CSR & Carbon Footprint policy are changing job adverts

Are companies going to far with CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility and Carbon Footprints? While I agree with their ethos, I am beginning to see that these initiatives are impacting recruitment advertising going forward. I have experienced candidates choosing jobs because of CSR earlier this year, but now it has even impacted candidate attraction!!

This week, in writing a client advert for insertion into a national marketing magazine, I was told by the client that the image of The Red Arrows flying (above), breaches their CSR - Carbon Footprint policy!! It would apparently leave readers with the impression that they support unnecessary and frivolous air travel, and they can't be seen to be condoning it!

Does it mean that someone reading the advert will actually believe for one second that it is the client flying the aircraft and that it represents what they do every day in their job?? Of course they won't, candidates aren't that stupid are they? (don't answer that!)  We already have a culture within the UK of being extremely PC - politically correct, and it seems that CSR and CF are taking the march forward on the PC front into corporate life.

So if you are involved in writing adverts to go in the public domain, whether it be print or web, just remember that you can't use pictures of planes, trains, cars, motorbikes, speedboats, trucks and certainly not a picture of the Saturn V rocket taking off!!