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.
3 Approaches to Building Customer Trust Through Transparency
In February, KFC in the United Kingdom had a bit of an issue — it ran out of chicken.
The Cost of Bad Data for Sustainability Reporting
Sustainability reporting focuses on the challenges that most affect business performance and matter most to key stakeholders. From understanding consumption and cost of inefficiencies and anomalies, clear reporting is mission critical to any organization’s ability to meet sustainability goals. But sustainability reports are only as impactful as the quality of the data that is being used. If the data driving your reports is incomplete or inaccurate, you could be compromising the nature of your assessments. Just like the quality of soil is important for the growth of a tree, the quality of your data is just as important for growing your sustainability programs.
Icebreaker Aims to Prove Its Apparel Is ‘Made Different’ with New Transparency Report
Outdoor apparel brand Icebreaker has reinforced its commitment to the use of natural fibres and sustainable production with the launch of its inaugural Transparency Report: Made Different. Touting it as an industry first, the report gives readers a full behind-the-scenes view of the brand’s entire operation. “Our thinking was simple. What if our customers could see everything we do?’’ explained Greg Smith, the CEO of Icebreaker.
One Planet Plate Campaign Highlights Sustainable Food on 1K UK Menus
The Sustainable Restaurant Association’s (SRA) latest campaign is “helping people understand what sustainable food looks, smells and tastes like,” says its president Raymond Blanc OBE.
Canopy Sheds Light on Link Between Fashion, Rainforests in New Short Film
While textile waste and human rights are often the focus of conversations surrounding sustainability in the fashion industry, most consumers remain unaware of the sector’s impact on forests and the wildlife and communities that rely on them. In a bid to raise awareness around the need to protect this valuable natural resource, Canopy, an environmental organization dedicated to protecting the world’s forests, has launched a new video for International Day of Forests that connects clothing to the rainforests of Northern Sumatra.
P&G, Nat Geo Shed Light on Global Water Crisis in New Documentary
One in 10 people around the world lacks access to clean drinking water, yet the majority of US consumers are unaware of the extent of the global water crisis, new research from Procter & Gamble (P&G) shows.
CDP Identifies Gap Between Corporate Intention, Action on Tackling Climate Risks
A new report from CDP and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) shows a gap between the way companies identify climate-related risks and opportunities, and how they are preparing to tackle them.
E.ON’s New ‘Un-Utility’ Marketing Campaign Looks to the Future of Energy
Electricity and gas company E.ON Energy has launched a new campaign in hopes of challenging the norms in the utilities sector and exploring what can be done differently. The first ad shows Barcelona’s city streets transformed into a giant swimming pool that is heated by E.ON’s air source heat pumps. This E.ON technology has already heated an Olympic-sized swimming pool by harnessing energy in the air, combined with electricity. The ad, of course, imagines this technology’s capabilities on a much larger scale.
WWF Challenges Creatives to Make Sustainability Sexy, Mainstream
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is challenging the marketing industry to use its influence to help deliver a more sustainable future with the launch of Project Extraordinary, a global video challenge that will see creative agencies produce short films to demonstrate how sustainability can be desirable and sexy.
What I Learned from 14 Years of Shooting ‘Images from a Warming Planet’
Over the past fourteen years, photographer Ashley Cooper amassed the world’s single largest collection of images documenting the impacts of climate change and renewable energy projects around the world, which have just been published in a book entitled Images From a Warming Planet. Jonathon Porritt, who wrote the foreword for the book, called it “An extraordinary collection of images and a powerful call to action.” Here, Cooper recounts the highs, lows and lessons learned during his journey.
Trending: Int'l Women's Day Spawns Host of Social Impact Partnerships, Films, Campaigns
At a moment when the world is beginning to more fully acknowledge the power and voice of women, big name brands and organizations are using their influence — and some creative marketing — to shed light on issues such as the gender pay gap and the lack of opportunities for women in STEM.
Air New Zealand Sheds Light on Climate Change in New Safety Video
Air New Zealand has uncovered a unique way to use its global reach to spark a conversation around climate change. In partnership with Antarctica New Zealand and the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute, the airline has created a new safety video that showcases the frozen continent and highlights the important climate and environmental science taking place there.
New Transparency Initiative Aims to Boost Responsible Ship Recycling Practices
In a bid to increase responsible shipping practices, Forum for the Future and the Sustainable Shipping Initiative have launched the Ship Recycling Transparency Initiative (SRTI). The Initiative brings together key industry stakeholders to improve transparency in the global ship recycling value chain by facilitating voluntary disclosure of recycling practices and related data by ship owners, and to support the use of this information to inform decision-making.
Employees Are Your Best Purpose Ambassadors
This is the fourth in a series of articles examining how business leaders and companies can transform their corporate culture in order to succeed in the midst of the impending Purpose Revolution. Find links to the full series below.
How to Take Stakeholder Engagement to the Next Level
Companies are investing in corporate responsibility programs with the goal of making a positive contribution to the communities and environments in which they operate. Successful corporate responsibility programs emphasize engagement with various stakeholders, including customers, partners, governments, and employees. In today's changing communications landscape, stakeholders have an important role in shaping these programs. Stakeholder engagement is critical to the shared success of corporate responsibility programs. It is time that companies take a fresh look at how to engage with these individuals to arrive at common goals and maximize collective resources.
Purpose-Driven Employees Are Your Strongest Brand Ambassadors
You’ve probably read the proliferation of literature about the benefits of hiring purpose-driven employees, which can result in increased productivity, higher retention rates, and more effective collaboration, just to name a few. But have you ever wondered how purpose-driven employees impact your organization’s branding and marketing?
Kering, LCF Launch First-Ever Open-Access Course for Sustainable Luxury Fashion
In response to growing demand for sustainable apparel products, Kering and London College of Fashion, UAL (LCF) are launching the world’s first open-access digital course in luxury fashion and sustainability.
Corporate Community Engagement: 5 Essential Considerations
Back in the early days of corporate philanthropy, companies typically selected causes to support based on the personal interests of the chairman — or the chairman’s wife! — with little or no regard to issues of strategy, relevance or impact. Fortunately, things have moved on, with many companies now adopting more innovative, imaginative and considered approaches to their companies’ community involvement activities — such that in many cases they can no longer be understood as purely ‘philanthropic’.
Unleashing the Power of Online Reporting
Confronted with an ever-growing demand for transparency and materiality, companies need to find an adequate format to publish both financial and pre-financial information to their stakeholders in an effective way. While traditional reporting reaches its limits, online integrated reporting features a number of key advantages that enable them to get the job done. It is fair to say that 2017 was an important year for corporate reporting. A number of events established the disclosure of relevant ecological, social and governance (ESG) specific data as the “new normal”:
Unilever Threatens to Pull Ads if Tech Platforms Don’t Clean Up ‘Toxic Content’
In a bid to build trust into our systems and society, Unilever has announced a new commitment to cut investment in platforms that breed division in society — and is challenging the rest of the industry to do the same. In his keynote speech at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, Calif., Keith Weed, Unilever’s CMO, demanded the industry work together to improve transparency and rebuild consumer trust in an era of fake news and toxic online content.