Connor Brooke
Image credit: nezezon / 123RF Stock Photo
Sustainable marketing and green marketing are major elements supporting the brand because CONSUMERS care about limiting their carbon footprint — leaving the earth for future generations to enjoy.
Increasingly, consumers vote with their dollars to support brands who promote their sustainable marketing and green marketing efforts.
What is sustainable marketing?
Sustainable marketing can take 2 forms.
1. Sustainable marketing involves publicizing your efforts to be socially and environmentally responsible — cutting down production of greenhouse gases, reducing waste, and using resources wisely.
Of course, sustainable marketing is like anything else in marketing — perceptions become reality. For instance, experts argue the batteries installed in hybrid vehicles actually represent a GREATER danger to the environment than the carbon reduction from using less fossil fuel. Production of these batteries strain supplies of the rare earth elements required to produce them which certainly doesn’t fit with notions of sustainability. So, while Toyota and other leading hybrid manufacturers get rave reviews from consumers when it comes to sustainable marketing, in reality their cars are probably an environmental wash representing as many drawbacks and benefits to the environment.
2. Sustainable marketing involves undertaking marketing efforts to get YOUR consumers to act in more environmentally sustainable ways.
Here are some examples of this type of sustainable marketing:
- McDonald’s sponsors efforts to reduce waste caused by consumers who indiscriminately through McDonald’s wrappers and bags into the environment.
- Energy companies offer conservation tips and products to help consumers conserve natural resources.
- Grocery stores encourage consumers to use re-usable bags or recycle their used grocery bags.
Truly sustainable marketing is hard
I recently heard an esteemed marketing professor chart the woes of his client in achieving sustainability. Sustainable marketing is really a tough notion to implement because environmental threats come from sources you’d never imagine contributing to your carbon footprint.
In his example, a dairy switched to environmentally friendly packaging and bought a fleet of hybrid vehicles to move their milk to market. Yet, evaluations still showed their carbon footprint was significantly higher than hoped. Further evaluation showed that the amount of greenhouse gas produced by the cows themselves far outweighed those produced in processing, packaging, and transporting the milk to market. Even natural sources can be significant producers of greenhouse gases.
Attempting consumer behavioral changes necessary for sustainable marketing is even more challenging. Consumers don’t LIKE change. During WWII, efforts to get consumers to eat more organ meats due to shortages met with very limited success and years to preaching energy and water conservation produced few adherents.
Some states, like DC and Maryland, impose a charge for consumers who wish disposable bags at restaurants, grocery stores, and shops, which resulted in much lower usage of these bags. Credits on Federal Income Taxes also encouraged homeowners and others to save energy. An impressive program used peer pressure to encourage neighbors to limit their energy usage.
Implementing sustainable marketing
Sure, you can be like Toyota and create the image of sustainable marketing without creating true sustainability. Of course, the danger is loss of consumer confidence should they ever become convinced of your deception.
Here are some sustainable marketing practices to consider
- Sense of mission marketing – for instance, Pedigree promotes pet adoption by running advertising campaigns aimed at adoption over buying pets and donates money to support the activities of pet shelters.
- Socially responsible marketing – marketing safer, more environmentally friendly products and packaging such as Method brand of home products that feature low sulphur cleaning products.
- Emphasize innovative, customer driven products rather than lower value products that must be replaced over time – planned obsolescence.
- Conduct a sustainability audit to determine points where the company produces waste, consumes energy, or increases consumer packaging with an eye toward reducing or eliminating them.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Dear Angela,
Thank you for writing this piece. There is a lot of confusion about green marketing and how it works. One of the biggest issues we face is from within the marketing/communication and advertising industry which for the most part is absent from the discussion of sustainability in general.
Add to that the lack of choices advertisers have when it comes to the media they can use to communicate their messages. A green or sustainable message communicated with unsustainable forms of media is confusing at best.
Take a look at out door media. Out door advertising consumes huge amounts of resources and uses an enormous amount of electricity. For the most part, these advertisements have a very short life span and wind up in our land fills, incinerators or recycling centers (though even this is questionable).
Our industry seems to have managed to avoid the cross hairs that almost all other industries have been in. Until the public is made aware of the environmental impact of mass media, it seems that we will simply continue our business as usual approach to communication.
It is not fair for consumers or our governments to demand companies act more responsibly when there really are no choices available to do so.
The next big thing in outdoor advertising, the “innovation” are digital billboards that consume between 15 and 30 times the amount of electricity as an average household. Yes, no more printing but 30,000 LCD bulbs still has an impact. Just what is an advertiser to do? The only choice is to limit their communications and that is not a choice.
The choice is to find alternative being offered by a new industry sector call “natural media” a fast growing sector that has grown from fewer then 5 companies 5 years ago to well over 100. Water, sand, moss, milkpaint and other natural materials are used to produce communications that have a high impact on the audience but a low impact on the environment.
The draw back of course is that brands need to have courage to use these new forms of media as local governments have for the most part been unable to figure out if they will allow this new from of advertising or not. Let’s remember that most cities have long term contracts with out door media agencies and the funds they generate for the cities are needed to help fill city coffers. The real question is, “should the public space be commercialised by smaller companies” or should only the large media companies be able to do this. The way things work right now most media companies have exclusive rights and that is not fair competition nor in the true spirit of capitalism.
Green Marketing is in it’s infancy and there is a lot of growing up it needs to do before it will be taken seriously. Let’s hope for a time warp!
Jim Bowes
Founder GreenGraffiti
Thanks, Jim. You make some very good points — and ones I’d never considered before. Whenever I think about Green Marketing, I think about firms making and implementing sustainable practice plans for their operations. But, obviously, that can and should extend to their marketing communication choices.
Angie