ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
The “brand purpose” bandwagon has become awfully crowded. And as more and more brands seek to capitalize on the opportunity to cast themselves in a more authentic, meaningful light, the language of “brand purpose” has become weak, watered down and increasingly meaningless.
Marketing purpose is easy; embedding purpose is hard work. And while a number of pioneers and purists remain committed to embedding purpose at the organizational level, the temptation to cut corners and to exploit purpose for marketing “quick wins” — rather than to embed it in more meaningful, transformative ways — has become too great to resist. The phenomenon of “purpose-washing” is real.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
On Thursday, June 14th, I will be with my closest family at Buckingham Palace, proudly receiving my OBE. For those outside the UK, this may not mean much (unless you’ve been watching “The Crown”), but the award is a public recognition of doing something useful — in my case, for services to sustainability.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Last week, over 2,000 representatives from our global community of sustainability practitioners, brand strategists, product and service innovators, thought leaders and other change-makers converged at SB’18 Vancouver to share their latest insights on a multitude of themes pertinent to all of those committed to improving business around the world. Here, we dig into brand and organizational efforts to get consumers to deliver their part of the equation, through responsible consumption.
P&G: The road to responsible consumption
By Marissa Rosen
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
The idea of the Deep Time Walk is simple but incredibly powerful: When dealing with the vast dimensions of time and space, we are often unable to grasp the magnitude quantitatively, just through studying the numbers. A Deep Time Walk allows us to walk the timeline of the history of the Earth and also universe, and thus for example, on a walk of 4.6km, if we start with the birth of Earth, each one-metre step represents one million years.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
Purpose-driven brands can build stronger emotional connections with consumers that go far beyond a transactional relationship, according to the newly released 2018 Cone/Porter Novelli Purpose Study. Nearly eight in ten (79 percent) say they are more loyal to purpose-driven companies and would tell others to buy products from those companies (78 percent), while two-thirds (66 percent) say they would switch brands and over half (57 percent) would pay more.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
As we at Sustainable Brands — and anyone working to rectify the damage people have done to the planet — are well aware, it's all too easy to ignore pressing social and environmental issues if their effects can’t be seen or felt in our daily lives.
After a life-altering excursion across three continents, SoulBuffalo CEO and founder Dave Ford was determined to find a way to change this, by taking those just as responsible for causing as solving many of these issues — global corporate decision-makers — out into the wild to experience the effects of their business decisions with their own senses.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
As the amount of single-use plastic in the world's oceans continues to grow, National Geographic is announcing a new, global commitment to tackle this pressing problem. On Wednesday, the media giant launched Planet or Plastic?, a multiyear initiative aimed at raising awareness of this challenge and reducing the amount of single-use plastic that enters the world's oceans.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Have you ever stopped to think about how many people were involved in making the clothes you buy? Chances are you have heard about or read The Travels of a T-shirt in a Global Economy or listened to Planet Money’s piece on making a t-shirt. Both are incredibly interesting examinations of the effects of global trade on the fashion industry, developing countries and garment workers.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
It’s official. Sustainability is mainstream.
You probably already knew that. What you may not know is that Americans aren’t really changing their personal behaviors. They’re changing their buying behaviors. And that gives brands a new way to win in the marketplace.
Here’s what we’re seeing in our ongoing polling of Americans to understand their attitudes and behaviors related to the environment:
One of our most recent surveys finds that 88 percent of Americans believe the average person should be taking concrete steps to reduce environmental impact, and nearly 80 percent feel a sense of personal responsibility to change daily purchase habits and practices to positively impact the environment.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
On April 21st, at the Palace Cinema in Raffles City, Changning, Shanghai, I attended the premiere of the first of a three-part documentary series, “Jackie Chan’s Green Heroes” — a joint project by the action movie star, National Geographic Partners LLC and Buick — which captures stories of sustainability innovators to inspire and educate the public.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
For decades, the ASPCA has been advocating for better breeding practices and adoption for dogs with campaigns that focused on educating the public on where pet store dogs come from.
But over time, the influx of digital technology has completely transformed how people get dogs. And Millennials, the largest generation of dog lovers ever, are increasingly relying on online sources, which makes it difficult to track where our furry friends are coming from.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
A night of celebration for a friend moving for a new job turns to tragedy in a new virtual reality (VR) experience from Diageo about the dangers of binge drinking. In a follow-up to 2016's "Decisions," which placed viewers in the front seat of a fatal drunk driving crash, "Decisions: Party's Over" immerses consumers in a first-person, interactive story.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
Going “circular” refers to the change from our current take-make-waste linear economy to a borrow-use-return circular economy, also known under the banners of ‘zero-waste’ and ‘cradle-to-cradle.’ The concept has sparked a movement among companies, governments, NGOs, and
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
Is there any better platform than Instagram to turn the jealousy of wanderlust into environmental awareness? Followers scroll through the feeds of travel influencers, admiring the photos of scenic destinations and express their enjoyment with a 'like' and their envy in the comments. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and ad agency TBWA\Paris saw this as an opportunity to highlight how many beautiful places are being lost to pollution, clear-cutting and other forms of environmental destruction.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
Dear CEO,
I know it’s lonely at the top. Each day you contend with a boiling stew of global competition, digital transformation, labor issues and challenging board members, to name a few. You walk this tightrope while hewing to a notion of shareholder primacy that has guided you throughout your career — the need to maximize financial profits and consider shareholders above all other stakeholders.
And now, here comes society nipping at your heels, demanding that you incorporate social purpose into your corporation.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
The adage, “behind every great man, there is a great woman,” has officially — and irretrievably — been relegated to the history books. In its place comes the understanding that behind every woman is a powerful and growing network of women who have, and are helping to, pave the way.
When I joined Ceres more than a decade ago, I was privileged to experience firsthand the power of working under a female CEO and a gender-balanced leadership team. Today, even as the organization has quintupled in size, Ceres maintains this gender parity.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Hundreds of students from Los Angeles STEM programs will participate in one of the largest student-driven programs ever launched to protect the world’s rainforests. Rainforest Connection’s “Planet Guardians” program will guide middle schoolers in building solar-powered listening devices using old smartphones. These “Guardian” devices will be installed high in the trees of fragile rainforests to capture sounds of illegal logging and alerting forest rangers in real time.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
While textile waste and human rights are often the focus of conversations surrounding sustainability in the fashion industry, most consumers remain unaware of the sector’s impact on forests and the wildlife and communities that rely on them. In a bid to raise awareness around the need to protect this valuable natural resource, Canopy, an environmental organization dedicated to protecting the world’s forests, has launched a new video for International Day of Forests that connects clothing to the rainforests of Northern Sumatra.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
One in 10 people around the world lacks access to clean drinking water, yet the majority of US consumers are unaware of the extent of the global water crisis, new research from Procter & Gamble (P&G) shows.
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT -
Paulette Frank, vice president, EHS and sustainability at Johnson & Johnson, sat down with us recently to discuss her inspiration for tackling issues related to human and environmental health.
Keep reading to discover why Paulette enjoys palm reading (for fun), what compels her to run toward the next big challenge, how she’d like to pool resources with other members, and more.