Interested readers already know that there are innumerable ways in which companies enact their commitment to serve society. This chapter focuses on how stakeholders learn about CR and what characteristics of CR stakeholders are looking for when they evaluate socially responsible activity. Such information is vital to know, because what managers care about may be very different from what stakeholders care about. Moreover, what companies think they are saying may be quite different from what stakeholders are seeing and hearing.

There are two aspects of communications that CR managers need to be aware of in order to have the impact they need for success:

• First, they must understand what CR characteristics stakeholders look for as they evaluate CR activity. This is important because it enables managers to make these characteristics prominent in communications.

• Second, managers must understand that stakeholders acquire information from a variety of communication channels. Getting a handle on the costs and benefits of these channels is the first step to designing integrated communications campaigns for stakeholders. We now look at each of these aspects in turn.