Marketing and Comms
How brands are evolving in the area of sustainability marketing and communications — and how their stakeholders are asserting their own needs and preferences.
New Nat Geo, P&G Media Platform to ‘ACTIVATE’ Solutions to Global Issues
(6 days ago) - Nat Geo, P&G, Global Citizen launch storytelling partnership, documentary series to drive action around global challenges connected to extreme povertyWas I Asleep During This Year’s Super Bowl?
(1 week ago) - Quick laughs, bad jokes, celebrities — but very few with a message
Giving Consumers a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Sustainable Forestry
(2 weeks ago) - With certified companies such as Procter & Gamble, the FSC is advancing a strategy to help consumers understand the impacts of their purchases.
What Are the Fastest-Growing Social Issues Consumers Care About?
(2 weeks ago) - “If there is one take-away for brands after reviewing this study, we hope it’s this: What matters most to your stakeholders should matter the most to your company.”
2019: The Year of the Civic CEO
(3 weeks ago) - New mediums of communication, power and trust produced the Civic CEO, and she is here to stay.
‘We Believe’: Communicators Weigh In on P&G’s Controversial New Ad
(1 month ago) - We reached out to communication leaders in the SB community for their take on P&G’s spotlight on toxic masculinity.
Top 5 Companies That Effectively Amplified Their Impact in 2018
(1 month ago) - As we wrap up work for the year and prepare for 2019, we reflected back on all that occurred this year within our niche realm of sustainability communications — and when looking back, it was apparent that 2018 was the year of brands taking stands.
JUST Capital, Forbes Name America's Most JUST Companies for 2018
(2 months ago) - JUST Capital and Forbes today released the 2018 list of America’s Most JUST Companies, an annual ranking of the 1,000 largest publicly traded US corporations on the issues Americans care about most, including fair pay and good benefits, customer treatment and privacy, beneficial products, environmental impact, job creation, and community support in the US and abroad, as well as ethical leadership and long-term financial growth.
The Gen Z Breakthrough Brands and Why They Love 'Em
(2 months ago) - What Gen Z want from brands is the new Holy Grail for marketers — you only have to look at the myriad surveys and reports published recently that seek to analyze their preferences and intentions. This obsession with Gen Z is understandable — after all, this new generation of consumers already are two billion strong and have a combined $44 billion in purchasing power.
WWF Calls on Corporates to Implement Credible Mining Certification
(2 months ago) - WWF Germany recently published a report, Boom in Raw Materials: Between Profits and Losses, which offers one of the first concrete rebuttals from a major environmental group against the notion that industry actions alone are enough to move the global industrial mining sector towards greater responsibility.
Nat Geo's Susan Goldberg on Creating a Picture of Diversity
(3 months ago) - National Geographic has kept pace as the country’s demographics rapidly shift and the cultural definition of immigrants, identity and families continues to evolve, having recently launched a year-long series dedicated to exploring “Diversity in America.” With national conversations on race, immigration and diversity front and center, Susan Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Director at National Geographic Magazine and National Geographic Partners, spoke with MediaVillage about why it was time to take stock of these issues and how that might be done.
Iceland's Banned Ad Had the Potential to Democratise Sustainability
(3 months ago) - The news last week that the Christmas advert from Iceland — a UK supermarket chain specializing in frozen food — has been banned is a bad decision. Iceland’s advert — a repackaging of a short, animated film by Greenpeace released earlier this year with a powerful, consumer-friendly sustainability message — shows a brand that is trying to do good work by improving its impact on the world.
Celebrities as Social Entrepreneurs: What the Trend Means for You
(3 months ago) - A growing roster of celebrities are no longer satisfied with endorsing corporate products, instead creating (or at least investing in) their own. Think George Clooney, Dr.
'Earth Day Every Day': 4 Tips for Successful Corporate Activism
(3 months ago) - Companies have long run sustainability initiatives that exclude customers. To be fair, these companies have donated a percentage of profits to charities, volunteered employee time, reduced emissions, cleaned up supply chains, and much more. However, their customers have been on the sideline, sometimes aware but not personally engaged. Through corporate activism, brands can change this dynamic and make customers partners in their most meaningful sustainability initiatives. Here are some tips based on brands that have used it successfully.
How to Communicate Diversity and Inclusion When You Aren't Quite There Yet
(3 months ago) - While sustainability and citizenship mean different things to different people, these terms are most commonly associated with a company’s impact on the external world, focusing heavily on social and environmental initiatives. However, businesses can do a lot of good (for the world and their bottom line) by equally focusing internally, on such things as their diversity and inclusion practices.
To Market Sustainability, Focus on What Consumers Love, Not What They Hate
(3 months ago) - Early marketing for products promising sustainability was all about what they “weren’t.” Tofurky wasn’t meat. Soy milk wasn’t dairy. Solar wasn’t coal. Positioning against the negative helped companies attract consumers who were revolting against the polluting impacts of standard manufacturing practices and products. But doing so ignored what potential customers still wanted, whether a product was sustainable or not: delicious taste, high performance, reliable quality and comfort, and overall satisfaction. Consider the ominous ads for the first Prius, which started running in 2001. The only virtue they extolled was fuel efficiency, and portrayed oil drills as monsters.
Urban Brand Utility: Impact Branding for the Urbanising Century
(3 months ago) - The brand communications crisis is not an urban legend, albeit just as scary Between 2001 and 2002, Brazil went through its largest energy crisis. The lack of infrastructure planning combined with economic growth forced the Government to ration the energy supply from its main urban centres, for intermittent periods of time. Back then, as a student living in São Paulo, I remember streets darkening as the sun went down. In one of those evenings, walking back home from university, two men driving a motorcycle stopped right in front of me. One of them jumped off the bike and before I knew it, he hit me on the head with the back of his gun and stole my backpack.
Study Sees Progress Towards More Robust Reporting on Global Issues
(3 months ago) - Today, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and British creative consultancy Radley Yeldar released the sixth edition of Reporting matters — WBCSD’s annual review of member companies’ sustainability and integrated reports.
Activating Community: How Box Inspired Real-Time Digital Social Impact
(3 months ago) - How do you get a community to take immediate social action when you have just a handful of minutes onstage? This question doesn’t get asked often — or sound plausible — because most organizations have created an imaginary line between things that happen in ‘real life’ and things that happen in ‘digital life.’ At conferences, keynote speakers make their pitch for social action and hope, against the odds, that attendees will remember to donate to causes or email their lawmakers later.
140 US Companies Band Together to Rally More People to the Polls
(4 months ago) - Companies across the US have banded together to support the Time to Vote campaign, a nonpartisan effort led by CEOs aimed at increasing voter participation.