What today's business reality makes clear is that brands cannot survive in a society that is failing economically, socially, ethically, and morally.

Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn't happen overnight by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credible and aligned with their values.

How well you tell your story determines how well your customers tell your story.

The theory of social contracts extends as far back as Plato. However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.

When thinking through who to bring together to generate new ideas, it is more effective to combine specialists from very different and unrelated disciplines rather than a variety of people with different skills sets in the same field.

Through their own actions, customers can hold companies responsible to higher standards of social responsibility. Through collective action, they can leverage their dollars to combat the force of those investors who myopically pursue profits at the expense of the rest of society.

The most impactful way consumers can assert their power is to become mindful shoppers, giving their dollars only to socially responsible companies. In today’s world of social media and smart phones, this is easy to do.