Corporate social responsibility

A standard is only worth teaching if you hold yourself to it first

The Centre puts its responsibility in two places: making access to this knowledge genuinely open, and publishing a position on responsible practice that we can be held to when we get it wrong.

Our responsible AI stance Partner with us

Initiatives

Four commitments with a cost attached

Each of these gives something away that we could otherwise charge for. That is what makes them commitments rather than marketing.

Open Seats

Access to education

A share of every paid cohort is held for people who could not otherwise attend.

For each paid cohort the Centre runs, a fixed number of places is reserved and given at no cost to marketers from not-for-profits, community organisations and charities, and to practitioners between roles. Applicants are not asked to demonstrate hardship in writing or to justify their circumstances to a panel. They ask, and if a seat is open they take it. The reserved places are filled before general registration opens, so they are never quietly absorbed by demand.

The Regional Program

Geographic equity

Teaching and roundtables taken outside the eastern capital cities.

Most marketing education in this country happens in Sydney and Melbourne, which means practitioners in regional centres and smaller states pay for flights and accommodation on top of a ticket, or they go without. The Centre commits to running a meaningful part of its calendar elsewhere, and to delivering the full foundations curriculum online at a lower price for participants outside the major metropolitan areas. Where a regional industry group wants to host, we bring the program to them rather than asking their members to travel.

Sector Support

Not-for-profit capability

Pro bono advisory hours for charities and community organisations.

Not-for-profit marketing teams are usually small, usually stretched, and are being offered the same tools as everyone else with none of the budget to evaluate them properly. The Centre sets aside advisory hours each quarter for these organisations: a working session on a specific decision they are facing, whether that is a tool they are considering, a policy they need to write, or a measurement problem they cannot resolve. No engagement is contingent on becoming a member or buying anything.

Public Record

Open knowledge

Research, frameworks and teaching material published openly rather than gated.

Everything the Centre learns that can be published, is published. Frameworks, policy templates, evaluation approaches and the substance of our thought leadership go out free and unregistered, without a form standing in front of them. We take the view that an industry body which discovers something useful and then charges the industry to hear it has confused its purpose with its revenue model. Members fund the work and get the depth, the cohorts and the room; the knowledge itself belongs to the field.

Community impact

What we hold ourselves to, in plain terms

We publish commitments rather than counts. A number without a method behind it is decoration, and this Centre argues against exactly that practice everywhere else.

Reserved placesHeld in every paid cohort for not-for-profit and between-roles practitioners.
Published openlyResearch, frameworks and policy templates released without registration or payment.
Quarterly hoursAdvisory time set aside for charities and community organisations, with no strings attached.
Beyond the capitalsA committed share of the annual calendar delivered outside Sydney and Melbourne.

Responsible AI stance

Six principles for marketing, written to decide real cases

A principle that cannot rule out a specific decision is a slogan. These are written to be applied to work in progress, including our own, and they are the standard our teaching is built on.

Disclosure is the default

When a person could reasonably want to know that what they are reading, seeing or speaking to was machine generated, they should be told. Our position is that disclosure belongs in the work itself rather than buried in a policy page, and that the burden of proof sits with the marketer who wants to stay silent, not with the audience asking. We teach disclosure as a craft problem: how to say it plainly, in the right place, without turning every piece of content into a legal notice.

A person is accountable for every published thing

Automation can produce the work. It cannot hold responsibility for it. Every piece of marketing that reaches an audience should have a named human who approved it and who would answer for it if it were wrong, misleading or offensive. This is not a brake on speed, it is the thing that makes speed survivable. Teams that cannot name that person for a given output have a governance gap, not a technology problem.

Consent is not a technicality

Data that a customer provided for one purpose does not become available for every purpose because a new capability made it useful. The reasonable expectation of the person who gave you the data is the standard, and it is a higher standard than the minimum a terms-of-service page can be argued to permit. Australian marketers should expect community expectations here to keep tightening, and should build on the assumption that what is barely defensible today will be plainly unacceptable soon.

Personalisation has a limit, and it is set by dignity

The technical ceiling on how precisely a person can be targeted is now far above the ethical one. Inference about health, financial distress, sexuality, immigration status or vulnerability should not be used to sell, whether or not the inference is accurate and whether or not the data was lawfully obtained. We treat the question “would this person be uncomfortable knowing how we reached them” as a real design constraint rather than a discussion for later.

Likeness and voice belong to people

Synthetic representation of a real person requires that person’s informed, specific and revocable permission, including for people whose image or voice your organisation has previously licensed for conventional use. A general release signed for a photo shoot is not permission to generate new performances. This applies to staff and to customers as much as to talent, and the Centre teaches it as a hard boundary rather than an area for commercial judgement.

Say what you do not know

Modelled measurement produces estimates, and estimates carry uncertainty. Presenting a modelled number to a client or a board with the same confidence as a counted one is a form of dishonesty, even when it is unintentional and even when the model is good. We teach marketers to state their uncertainty out loud, because a profession that overstates its certainty will eventually be believed less on everything, including the things it is right about.

These principles are reviewed annually with the membership and with the Responsible Practice Director, whose specific brief is to argue against them. Where a member believes the Centre has failed to meet its own standard, that is a matter for the board and we would rather hear it early.

Partnership

Fund the access, not the message

Partners underwrite the Centre’s public programs: the reserved seats, the regional calendar and the open research library. It is a real contribution to an industry that needs this knowledge to reach past the organisations that can afford it.

What partnership does not buy is a platform. No speaking slot, no editorial influence, no recommendation, no early sight of anything we are about to publish. Support is acknowledged clearly and kept entirely separate from what the Centre says. If that separation is a problem for your organisation, this is the wrong partnership and we would rather establish that early.

Apply as a partner How we are governed

You fundOpen seats, regional delivery, published research
You receiveClear acknowledgement, separated from editorial
You do not receiveSpeaking slots, endorsements or editorial influence
ReviewedAnnually, by the board