Marketing & Communications

Book’s 3rd Edition Digs Deeper into the Making, Marketing of ‘Greener Products’

‘Greener Products,’ from sustainability marketing veteran Al Iannuzzi, provides valuable insights for everyone from sustainability students and academics to corporate sustainability leaders.

Brand Provided | By Mark Wolf | Published 8 months ago | About a 2 minute read

Image: CRC Press

In Greener Products: The Making and Marketing of Sustainable Brands, sustainability marketing veteran Al Iannuzzi provides a well-articulated story that integrates the need for, design of, and manufacture of more sustainable products with how to effectively create a meaningful, accurate story. The book serves everyone from senior undergraduate and graduate students in programs focused on sustainability to academics and corporate sustainability leaders.

Previous editions of this book — which provides a framework for the making and marketing of sustainable products within a company’s brand portfolio — have been used to teach courses on sustainability, product improvement, introduction to sustainability, green marketing and sustainability, and sustainability policy; and as a guide to companies’ sustainable product design and marketing initiatives.

The ‘greener product’ landscape

Companies are paying attention to the growing consumer demand for sustainable products; and meeting this has become imperative to brand success, as illustrated by scores of mini-case studies throughout the book.

Section one, on making a case for more sustainable products, will appeal to established sustainability professionals — it’s an important part of their job. However, this third edition provides a global context on regulatory and market drivers for greener products. It uses the cultural (B2C, B2B) and regulatory demands for better-made products as a foundation for the knowledge and insights delivered.

Section two focuses on the design and manufacture of more sustainable products in the context of many current sustainability topics — including a circular economy, plastics in the environment, biodiversity, climate change, green chemistry and more.

Tools and case studies

The case studies of leading companies provide both tools and strategic frameworks that will educate and inform the leadership required to develop a process, team or organization, and create brand value to boost an organization’s profitability and ability to retain/attract top talent.

Also noteworthy, these insights and strategic guidelines are important for the development of emerging professionals who are pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees related to climate, sustainability, cleantech, regulatory policy, project management and more.

I am especially inspired by the chapter on valuing natural capital and attendant tools (many of which didn’t exist ten years ago). These tools enable companies to measure and manage their use of natural resources more efficiently and become stewards for future generations of consumers, communities and employees — a very topical growth area in corporate sustainability today.

As an experienced marketing professional, I found much to appreciate in section three — marketing greener products. The author addresses both the strategic and practical considerations of this by sharing two points he makes when he speaks publicly on the subject:

There is no such thing as a “green” product.
What good is a greener product if no one knows about it?

Mark Wolf

CEO, LavaFish Advisors

Mark D. Wolf is The Sustainability Career CoachTM, CEO of Lava Fish Advisors and co-founder of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals - NYC chapter.

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Al Iannuzzi