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.
Swarovski, UCLA Shine Light on Water Protection, Education in New Documentary
A new film, WATERSCHOOL, takes viewers on a journey with several young female students who live along six of the world’s major rivers — the Amazon, Mississippi, Danube, Nile, Ganges and Yangtze — to shine a light on the importance of safeguarding the continued supply of fresh water and the work of the Swarovski Waterschool education and community investment progra
Corporates Are Making Activism Great Again
Corporations are people, my friend — and not just for tax purposes anymore. In the age of ubiquitous social media pressure, businesses are rebranding as social justice warriors — and that’s a shrewd marketing move on their part, new research reveals.
Dove, Nike, Hershey’s Among Millennials’, Gen Z’s Most Trusted Brands
The erosion of trust among consumers – and especially young consumers bucketed as Millennials or Gen Z – is top-of-mind for brands fighting for brand loyalty in a world with the highest youth population in history.
JUST Capital’s New Tool Helps Citizens See, Compare US Companies’ Environmental Impact
A new interactive data visualization tool allows the general to see how the largest U.S. companies stack up when comparing their environmental impact. The Environmental Explorer, which is freely available, lets users explore rankings of the 1,000 largest public U.S.
Consumers Ready to Reward Brands That Take Stands
When Dick’s Sporting Goods bans the sale of assault rifles, or McDonald’s makes a commitment to get 100 percent of its packaging from renewable, recycled or certified sources by 2025, how does their position in the marketplace change?
Max Burgers’ New Green Burger Emojis Bite into Debate, Highlight Climate Smart Food Options
Not long ago, where the cheese is put on the hamburger emoji triggered an online debate that resulted in Google updating its version to position it atop the patty, rather than underneath. Swedish fast food chain Max Burgers, which recently launched the world’s first climate-positive burgers, wants to start a different conversation, about the patties themselves.
One Size Does Not Fit All: Brands Creating Bespoke ‘Purpose’ Strategies
At SB’18 Vancouver, over 2,000 representatives from our global community of sustainability practitioners, brand strategists, product and service innovators, thought leaders and other change-makers converged to share their latest insights on a multitude of themes pertinent to all of those committed to improving business around the world. Here, we dig into how brands are finding unique ways to embed social and environmental purpose into all touchpoints. Brands taking a stand! By Lorraine Schuchart
P&G Takes Pledge to #FreeTheBid, Promote Gender Equality in Media, Advertising
Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world’s largest advertiser, advanced its commitment to gender equality through a series of new actions and partnerships announced at the 2018 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Live Well San Diego: Creating Social Change Through Collective Impact
The recent SB'18 Vancouver conference was a fitting stage to share the success story of Live Well San Diego, a visionary partnership that’s creating measurable progress toward a region that’s healthy, safe, and thriving.
Can Blockchain Really Answer All of Our Transparency Challenges?
For some, blockchain is the disruptive technology that promises to solve transparency problems by creating one version of the truth; for others, it is all hype with no great real-world application other than cryptocurrency. I attended an SB’18 Vancouver workshop on “How Blockchain Technology Can Power Superior Supply Chain Innovation and Understanding” to move closer to understanding blockchain and its applications.
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.
Marketers, Neuroscientists Demystify 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.
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.