How brands are successfully communicating their sustainability efforts — and how their stakeholders are asserting their own needs and preferences
Fans of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy will be familiar with the wretched character Grima Wormtongue, adviser to King Theoden of Rohan. He whispers from the shadows into the ear of the decrepit ruler, urging self-interest and accommodation with evil.Such is the common perception of how business lobbyists conduct themselves within the labyrinth of government: peddlers of dark influence and maintainers of the status quo. The tobacco sector’s half-century conspiracy to resist health regulation is just one example of why such a negative perception is, in part, warranted. There is another side to the story, however.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Americans say they are more inclined to support social and environmental issues in a variety of ways, including volunteering, donating and sharing information, after first “liking” or “following” an organization online, according to new research by Cone Communications.Americans also view their online activities as a positive way to make an impact on the issues they care about, with 60 percent believing tweeting or posting information online is an effective form of advocacy or support.
This Monday afternoon workshop offered great insight into the way innovative and successful companies have made the transformation from a culture of Storytelling to one of “Storydoing.” For those not familiar with the term, Ty Montague (author of True Story: How to Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business) set the scene by doing just that, and telling us a story.
In a workshop on Monday morning, day one of SB ’14 London, Futerra’s Head of Brand Strategy, Daianna Karaian, and Marketing Manager Stuart Duncan shared several guidelines on customer engagement and suggested a 4-step strategy to effectively enhance customer–brand relationships. Starting point: Companies need to involve their customers while communicating their brand promise in order to get their attention and consideration for future purchases.
What if 15 of the biggest Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies decided they really wanted to change the world? How would they go about communicating their sustainability commitments to the millions of consumers they need to persuade to live more sustainably?At present, even though FMCG companies are starting to understand the need to explain sustainability directly to consumers, they continue to put most of their communication efforts into their Sustainability and CSR corporate sites — an obvious destination for NGOs, shareholders and academics but not the first place the general public go to get information.
Reporting companies find themselves in a colorful landscape of codes, frameworks, indicators. Many of these companies — not only SMEs — are concerned and overburdened by this complexity. Many discussions are summed up with one thing many agree on: the need for “alignment” of the different frameworks or approaches suggesting principles or indicators.What I see is that the experts in the corporate reporting field very quickly enter a quite technical level of capitals, indicators, assurance-potentials ... But isn’t the question: What exactly needs to be aligned — and for what purpose? In these discussions it came to my mind that any attempt at alignment in this field needs to address three cornerstones — which I see as the “Trilemma of Reporting”:
The North Face President Todd Spaletto and U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell have announced a partnership to protect, preserve and celebrate public lands in support of the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps (21CSC).
Since launching in 2013, Sustain Condoms, the first Fair Trade-certified brand of condoms, has been cheekily encouraging its target market — women ages 25-35 — to “Do what’s natural.”
Sustainability bona fides are at the heart of the first national TV and print advertising campaign by Whole Foods Market, which ushers in the slogan “Values matter.” The Austin-based healthful-foods pioneer hopes that the commercials can restore some of the brand’s differentiating luster now that sales growth has slowed and it has more worthy competitors than ever.
Microsoft has met its carbon neutrality commitment through internal efficiency projects, the purchase of more than 3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy and a carbon offset project portfolio representing more than 600,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to the software company’s 2014 Citizenship Report.The company also achieved its goal for all new data centers to have an average 1.125 Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), one-third less than the industry average datacenter PUE of 1.7.
With the launch last week of Business in the Community’s Be Energy Aware campaign, customer engagement lead Michelle Gallant outlines how we are helping to make energy bills a little less scary.The clocks go back this weekend, meaning winter is well and truly on its way. Some of us may have already put the heating on to take the edge off those chilly nights, and the darker evenings mean the lights will be coming on earlier and earlier. All this means that our energy bills will soon be ramping up.
UK nonprofit Business in the Community (BITC) has joined forces with leading UK brands to launch its Be Energy Aware campaign, running October 13-26, aimed at encouraging consumers to be more aware of their energy use in the home.BITC and its partners — lighting manufacturer Osram, DIY retailer B&Q, Virgin Money, Thames Water and others — will show consumers how they can save on their bills by changing their behavior.
Cross-Posted from New Metrics. On Wednesday, I had the pleasure to attend Metrics that Matter, Messages that Motivate — Making the Right Case for Sustainability in Healthcare, an event hosted by The Wharton Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (Wharton IGEL) and Johnson & Johnson at Wharton’s West coast campus in San Francisco. Geoffrey Garrett, recently named dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, kicked things off by emphasizing the importance of sustainability in every area of our daily lives.
Transportation Network Company (TNC) Uber has received an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), the lowest possible rating given by the organization. The failing rating largely was attributed to dozens of complaints related to the company’s practice of implementing “surge pricing” during times of high user demand.Uber received more than 90 complained filed with the BBB over the past three years, most of which focused on surge pricing. Customers claimed they felt misinformed about how they are charged for rides, and say they are unable to receive proper customer service when they try to complain about their fares.
As Julia Roberts (as “Mother Nature”) chillingly points out at the end of her rant against the human race in Conservation International (CI)’s new Nature Is Speaking campaign: “I am prepared to evolve. Are you?”Nature doesn't need people. People need nature. That's the message of the provocative, celebrity-studded campaign that CI is launching today. Nature Is Speaking aims to raise awareness that people need nature in order to survive.
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities were 0.6 percent, or 20 million metric tons, higher in 2013 than the previous year, driven primarily by an increase in coal use for power generation, according to new data provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Recognizing the power of film as an educational tool, two contests — both geared towards highlighting the importance and complexity of the world’s food system — through short films are accepting submissions.The first, the Real Food Media Contest, is part of the Real Food Media Project, a collaborative initiative with both online resources and grassroots events nationwide for sharing stories of sustainable food and farming, and ‘myth-busting’ in the process.“The Contest taps into the growing interest about food from all corners of the country and inspires up-and-coming filmmakers alongside established ones to create original, bold — and super short — content,” said founder and director Anna Lappé.
Switzerland, Canada and Sweden have the best reputations in the world, according to a new report by the Reputation Institute, a global private consulting firm based in New York and Copenhagen.Finland is the biggest gainer in the top 10, moving up to fourth place, from eighth last year. The U.S. is down at 22, behind Brazil and above the Czech Republic.The firm’s fifth annual “Country RepTrak” of what it calls “The World’s Most Reputable Countries,” is a tool used to help advise countries on how to improve their reputations around the world. It also advises companies wanting to know how their country of origin influences their reputations elsewhere.
Really, what is a sustainable brand?Having visited port wine cellars in Portugal, I know the history and value of branding — symbols literally burned into casks as a guarantee of provenance and quality. And when I think of the brands I have bought into over the years, there are a number of common links: quality (Bose, Leica), safety (Dawes cycles, Volvo), creativity (Apple), long life (Barbour jackets), self-education (Penguin, Google) and sustainability (Patagonia, though I confess that their bag I carry was given to me as a freebie at an early Wall Street Journal ‘Eco:nomics’ [another bit of branding] conference in San Diego).
Coca-Cola products in the United Kingdom will soon sport a system of traffic light coded labels and Reference Intakes (RIs) to indicate how much fat, salt and sugar an item contains.This decision reverses the company’s previous position against adopting the UK government’s labeling system, first introduced last year. Since then, there has been a marked increase in consumer support for the scheme, with UK customers saying they want a consistent labeling system across all food and drink products.