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.
Frameworks to SHIFT Behavior, Create MAPS for Product Marketing
How to get consumers to choose sustainable over conventional remains a puzzling question, but two sessions I attended at SB’18 Vancouver provided frameworks to help brands make some headway. One highlighted actionable ways practitioners can influence consumers to behave more sustainably with the SHIFT framework. In the other, Nice and Serious drew parallels to the story of David and Goliath to introduce the MAPS and MEE frameworks to help companies compete with conventional products.
The Conscious Consumer vs. the Consumer Unconscious
Last week, over 2,000 representatives from our global community of sustainability practitioners, brand strategists, product and service innovators, thought leaders and other change-makers convened at SB’18 Vancouver. Attendees shared their latest insights on a multitude of themes pertinent to improving business around the world. Here, we dig into brand and organizational efforts to get consumers to deliver their part of the sustainability equation, by putting their money where their mouths are.
Deep Time Walk: Helping Brands to Engage with the SDGs
The idea of the Deep Time Walk is simple but incredibly powerful: When dealing with the vast dimensions of time and space, we are often unable to grasp the magnitude quantitatively, just through studying the numbers. A Deep Time Walk allows us to walk the timeline of the history of the Earth and also universe, and thus for example, on a walk of 4.6km, if we start with the birth of Earth, each one-metre step represents one million years.
Study: Purpose Now Rivals Cost, Quality for Attracting, Retaining, Engaging Consumers
Purpose-driven brands can build stronger emotional connections with consumers that go far beyond a transactional relationship, according to the newly released 2018 Cone/Porter Novelli Purpose Study. Nearly eight in ten (79 percent) say they are more loyal to purpose-driven companies and would tell others to buy products from those companies (78 percent), while two-thirds (66 percent) say they would switch brands and over half (57 percent) would pay more.
Can Transparency Alone Transform the Fashion Industry?
Cross-Posted from Organizational Change. Transparency has become a bit of a buzzword in the fashion industry and judging by the number of times it was mentioned at this year’s Copenhagen Fashion Summit, it is a trend that we are not going to shake anytime soon. Quite the contrary, transparency is reshaping how brands and retailers interact with their suppliers and consumers. But can it really transform the entire fashion industry? C&A Foundation’s Leslie Johnston hosted a panel of experts to find out.
HP-Powered Girl Rising Creative Challenge Seeks Stories of Girl Power, Action for Gender Parity
Are you or someone you know helping create a gender equal world? Individuals are being invited to share stories of initiatives big and small in the form of video, audio, essays and artwork as submissions to the Girl Rising Creative Challenge, Powered by HP.
Machine-Readable Disclosure and ESEF 2020 – A New Era of Corporate Digital Reporting?
New regulation in the EU mandates public companies to file financial statements in digital format. Does the move to HTML and Big Data have the potential to push corporate reporting into the digital age?
Something > Nothing: The Importance of a Circular Feedback Loop
“All I really need is the word to be brought up.” “If they aren’t talking about it, then it can’t be important to them.” At WAP Sustainability, we work with manufacturers and brands to help them meet customers’ expectations on sustainability, many of which receive requests through The Sustainability Consortium (TSC).
Nat Geo's 'Planet or Plastic?' Initiative Latest Attempt to Save the Oceans from Plastic
As the amount of single-use plastic in the world's oceans continues to grow, National Geographic is announcing a new, global commitment to tackle this pressing problem. On Wednesday, the media giant launched Planet or Plastic?, a multiyear initiative aimed at raising awareness of this challenge and reducing the amount of single-use plastic that enters the world's oceans.
New Animated TV Show Aims to Teach Kids to Be Stewards for the Planet, SDGs
A new television series is under development to help teach children about sustainability and what they can do to help keep our planet beautiful. With a goal to inspire and guide 4- to 7-year-old children to become global citizens as they grow up, the five Alphabravos heroes will traverse the planet righting wrongs, foiling the evil Mdudu’s plans, having fun and learning.
Rapport: ‘The Gateway Drug of Sustainability Data’
As we get ready to select our semi-finalists for the 2018 Sustainable Brands Innovation Open, we wanted to check in with last year’s semi-finalists to learn about the impacts they continue to have on the business world. Here, we catch up with Rapport.
Survey: Majority of Americans Concerned About Contaminants in Tap Water
It’s National Drinking Water Week, but new survey results suggest Americans may have more concerns on their minds than reasons to celebrate. Most Americans feel unknowledgeable about what is in their drinking water and are concerned about contaminants.
Why Should Anyone Trust Your Brand?
Which brands do you really care about? Is there one you simply couldn’t do without? It’s a question that we rarely ask — so prevalent and dominant are companies and brands in our everyday lives. But while we’re dependent on the products and services that enable our modern existence, do we really care who makes them? The history of consumer culture is littered with once-dominant consumer brands that were replaced by newer, more relevant offerings. Today, in the Internet age, the shelf life of major brands is shorter than ever before. Consider powerful brands such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: None of these existed 15 years ago. Would you like to bet they will be around 10 years from now?
Fight for Love: Five Ways to Mobilize Millennials Behind Your Cause
For decades, the ASPCA has been advocating for better breeding practices and adoption for dogs with campaigns that focused on educating the public on where pet store dogs come from. But over time, the influx of digital technology has completely transformed how people get dogs. And Millennials, the largest generation of dog lovers ever, are increasingly relying on online sources, which makes it difficult to track where our furry friends are coming from.
What We Can Learn from B Corps' Big Bets on Customer Engagement
Today’s customers are choosing how to spend their dollars based on one of two factors: convenience or shared values. For example, Blue Apron, a grocery delivery company that makes it easier to cook healthy meals, is winning on convenience. But when you have the option of choosing between convenience services, as many customers do in the ride-hailing market, values determine the victor. Lyft is riding (pun intended) on the sharing-economy movement and gaining market share because of its commitment to fair practices with customers and employees. Customers tell their friends they “took a Lyft” as a signal of shared cultural values.
Creating a #FashionRevolution: How to Campaign for Change
Proposing a new idea and convincing others of its validity is no easy task. Even more so when you’re dealing with complex issues such as supply chain transparency, or trying to shift the ‘take, make and waste’ model of the fashion industry to one of circularity.
SC Johnson Reveals How It Selects Ingredients to Protect Human Health, Environment
People can now see, in detail, what goes into choosing each of the ingredients that are used in SC Johnson products.
The Environment Is Under Threat, But Not in the Way You May Think
Nearly 50 years ago, the U.S. passed legislation to ensure the air we breathe and water we drink is clean, and that endangered animals and federal lands are protected. For 20 years, enforcement of these laws ranged from full swing or lapsed, depending on the political winds. And then something remarkable occurred: The American people took over and started a movement, spurring action to protect the environment.
‘Beauty in Real Life’ Campaign Makes Good on CVS Promise to Stop Altering Imagery
CVS Health continues to put its money where its purpose is. Following up on the promise it made in January to stop altering imagery for beauty products, the company’s retail division, CVS Pharmacy, has launched an advertising campaign, “Beauty in Real Life.”
Beautiful Then, #TooLatergram Now: Photos Compare Former Glory to Current Reality
Is there any better platform than Instagram to turn the jealousy of wanderlust into environmental awareness? Followers scroll through the feeds of travel influencers, admiring the photos of scenic destinations and express their enjoyment with a 'like' and their envy in the comments. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and ad agency TBWA\Paris saw this as an opportunity to highlight how many beautiful places are being lost to pollution, clear-cutting and other forms of environmental destruction.
