How brands are evolving in the area of sustainability marketing and communications — and how their stakeholders are asserting their own needs and preferences.
Global opinion research consultancy APCO Insight last week revealed its list of the 100 Most Loved Companies, based on findings generated by its Emotional LinkingSM model, which measures consumers’ emotional attachment to brands. The Walt Disney Company was ranked #1, but the list was largely dominated by tech companies — Yahoo!, Google and Sony rounded out the top four.
Cross-Posted from Behavior Change. Last week, McDonald’s USA announced the launch of a new Happy Meal Books promotion, coinciding with National Family Literacy Day on Nov. 1. From Nov. 1–14, Happy Meals will be accompanied by one of a series of four original books designed to encourage children to eat right and be more active.As part of the launch of Happy Meal Books, McDonald’s is collaborating with Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the largest children’s literacy nonprofit in the U.S., to help more children and their families discover the joy of reading. RIF will distribute 100,000 Happy Meal Books to children who do not have easy access to books.
Diageo, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Anglo American were recently ranked highest among the companies reporting on indirect emissions and supply chain impacts on the CDP's FTSE 350 Climate Change Report.Launched this week, the report provides an annual update on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) data and climate change strategies at the UK's biggest public companies. While those topping the list make up a wide range of industries, the financial sector is prominent among the leading eight firms.Rounding up the top 8 were BT, Barclays, British Sky Broadcasting, HSBC and British Land, which all received a disclosure score of more than 90.
Companies that donated funds to oppose ballot initiatives to require the labeling of products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are facing new pressure from shareholders to stay out of future elections.
Cross-Posted from Collaboration. CVS recently announced a partnership with health and well-being company Humana to help customers make sense of their healthcare coverage options under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).Starting this month, Humana representatives will be present at CVS’s Project Health events, where individuals can receive free health screenings to check blood pressure, body mass index, glucose, total cholesterol and even receive oral or dental care. During October and November, Humana representatives will be available to answer questions about health coverage under ACA at 80 Project Health weekly events in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan and Texas.
While it might not win any Academy Awards, certainly the best title for a movie this year has to be the food industry critique, GMO OMG. On the surface, it is an attack on genetically modified seeds and what they are doing to our health. Underneath, it is an emotional play on a father’s frustration with the clarity of our food system. What is in our food and where does it come from?
Cross-Posted from Behavior Change. Heading into this year’s Sustainable Brands conference, I was looking forward to driving BMW’s electric prototype that was on display. In hindsight, however, the technical highlight of the show for me was the Tesla Model S. You know, the ones that people were actually driving, with coffee cups in the console and crumbs in the backseat.
Microsoft says it achieved carbon neutrality after introducing an internal carbon fee for renewable energy and carbon offsets, which led the company to increase the purchase of green energy in the U.S. by 70 percent, from 1.1 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2011 to 1.9 billion kWh in 2012.
Does your heart sink at the thought of reading yet another sustainability report?Over the last three years I’ve been documenting the ways companies are communicating sustainability online and using social media in particular. Time and time again, even those companies that demonstrate real panache in their sustainability communications fail to make the best use of the research, data and information that goes into their sustainability report. Often, as a result, a company’s most interesting sustainability work is left buried in these dull but worthy publications that no one really reads.
Currently, sustainability is a lot like beauty — its definition lies in the eyes of the beholder. This author’s preference is for actionable definitions that can be integrated into daily operational processes. The following is an attempt to define sustainability through this lens.
For the second year in a row, consumers named Sustainable Brands® corporate member Microsoft the company with the best CSR reputation, according to a new study by corporate reputation management consultancy Reputation Institute. This year, the IT company was joined at the top in a four-way tie with fellow SB member The Walt Disney Company, Google and SB ’13 sponsor BMW.
Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, family-owned maker of the top-selling natural brand of soap in North America and advocate for sustainable agriculture, has created a special agitprop label for its quart-size liquid soaps in support of GMO labeling and the Washington State voter initiative to label GMOs, Yes on I-522 — “The Washington Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.” Last week, natural product stores nationwide and Dr. Bronner’s webstore began stocking products featuring the limited edition soap label, which will be available through November.
For the second year in a row, retailer Marks & Spencer has topped Carbon Clear’s ranking of the carbon performance of the FTSE 100. This is the third year that Carbon Clear has undertaken the research, examining the extent and depth of FTSE (London stock exchange) 100 companies’ carbon measurement and reporting practices, ranking companies based on a well-developed scoring matrix.
There has been significant progress on many of the key globally negotiated and voluntary commitments made at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in June 2012, according to a new study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Stakeholder Forum.“Fulfilling the Rio+20 Promises: Reviewing Progress Since the UN Conference on Sustainable Development” is a first-of-its-kind assessment by civil society organizations on progress toward some of the key commitments made at Rio+20.
The North Face recently became one of eight organizations awarded a 2013 Green Power Leadership Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its commitment and contribution to helping advance the development of the nation’s voluntary green power market.The award recognizes EPA Green Power Partners who distinguish themselves through purchases of power from a utility green-pricing program or a renewable energy certificate (REC) supplier.The outdoor apparel, equipment and footwear company says it installed a one-Megawatt solar system at its distribution center in Visalia, Calif. and worked closely with its parent company VF Outdoor, Inc., and sister brands Lucy and Jansport, to install a 950-kW system at their new headquarters in Alameda, Calif.
Leaders from outdoor apparel company Patagonia have announced a new campaign, The Responsible Economy, which calls on consumers and businesses alike to rethink disposability for more effective resource allocation.
Today marks the release of “The Story of Solutions” – the latest clip from The Story of Stuff Project and Free Range Studios. In the eight-minute clip, “Story of Stuff” storyteller Annie Leonard describes a set of solutions to the issues set forth in the company’s mega-popular series of videos, including “The Story of Broke,” “The Story of Cap & Trade,” “The Story of Electronics” and “The Story of Bottled Water,” among others.
Ninety percent of manufacturers agree that the environment is becoming more important, but 40 percent of consumers think manufacturers are not doing enough in terms of environmentally friendly manufacturing procedures or products, according to a study by Underwriters Laboratories (UL).The Product Mindset examines manufacturer and consumer perceptions about how products are made, sold, bought and consumed. This year’s report claims misalignment is occurring between the two stakeholder groups in what is expected or desired and what is being delivered.Some of the noteworthy gaps include:
McDonald's announced it is partnering with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, founded by the Clinton Foundation and American Heart Association, to increase customers' access to fruit and vegetables and help families and children to make informed choices in keeping with balanced lifestyles. President Bill Clinton, founder of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation; Don Thompson, President and CEO of McDonald's; and Dr. Howell Wechsler, CEO of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, announced the groundbreaking Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) commitment on Thursday at the 2013 CGI Annual Meeting in New York City.
Composters, consumers and foodservice companies now have unprecedented detail — and confidence — in BPI Certified Compostable Products thanks to the industry’s first item-level online database of products.Funded by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), the new Compostable Products Catalog features more than 3,300 different compostable product SKUs (shelf keeping units), including food serviceware (cups, cutlery, plates and trays), resins and coatings, compostable bags and films.The catalog is believed to be the world’s first web-based catalog to offer searchable product-level information on compostable products, according to BPI.