PR Week (UK) reported yesterday that Microsoft will be “slashing” the PR budgets for its corporate social responsibility activities “in favour of driving awareness for key products such as Windows 7, Office and Xbox,” and that “the company was looking to ‘protect its business lines first’ – in response to this year’s economic upheaval.”

They noted that “across Europe and the UK, it is thought as much as a quarter of Microsoft’s citizenship PR spend is being shelved. Similar cuts have been made in Asia, while a source said pullbacks in global and US budgets were imminent.” 

Microsoft’s PR director said the claims were incorrect and that CSR communications remains an important focus area for the company.  Even still, their agencies in Europe and the UK are none too happy.  One “agency source involved in the process” said that budget cuts on the CSR front will ”hit hard at Mic­rosoft’s reputation as a committed advocate of long-term CSR policies.”

The article goes on to say, “Microsoft account dir­ectors at key agencies said specific programmes affected by the PR cuts include the Imagine Cup student technology competition and CSR work around human trafficking. Other PR budgets under threat include the BizSpark initiative that pairs start-ups with Microsoft software, and the Unlimited Potential community technology programme. ‘These initiatives will definitely happen, but PR support will go down, and a lot of the stories are driven by PR outreach,’ said a source.

It seems to me that the unnamed agency sources griping about cuts are missing a couple of key points. 

First off, corproate social responsibility is about outcomes, not outputs.  Microsoft isn’t cutting the actual socially-responsible programs or abandoning their commitment to community and environmental initaitives, they’re reducing the investment they make in getting credit for those good works.  25% fewer press releases, media hits, etc. doesn’t make the actual CSR activity any less effective, it just reduces the “look at me” factor. 

Second, a good PR team could turn the fact that even amidst the current economic ice age, Microsoft is maintaining its commitment to the environment and the community.  Facing the need to reduce expeditures associated with CSR, Microsoft weighed the importance of ‘looking good’ and ‘doing good’ and decided the later was far more important.   Sounds like the right decision to me…perhaps even a bit noble.

A bit of advice for the agency exec offering up pearls of wisdom on how hard a PR budget reduction will hit their client’s ”reputation as a committed advocate of long-term CSR policies”…be very glad you’re not losing 100% of the budget.  There are plenty of other agencies willing to take over that assignment at the reduced budget level, and who could enhance and extend Microsoft’s reputation as a CSR advocate regardless.

msacks CSR Corporate Reputation