How brands are successfully communicating their sustainability efforts — and how their stakeholders are asserting their own needs and preferences
Today at the UN Climate Change conference (COP21), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Climate CoLab, in collaboration with the United Nations Secretary-General, announced the launch of a series of global, online contests to help strengthen the resilience of vulnerable countries to respond to climate-related hazards.
Transparency is a new playing field that many companies will find themselves on, whether or not they want to be there. Rather than resist and risk failure, companies and the customers they serve will benefit by embracing transparency today. In fact, as more consumers demand proof that the products they buy fulfill the promise of the label, transparency is becoming a key differentiator that sets successful companies apart.
SB ‘15 London’s third and final afternoon kicked off with a colourful session with Matthew Yeomans, founder of Sustainly, a knowledge consultancy and advisory platform based around bringing together the worlds of sustainability and communications.Yeomans discussed the results of Sustainly’s The Big Brand Report: How 175 Major Brands Do and Don’t Talk about Sustainability, which looks at if and how brands are talking to their customers about sustainability. The workshop revealed what is and isn’t working for brand-level social media communications.
This Tuesday afternoon breakout session saw Thomas Kolster, founder and creative director at the Goodvertising Agency, and Kerry Eustice, Editorial Partnerships Editor at The Guardian Sustainable Business, share their perspectives on changing the conversation around sustainability values.Early on, Kolster asserted that sustainability advertising is not doing enough to drive change, as it tends to be less engaging than other advertising messages. He and Eustice discussed dos, don’ts and new approaches that could change the way the message of sustainability is communicated.
Do people care about sustainability? And how do we start to have the kind of influence that we want to have? Those were the opening questions from Betsy Henning, the CEO and founder of AHA! — a content-focused agency from Vancouver — as she kicked off this energetic Monday afternoon workshop at SB’15 London.
Leading brands at this week’s SB ‘15 London will reaffirm that doing good is good for business. At ISEAL Alliance, we wanted to find out why companies were choosing certification as a way to meet their sustainable sourcing goals and what the business benefits are for those that do.
Soon consumers in the US will come a lot closer to knowing what's in the food they buy thanks to a new standard being introduced by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). SmartLabel was created to meet the public’s desire for more information about the products they use and consume, and Hershey is the first brand to adopt it.
Millennials will lead the way for small and medium businesses (SMBs) in future conversations and efforts around conservation, energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, according to a new survey by Cox Enterprises.The second annual Cox Conserves Sustainability Survey found that Millennials have a huge appetite for sustainability and will drive adoption of these practices. Millennials showed greater knowledge about sustainability than other age cohorts and a strong interest in implementing sustainable business practices, but noted that in their current roles, they lacked the influence needed to effect change.
Environmental health non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) has launched its new verification program to help consumers quickly and easily identify consumer goods that do not contain toxic ingredients. The EWG VERIFIED: For Your Health™ mark will appear on personal care products and cosmetics that meet criteria set by EWG scientists.
This might be the best recent trend in children’s brands. After years of being a less-than-progressive feminine role model, Barbie is on the verge of becoming the feminist icon she should be. Mattel’s latest ad features a college professor, a veterinarian, a soccer coach, a businesswoman, and a museum tour guide — all girls under the age of 10. It asks the audience, “What happens when girls are free to imagine they can be anything?”
There was a time when the only way a company could hope to talk directly with real people was through the medium of advertising or public relations. Companies felt distanced from consumers and they worried that people wouldn't take them seriously unless they could broadcast a big campaign or get their PR agency to persuade a journalist to write about them.
Greenwashing practices, combined with claims of corporate social responsibility, have reduced the trust of U.S. consumers who are increasingly recognizing hotels’ green claims may be self-serving, according to a new study in the Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, as reported by Eco-Business. All of this could cause hotels to lose valuable repeat customers.
The 17 Global Goals (also known as the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs) launched late last month by the United Nations (UN) aim to achieve three main objectives in the next 15 years: end extreme poverty; fight inequality and injustice; and tackle climate change. Since the launch, various companies and leaders have pledged to do their part to achieve the goals; now, the latest push is to build worldwide public awareness of the goals through various efforts to “tell everyone” (#TellEveryone), including support from scores of celebrities:
“...almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realise them.” - Lysander SpoonerDo you have to pay to play?If you are a sustainability practitioner and attend events on the topic – do you know the approach those events take to recruiting speakers, and do speakers have to pay to play? Do you know which experts are onstage because of their marketing budgets and which are there on merit?
The scandal that erupted recently around Volkswagen’s “diesel” pollution scam is going to reverberate across the corporate world − and so it should. All around the world surveys have shown that a majority of consumers care about whether the companies they buy from are “green” and “good.” Yet those same surveys show that consumers are confused as to whether the companies they buy from really are good and skeptical of company claims in this regard.
Amazon, LEGO, BMW, Sanofi, Schneider Electric and Panera Bread have the best public perception for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the United States, according to a new report by the Reputation Institute. The U.S. CSR RepTrak highlights the companies that have the best reputations for CSR among the U.S. public based on a survey conducted in Q1 2015.
While new surveys are emerging left and right attempting to find the pulse of the ever-elusive consumer when it comes to sustainability, that stubborn attitude/behavior gap still persists. So, let’s take a few steps back … Does the growing proliferation of “green” jargon really reach a mass audience? Do these buzzwords and terms carry political baggage? Do consumers understand their meaning? And more importantly, do they stir up positive or negative feelings? Do people associate them with increased expense or better health?
Picture streets without litter. Picture an urban oasis. Picture a beautiful forest. Picture This.Such is the goal of Sony Pictures Television Networks, which has decided to put its global reach and services to use to bring viewers' attention to the environmental issues affecting the world and rally their collective power to make a global impact.
Millennials are universally more engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts, according to new research from Cone Communications. This includes everything from buying products associated with a cause they care about to using their online networks to amplify social and environmental messages.The 2015 Cone Communications Millennial CSR Study reveals that more than nine-in-10 Millennials would switch brands to one associated with a cause (91% vs. 85% U.S. average) and two-thirds use social media to engage around CSR (66% vs. 53% U.S. average).
Designer Chris Onesto created California Water Company to highlight the state’s historic drought. The company’s water bottles are only about 6 percent full, to reflect the current capacity of California water reservoirs.“The Golden State is turning a toasty golden brown all thanks to a record drought,” reads the project’s website. “Oddly enough Southern Californians could care less. In response I created the California Water Company, bottled water that moves the drought from a startling thought into a disturbing reality.”