkathons organized for 2nd year by Ecco, a well known athletic brand. Ecco has introduced this set of events that take place in several cities of Denmark, Germany and Poland, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility Program. Last years events raised more than 400.000€ which have been donated to the organizations chosen by the participants themselves!
But its not the first time an event of this type is organized. The first known walkathon was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1953 by the famous comedian Ramón Rivero, who walked 80 miles to raise money for the Puerto Rican League Against Cancer.

Since then, several CSR focused businesses encourage community members to voluntarily get involved with a walk event of a predetermined distance. The main cause varies from fund raising ( registration fees / donations / corporate sponsorships) to public awareness of the subject the organisation wishes to communicate.

Walkthons are excellent tool in the kit of public relations specialists as it mobilizes broad based community support, with participants from a wide range of ages and economic backgrounds.

Nowadays, hundreds of walkathons are organised all over the world, including Puerato Rican League Against Cancer, Walk and Rock, Arthritis Walk, Breast Cancer 3Day, Memory Walk by Alzheimer’s Association, PetWalk by Petsmart Charities and Out of the Darkness Community Walks by American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

New Media : Concerns ....

A survey was conducted in the end of 2006 by the PRSA and Dow Jones & company, in an effort to measure the degree of acceptance of new communication technology by the PR professionals and students of the field.

The findings of the survey were presented in the Public Relations Tactics and among others supported that there is an increased acceptance of the new technology tools as they considerably help Pr specialists engage with their key stakeholders. From all the available tools, the ones that provide the best opportunities to professionals are the news web sites, the blogs and the social networking sites.

Although, new media’s popularity was increasingly rapidly, the survey’s results suggests that there were serious concerns about the credibility of the information; there were no clear regulations and the potential for reputational harm was present at any time. As a consequence, there was a greater trust in traditional media.

Four years after this survey, I believe the same concerns are more contemporary than ever and a serious work towards the building of new media’s credibility has to be done.