Analysis of WWF stakeholder communication.

Interest groups or stakeholders are people or groups of people who have an impact on, or are
affected by the activities, products or services of a company (or another organization).
Stakeholders encompass a wide variety of actors, such as:

• The financial community (shareholders, investors, rating agencies)

• Employees and their representatives

• Customers and consumers

• National and local communities

• Public authorities (governments, regional and local institutions, public and international
organizations)

• Civil society (NGOs, associations, members and networks of organizations)

• Suppliers

• Others: Media, consulting.

Once organizations have become aware of the various audiences that interact with them, it is
important to categorize them based on the expectations, problems, geographic areas, their
impact on the company's activity. The proper functioning of any CSR policy depends largely
on issues related to the correct identification and prioritization of stakeholders. In addition,
relationships with stakeholders can be performed in many ways:

• Practices that involve confrontation.

• Practices that involve dialogue.

• Contractual commitments (NGO associations or transnational framework agreements)

For WWF, companies play a decisive role when it comes to protecting the Environment and
reducing the ecological footprint, since it is part of the core of the stakeholder groups with
which they interact, by using the following strategies:

• By changing their practices or products,

• Trying to influence their suppliers or supply chain,

• Sensitizing and influence its employees and customers to adopt a sustainable lifestyle,
including modifying their consumption patterns.

That is why WWF has established strategic alliances with those who demonstrate a firm
desire, at the highest level, to participate in the protection of the Environment. The objective
is to motivate stakeholders (especially companies, consumers and the government) to change
their practices and to influence their production or consumption methods in a way that will
cause less waste to the environment.

Communication strategy among stakeholders

The dialogue between WWF and the private sector is done in different ways and is carried
out through commitments. For example, WWF generally chooses to work with a single
company who belongs to a specific sector. In this way, by convincing a leader company in
that sector in advance and by this WWF makes the first step to influence the whole sector
through the word-of-mouth.

Despite the emergence of social media, WWF stated that the most effective communication
channel is face-to-face, especially with large institutional donors and policy makers /
regulators. Normally, they prefer B2B events, where WWF is selective in terms of conference
and think tank participation, ensuring that there would be a good return on the effort.

Social media is part of their most used communications channels, among them; the most
popular are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (in addition to the company website). Facebook
is seen as a useful way to connect with those who have common interests with WWF.
Additionally, WWF is blogging and achieving great engagement and success with their
articles. YouTube is a good emotional tool especially to showcase some of their already
performed field work. Twitter is especially good at finding and connecting with like-minded
audiences. It is a very powerful tool that must be kept active and is used to promote the
organization’s brand and unite followers around a cause or issue.

On the other hand, WWF established good relationships with the scientific media as their
stories are often picked up by mainstream national media outlets. The need to establish and
nurture relationships with key media is still important.

Among the WWF communication objectives we found:

• Encourage companies to adopt a sustainable development strategy.

• Encourage companies to improve their way of acting in environmental contexts.
• Diversify and pool financial, human and technical resources and skills to carry out a
specific project.
• Get more visibility and therefore more people involved in the cause defended by the
NGO.
• Generate and motivate innovation.
• (WWF)
Bibliography
WWF. (n.d.). About WWF. Retrieved 04 27, 2021, from WWF: https://wwf.panda.org