Marketing & sustainability: oil & water?
Our guests:
Lucy Carver - BSkyB
Lucy Jenkins - HSBC
Christopher Wellbelove - BT
Ninder Takhar - BT
Martin Casey - Cemex
Andrea Hopkins - Kimberly Clark
Marianne Mwaniki - Standard Chartered
Toby Webb - Ethical Corporation
Richard Foulerton - Allianz
What makes a product sustainable? Companies have a view, customers have a view, critics have a view. Rarely do they match.
But that’s not to say that one or other is necessarily wrong. It just means that if you’re marketing something as sustainable, you have to have a clear definition of what makes it sustainable, and communicate that well.
It’s this clarity in communication that will stop critics from tainting a product, company or industry with the greenwash brush. As one guest commented, “It only takes a few products to be misleading and any claim of sustainability is undermined.”
One resounding sentiment is that if you think a claim is in any way misleading or wrong, don’t claim it at all. Question, even, whether marketing a product on the back of its sustainability credentials might actually devalue it or your brand. After all, is it worth marketing something whose impact is small, compared with the reductions you could have made had you focused elsewhere?
Consumers aren’t stupid either. It’s key to understand them – know when they’re looking for value over anything else; know when they’re looking for quality over anything else. Usually sustainability will come after these and when it does, every claim has to be substantiated – otherwise you’ll be found out. You have to be able to prove to consumers that what you’re saying is gospel. They’re too astute these days to be sucked in by a clever strapline.
How you do this is constantly evolving. The latest craze is the social networks that have brought the world together. Through them, consumers combine to create a buzz. It’s up to you whether that buzz makes or breaks your offering.
If your product is being slated by online forums, do you sit back and let the popular opinion snowball, or confront the ill-feeling? Equally, when does astroturfing – blogging about your product until your green fingers fall off – become too much and detract from your credibility? (See Context’s Sustainability in Context blog for a discussion on corporate blogging.)
It’s a thin line, but one that companies need to start walking in this technological age.
