ABSTRACT
The biggest advertising budgets in the world are spent by the owners of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), the personal and household necessities people buy every day from supermarkets without spending much time thinking about them in the shopping aisle. Owners of FMCG brands are finding that linking their brands more closely to a social cause – giving them a social mission – is helping them tackle problems. In quest for awareness and preference, businesses are finding that a social mission enables them to communicate strong, positive messages about their brands in away that is interesting to society and therefore interesting to the gatekeepers of 'earned media' who make the news and light up social networks. Lifebuoy looks to the social context for its market development. Its social mission informs everything the brand does, from new product development to advertising and leadership development. The pharmaceutical industry has had a mixed relationship with social mission.
