I was looking through A&W’s website today, as it was a part of the pre-reading for next week’s E-Marketing class. After having visited most of the website’s different pages, it struck me how much content they had on the subject of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Not because it’s an unusual thing to see – because it’s definitely not. Everyone “has” to do it nowadays, so no, it wasn’ that.

I found it interesting because I linked it to the context of measuring success online. When I did that, the question about A&W’s CSR-content shifted from being about “why” A&W does it, to “how” A&W does it, and that is easier to answer and still quite interesting.

So, how did A&W decide on their CSR projects, and even more relevant for their current situation: How do they measure if their projects – and content about their projects – have been successful? How can they optimize the communicational frame around their projects, which they have already chosen?

The first thing I thought about, was to measure the success in page visits (amount of visits and time spent on site) and video views.
However, I kind of dismissed that idea when I clicked through one of their pages, that should illustrate that their burgers are made in a pro-environment way.

When I clicked the video, this happened (the video is playing in the background):

The video couldn’t even be played properly on their website…
Then I went and tried another browser (Safari) and it worked in one out of three times, so, it could just be browser problems.
But how many people would switch their browser for a CSR-video?

Then I checked how many people who had watched the video:

2.131 is not exactly a lot of views, if you are trying to convince Canada about your company’s good intentions.
But, then again, how many people go different burger restaurants’ webpages, to check out what it does for environment, before they decide where to go. I am guessing 1% or 2% under normal circumstances, which means that the number, 2131, could actually be massive, because those 2131 views represent the people that actually care and want to debate.

Or maybe that’s not the case. Maybe the number of views are actually too low, but people just don’t want to read about or see what a company does for the environment. They just want to know, that they are doing something. Then, the video becomes a symbol of CSR and the page visits and video views suddenly don’t matter much.

My point with this reflection is not conclude whether or not A&W’s CSR-content have been successful or not. On the contratry, I want to display that, that that is something I can’t do as a person outside the company. The process of evaluating success online is simply just to complicated.