Orange RockCorps volunteering - “Yes, and…where’s the social capital”

Orange is now using primetime advertising to promote its RockCorps social volunteering programme. Kudos is due.

My question is - how will they evaluate the success of this programme?

If the company makes it work, it’s the energy and community productivity generated that will constitute the value of the initiative; not the SMS bundles sold. The number of hours donated, or playgrounds renovated is a wholly inadequate proxy for the social capital generated by a campaign like this…

The next challenge for social communicators like Orange is to effectively model the social capital generated both by AND for the brand. This in turn, will create a new focus on planning and building productive networks (what get measured gets done, after all).