How brands are evolving in the area of sustainability marketing and communications — and how their stakeholders are asserting their own needs and preferences.
The Federal Trade Commission recently announced enforcement actions against six companies — five of which address biodegradable plastic claims for the first time — as part of the agency’s ongoing crackdown on false and misleading environmental claims.The cases include a complaint against a biofilms company that claims its additive makes its plastic products biodegradable, as well as four complaints and proposed consent orders against companies marketing various plastics with allegedly false and unsupported biodegradability claims. The civil penalty case involves a complaint and consent order against a company that has since violated a 1994 FTC order prohibiting it from making unsupported “green” claims for its paper plates and bags.
Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama was joined at the White House by Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita to announce a potentially game-changing collaboration in the fight against childhood obesity. Sesame Workshop and the Produce Marketing Association (PMA) formed a two-year agreement with the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) to help promote fresh fruit and vegetable consumption to kids, according to Let’s Move!, Mrs. Obama’s initiative to tackle the childhood obesity epidemic.
It has been a business maxim for years: Shareholder value trumps all when it comes to measuring corporate success. But by overrating shareholder value, management could focus too much on short-term stock price measures, given that outsized executive compensation often is fueled by stock options. And focusing too much on the short term can hurt a business over the long run, says Eric W. Orts, a Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics. There are better measures of corporate success, he points out in an interview with Knowledge@Wharton about his new book, Business Persons: A Legal Theory of the Firm.An excerpt of the conversation follows.
If you are like us, your family has already started asking you what you want for Christmas/Hanukkah/insert your mass-consumption holiday of choice here. And while we like getting presents, we really, really, honestly, we promise, do not need that much more stuff. Which is why we’re glad to see SoKind, which Treehugger describes as “a new and improved gift registry aimed firmly at those who value experiences over material goods, handmade crafts over mass-produced gadgets, and gently used and carefully selected pre-loved goods over things they’ll probably use once and never see again.”
Mainstream consumers can be a fickle bunch can’t they? They tell us in research that they want to be more green, that they WILL purchase more eco-friendly products in the next year ahead than the one prior. But there’s that eternal gap between reported and actual behaviours; what gets entered in an online survey is often different than what happens in the shop aisle. Finding a way to bridge that gap is one of sustainability and marketing’s ‘holy grails’ we are all seeking an answer to.
Cross-Posted from Collaboration. The Carbon Trust has been selected to develop an environmental labeling scheme for products and services in Mexico, designed to promote sustainable purchasing and procurement for consumers, companies and the public sector.The objective of the project is to drive the international competitiveness and economic efficiency of Mexican industry through more sustainable production. It will also provide a commonly recognised set of criteria to ensure that environmental claims about products and services are properly substantiated. The project is funded through the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Prosperity Fund, as administered through the British Embassy in Mexico City.Cuauhtémoc Ochoa Fernandez, Mexico’s Undersecretary of Development and Environmental Regulation, said:
The success of Chipotle’s recent ‘Scarecrow’ video goes beyond its glossy Cannes-worthy visuals or the 7 million views it has received since its launch last month: The online advertisement is a marketing feat because it taps into the power of storytelling in a way that reflects Chipotle’s ethos and is woven into all of the company’s communications. A look into Chipotle’s broader communications efforts reveals the lesson that for a sustainability message to authentically resonate with audiences, it needs to be part of a strategic communication plan and backed up by real action.
I was sitting with a team of entrepreneurs yesterday. Together, we're launching a new retail concept (look for updates here — we open in January!).The conversation was all about naming. We'd landed on two great names, which one of the team had put through an online poll. The names polled well — but not as well as a rather predictable moniker that had been included at the last minute. As you might imagine, the mundane-name-that-people-loved threw a wrench into the works.
A coalition of 70 global investors managing more than $3 trillion in collective assets on Thursday launched the first-ever coordinated effort to spur 45 of the world’s top oil and gas, coal and electric power companies to assess the financial risks that climate change poses to their business plans.The investors make up the Carbon Asset Risk (CAR) initiative, which is being coordinated by Ceres and the Carbon Tracker initiative, with support from the Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change.
In this series, Christophe Fauconnier & Benoit Beaufils, respectively CEO & founding partner of brand consultancy Innate Motion, present the tools that the company uses to develop purposeful, mission-driven brands with their clients. Benoit & Christophe view their tools as a free “thoughtware” suite, and propose that readers borrow and reapply.
The Climate Declaration, which to date has been signed by more than 700 companies and thousands of individuals, is now up in lights in Times Square.The Declaration, part of an ongoing campaign organized by Ceres and BICEP, calls on federal policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change. The campaign caught the attention of CBS, which offered to air a 15-second ad on their Jumbotron in Times Square, showcasing the Climate Declaration and its message that "tackling climate change is one of America's greatest economic opportunities (and it's simply the right thing to do)."
I believe futureproof brands are built on a foundation of two fundamentals: the brand’s reason for existence and the consumer’s yearning.These concepts may sound a bit esoteric, so allow me to explain.
While 7 out of 10 Americans say they always or almost always recycle, apparently a scant 1 in 5 consistently recycles bathroom items, according to a report commissioned by the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies.To encourage consumers to be more mindful, Johnson & Johnson has launched Care to Recycle™, a recycling campaign that begins with a gentle reminder to recycle more items from the bathroom. It is the first recycling awareness campaign of its kind to be hosted exclusively on Tumblr.
Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and CEO of L'Oréal, today announced “Sharing Beauty with All,” the cosmetics giant’s ambitious new sustainability commitment to transform its footprint while achieving its business ambition by 2020.
Cross-Posted from Behavior Change. This weekend, the feature-length documentary film Project Wild Thing opens in independent cinemas in the UK.The film explores the increasing disconnection between British children and the natural world around them; kids’ roaming distance from their homes has reportedly decreased 90% in the past 30 years.PROJECT WILD THING - official trailer from Green Lions.
Cruise ships dumped more than a billion gallons of sewage in the ocean last year, much of it raw or poorly treated, according to federal data analyzed by Friends of the Earth, which is calling for stronger rules to protect oceans, coasts, sea life and people.
Unilever, KT and Nestlé lead the Tomorrow’s Value Rating 2013 (TVR), which recognizes companies that increasingly demonstrate “clarity of vision and innovation in their pursuit of a sustainable business model.”Sprint, Vodafone, Iberdrola, E.ON, BMW, Ford and Deutsche Telekom rounded out the top 10. Two Tomorrows, the sustainability strategy consultancy that created the rating, says the average for the top 10 this year is 83 percent compared to 55 percent in 2010. While the average score across the companies rated has varied only slightly over recent years, in that time the highest scores have gotten higher. There also is a growing gap between sustainability leaders and laggards, the report says.
Bar none, the most persistent challenge that the sustainability movement faces is how to prove the business bottom line benefits of sustainability activities. This is particularly acute for small and medium-sized companies, for whom survival is the number one priority. When looking at who engages and communicates sustainability activities, a disproportionate number of them are large corporates with dedicated sustainability/CSR budgets, as covered in our previous post. All too often, sustainability is a ‘tack-on’ to what business normally do anyway, and not the reason for being.
Earlier this week, Dell announced a commitment to reduce the energy intensity of its product portfolio by 80 percent, as part of a comprehensive long-term corporate responsibility framework to achieve by 2020.The information technology company’s 2020 Legacy of Good plan is divided into three areas — the Environment, People and Communities. Dell says the plan complements its overarching purpose to “provide technology that enables people everywhere to grow, thrive and reach their full potential.”The Environment
How can consumers choose sustainable products? Eco-labels or sustainability ratings can be an important guide. These systems compare products or services in terms of their social and environmental performance, identifying those that are best in class.But not all rating systems are equally effective at influencing consumers. When the European Union revised its energy efficiency ratings for appliances recently, researchers Stefanie Hille (née Heinzle), a doctoral student, and Rolf Wüstenhagen, a professor at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, identified what kind of ratings were most likely to lead consumers to make energy-efficient choices.