After living and breathing the economic downturn these past 15 months or so, I developed a summary of this situation and some new rules for marketers to live by to keep their brand valuable and viable through the tough times and beyond. The complete whitepaper can be dowloaded here.

My overall point-of-view is that we are seeing a permanent shift in attitudes towards spending and buying behavior. And, because the spending habits of the next generation are being formed in the current crucible, the impact on how we position and market brands will last well beyond the date that the Federal Government declares the recession over.

My initial thoughts focus on consumer brands. However, I recently participated in a panel discussion on brand marketing in a down economy at a Techcoire conference. The majority of the audience were business-to-business marketers who were somewhat skeptical of looking at their customers through the lens of the consumer. I agree that B-to-B has different challenges, but strongly encouraged the group to look at their business customers as “people” first. To ignore how their personal values have changed toward spending leaves out the emotional side of the purchasing decision. In other words, a purchasing manager who is concerned about his job/family/mortgage is going to think very differently than a secure, well paid one.

In understanding how to keep your brand relevant in the Age of Frugality, perhaps the most important thing to come to grips with is that we are experiencing a fundamental, permanent shift in values and buying behavior. It is a change that will be good for your customers, the country and the global economy. To be successful, your brand must take into account the challenges your customers face and become empathetic with their emerging values.

Now, building brand value is wholly dependent upon understanding how your customers values have evolved. Getting it right is essential for both short-term survival and long-term growth.

I attended the Silicon Valley Brand Forum’s session on cause marketing this week. Given the sea change in America against major brands, I was looking for some insights into how some of the big technology brands were thinking about cause marketing and corproate responsibility as a whole.

The session opened with an updated presentation on the psychology of giving, with implications for how doing good can dramatically improve brand value. The presentation, by Jennifer Aaker of Stanford, gave me the title of this post. Most interesting to me was the ability to see into the future by understanding the importance of social responsibility to Millennials. Looking forward, it will be critical for companies to Do Good if they expect to employ, do commerce with, or gain investment from Millennials–this generation has caring in its DNA.

The panel, moderated by Melissa Dyrdahl of Bring Light, was made up of two brand directors, Susan Space of Sun Microsystems and Cheryl Sawyer of Cisco, Alicia Sieger of Terrapass, and Jamie Hartman of the Taproot Foundation. The discussion focused on what Cisco and Sun were doing, how they evaluate cause marketing sponsorships and what the future might hold from a budget perspective for future efforts. Overall, these companies do a lot of good; they provide opportunities for their employees to participate, and they don’t go out of their way to over-commercialize their efforts.

Terrapass is a company that enables others to do good by offsetting their carbon footprint. They are in the Doing Good for the Environment business. It was interesting to note that, while Cisco and Sun managed their cause marketing programs through their corporate or brand marketing teams, Terrapass is working with other groups in their customer companies, creating a much more institutionalized way of Doing Good.

Taproot brought the facilitation role to the table, helping companies select and manage how they get involved with causes. One of the most interesting comments from Jamie Hartman of Taproot, was that companies can kill a charity by trying to help it. We were asked to consider the situation of 100 employee of a company descending on a school or shelter for several hours of volunteer work. The same shelter gets a similar offer from another company a month later. The charitable organization is not going to say “no.” On the other hand, you can only paint the same wall so many times. The point being: if a company really wants to have an impact, a more thoughtful, strategic approach to doing good is required.

From my perspective, “cause marketing” is a topic that is going to go through some changes over the next several years, much the same way that “green marketing” has. It is not going to be enough for companies to participate in causes via their marketing groups and employee events. To be authentic, companies are going to have to make “Doing Good” part of their culture and part of what their brand stands for.

The benefits are easy to see. A company that makes Doing Good part of their brand will see benefits in terms of the customers they get and how long they keep them, the employees they attract, how hard they work and how long they stay with the company, and even the amount of investment they can get in their company. That seems like a good definition for Doing Well by Doing Good.