Member exclusive: How Tapestry uses a ‘wheel of influence’ to operationalize its ESG communications

By Justin Joffe, editor-in-chief, Ragan Communications

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During this month’s member call, Tapestry Director of ESG Communications Jackie Albano walked us through how the clothing company — which owns Kate Spade, Coach and Stuart Weitzman—thinks about promoting its ESG content.

“This goes back to operationalizing ESG communications,” Albano said. “Every single time I have a story to tell, I go through this wheel of influence and I look at, ‘Where can I tell this story?’ Where can I share it? How can I post it?’ It’s kind of a checklist.”

Albano acknowledged that this stakeholder mix is unique to Tapestry,  but believes the approach is replicable for other members. “What I’ve done here is essentially outlined all the different channels that we have," she explained, "and all these channels also feed into audiences.”

After doing that, Albano can take the story and strategize where to place it. She shared one example of having a story ready about sustainability and packaging. She knows that her store ops and people running stores are particularly interested in that because they’re the ones receiving the products and seeing how those products are packaged.

“They’re also the ones who are engaging with our customers in our stores, and able to talk about our packaging, how we’re reducing our packaging and using recycled materials, all those things,” she explained. “And I know that an interview I’m doing with our new head of packaging, I’m definitely going to put that story in our store operations newsletter. I’m definitely going to post it on our intranet.”

Albano also said she planned to distribute the example piece on 3BL, a content distribution platform and great way to get stories out to folks who our interested in CSR content.

Check out the rest of Albano’s presentation here: