If you live in London you might have noticed everyone has gone ele-crazy. Thanks to the Elephant Parade which is the ‘largest financial support organisation for elephants’ in the world, there are 258 lifesize Elephant sculptures displayed around the Capital. For me it all started a few weeks ago when I spotted one on Carnaby St, then another near Marble Arch. The same evening I was in a kebab shop in Surbiton where I happened to learn that the kebab chef’s first English word was Elephant. OK, slightly random maybe but on closer questioning it turns out he used to live in Elephant and Castle. One of the girls at work started reading Water for Elephants. The Elephution seems to have begun….

So I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when the other day I was walking down Carnaby St (again) and spotted one of our clients campaigning next to a sky blue elephant adorned in hand-painted clouds giving out T-shirts, balloons and generally signing up petitioners to support the Elephant Parade and save the Asian elephant. This ele-vision was brought to us by no other than salesforce.com. They beautifully married the cause with the product by creating a campaign to save an elephant named Cloudia. The relevance being that salesforce.com is all about the cloud computing.

As I registered my personal support I chatted with one of the salesforce team who enlightened me about their fantastic work scheme – every employee at salesforce is given six days a year which they can spend on charitable works of their choice. How lovely is that?

A fantastic cause, a great (and clever) partnership and a committed brand. THAT is what CSR is all about.