Institute for Business in Society

With the onset of COVID-19, it was incredibly important for businesses to reach out to their consumers and preserve those consumers’ loyalty. Darden Professor Kimberly Whitler, an expert in marketing strategy and brand management, investigated how marketing teams were communicating with customers during the crisis.

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin stated that people fall into two categories: the fox and the hedgehog. Professor Mary Gentile shares her thoughts on why they must co-exist and work together.

Fiscal policy is a powerful tool to combat economic downturns, but the results depend on decreasing inequality, an imperative to the efficacy of fiscal multipliers. As COVID-19 cases rise, new research offers insights into which fiscal policies may bolster the economy — and the other options, which may have long-term ramifications.

Netflix is investing $100 million in financial institutions that support Black-owned banks and Black communities. This investment isn’t just socially responsible in fueling opportunity; research shows that Black-owned banks outperform non-minority-owned peers. How does that reconcile with data that imply decline in success? Lack of initial assets.

Around 90 percent of the cases of blindness in Ethiopia are avoidable. Restoring and maintaining sight frequently depends on corneal transplants, but those require access, and the global demand is greater than the supply. One partnership created a system to meet 100 percent of the current demand for quality corneal tissue in Ethiopia.

Grassroots organizations are engines for transformation but lack stable funding. To address these challenges, IAF and the Mott Foundation created a public-private partnership to put underserved communities in control of projects that improve quality of life, foster civic engagement and contribute to a more robust democracy in Mexico.

The greatest global health challenge for children is disease related to water, sanitation and hygiene. To address these health challenges, Sesame Workshop and World Vision established the Wash Up! initiative with the ultimate goal of reducing the number of children suffering or dying from preventable and treatable diseases.

Too often, well-meaning aid programs meet bare-minimum standards of quality — just “good enough” for the world’s poorest people. But by addressing “wicked problems” through the lens of design thinking and a social business model, one public-private partnership has been able to improve the health and livelihood of residents in eastern Congo.

Noncommunicable diseases lead to over 90 percent of all deaths in Ukraine, many of them preventable. With technological advancements and the removal of financial barriers, one public-private partnership is working to deliver essential services to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment and medicine to patients at little to no cost.

How Jeep and Bill Murray responded to a pandemic: a popular Super Bowl commercial for an SUV reincarnated as a message encouraging consumers to stay home and off the road. Here are an expert marketer’s observations of how brands shifted when faced with an integral shift in the way the world did business and people lived their lives.