Sustainable marketing - what it can and can’t do
When two worlds with their inherent jargons collide – namely the worlds of marketing and sustainability – it can lead to quite a few muddled concepts. Some might argue ‘sustainable marketing’ is one of them, but let’s dive into what it is and what it means for marketers.
During my studies last year at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership, I came across the most tightly defined concept of sustainable marketing I had read, so it’s only fair that I begin by quoting it:
Sustainable marketing is a purpose-driven practice that works to orientate businesses, brands and society towards a sustainable future, influencing appropriate awareness, aspiration, adoption and action across economic and sociocultural systems by taking necessary accountability for its impacts and opportunities. (See Charlie Thomson’s article here https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/resources/blog/what-sustainable-marketing).
Quite distinct from sustainability communications, which is the practice of sharing sustainable goals and initiatives with stakeholders and the general public, sustainable marketing aims to re-orient the practice of marketing to take into account long-term well-being for all.
In some ways, that is antithetical to the core principle of marketing which is to maximally promote the sales of products and services for growth. However, when taking a deeper look it appears to connect to a widely accepted truth in marketing strategy, which is to take into account ‘the long’ as well as ‘the short’. Or put otherwise, to not sacrifice the future health of a brand for short term gains.
Like a short-term heavy promotion injects a bit of growth into the sales cycle but diminish the brand’s long term value, going about marketing while ignoring the long-term sustainability challenges the world faces will sooner or later result in a dead end. This requires thinking about the real-life impacts that the depletion of Earth’s finite resources will have on your products and services (including increasing prices therefore cutting out parts of the market). Or thinking about the cultural tensions and backlash brands face when misaligned with generally accepted social inclusion goals.
Put simply, sustainable marketing requires marketers to consider their role in environmental and social impacts and their position on the world’s collective agreement on sustainable development goals (see here https://sdgs.un.org/goals).
So what is marketing’s impact in this broader planetary challenge? For many the first step when sustainability comes up is to think about their carbon footprint. For large advertisers and media businesses that would certainly have a material impact but there is a risk for a large oversight here, and that risk is called ‘carbon tunnel vision’ or the focus on carbon as a single issue in sustainability to the detriment of others.
In truth, marketing and advertising have always made their biggest direct impact in the social area, and then indirectly on the environment. The impact products and campaigns have on societal perceptions, representations, stigmas and behaviour change constitute a large reason why advertising is often under scrutiny and heavily regulated. Even the current focus on greenwashing is evidence that ‘the talk’ is often much closely monitored than ‘the walk’.
In an era where social contagion and virality leads, where the frontier between social connections and advertising are blurred by influencers and where people’s lack of trust in institutions and government has meant they’ve turned their attention towards businesses and not-for-profit organisations, marketers ought to be asking themselves how far their social impact and role stretches.
Is this something brand new? Of course not, we’ve had decades of increased focus on the impact of marketing on future generations. Should every marketing department override their current strategy for the next quarter? Certainly not but incremental changes inspired by sustainable goals will go a long way to preserve the value of brands and businesses in a changing world. For easy pointers, you can search for general sustainable marketing strategies or publicly available tools such as the sustainable marketing compass (https://www.sustainablemarketingcompass.com/) or delve deeper into the overlap and relevance of the UN SDG’s to your own brand strategy.
Ultimately it does come down to individual and collective will. Do you as a marketer want to lead the change and thereby establish some first(ish) mover advantages, or do you want to wait until further social and environmental damage is done? Consider this however: by not acting, a brand risks facing change forcefully rather than voluntarily, whether by regulation or disgruntled consumers as sustainability issues become more and more pressing and front of mind.
Vanig
