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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51835317186430814902014-08-31T18:46:36.206-07:00Sustainability MarketingEstablishing a new sustainability oriented marketing mainstreamFrank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-90354014861841735732012-08-30T08:58:00.003-07:002012-08-30T08:58:48.649-07:00Sustainability Marketing (2nd ed): 'New and Improved'

Frank, Ken and the team at Wiley are pleased and proud to announce the publication of the Second Edition of 'Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective'. Like any second edition it represents an evolution from the first edition, and the changes reflect some of the significant developments since 2009 in relation to sustainability and marketing. This is also expressed in the title cover, which is similar, and yet different and distinct:

We were really pleased with how the original edition was received by lecturers, students, companies and researchers, and many of them provided feedback and ideas that we have been able to incorporate in the new edition. Hereby we would like to thank everyone who has provided comments and ideas and pointed us towards interesting cases and companies!

The new edition is slightly longer than the first, and we have used the additional space to enable the book to more fully live up to our ambition to take a 'Global Perspective'. It includes cases from a more diverse range of countries than before, and provides an overview of differences and developments in sustainability marketing in key regions and countries as part of the second, context setting, chapter (Europe, North America, Africa, South America, Middle East, Asia). Some new sustainability marketing stories and challenges include the following:

American Apparel: Too Sexy for its (Sustainable) Shirts?

Beauty Brand Natura - Bem Estar Bem

Ecotourism in Costa Rica

Fair Trade: A Taste of Sustainable Good Life

Sun Chips: The Battle of Bags

Timberland: Communicating Steps towards Sustainability

Think Blue and Green Wars

and many others ...

The structure of the book remains the same as the first edition, which will hopefully come as a relief to those teachers who have already structured a course and teaching materials based around it. The range of industries we've explored through the cases and examples has expanded to include more on marketing within sustainable fashion, ecotourism, consumer electronics and cosmetics amongst others. We have also tried to capture some of the significant cultural trends that have gained prominence since the first edition was published, taking in topics such as open sustainability innovation, collaborative consumption, and even the dark arts of online 'astroturfing'. We will be looking to release updated teaching materials to support the second edition very soon, and will be revitalizing this blog to support the book with ongoing coverage of sustainability marketing news stories, controversies and further examples to supplement the contents of the book – so, watch this space .....

The phrase "New and Improved" has been criticised as the most over-used cliché in the entire world of marketing, but in the case of our second edition, we would like to think it is literally true. We still have high hopes that marketing managers within companies, and the managers of the future currently learning about marketing, will read the new edition of the book and be willing and able to take the ideas and perspectives that it presents and apply them in the 'real world' of marketing practice. One of the most gratifying responses we had to the first edition was when the Director responsibility for Sustainability Marketing at one of the World's biggest company emailed us saying

"I have been avidly reading it over the last several days and am finding it more and more appropriate to the challenge I am facing within our global organization - how to leverage the reach and relationships our brands have with consumers to make a positive difference in the world ...and equally importantly, how to institutionalize this thinking into our 'way of marketing'."

That was the moment when knew that our book was doing something more than just adding to the debate, and that it was helping to make a real difference to the way marketing is taught, learnt and practiced.
Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-65524270455543633802012-07-25T06:33:00.001-07:002013-01-15T02:26:51.800-08:00Green Apple: Challenges at the Core of Sustainable Design

"This was a mistake", wrote Bob Mansfield, Apple's Vice President of hardware engineering, in an open letter on July 13, 2012. What was a mistake? What has happened? Just a week before that Apple announced that it has withdrawn all Mac products from the EPEAT certification and that it will no longer submit items for review.

EPEAT stands for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, which addresses all stages of the life cycle from cradle to grave of electronics:

Reduction/elimination of environmentally sensitive materials<o:p></o:p>

Material selection<o:p></o:p>

Design for end of life<o:p></o:p>

Product longevity/life extension<o:p></o:p>

Energy conservation<o:p></o:p>

End-of-life management<o:p></o:p>

Packaging, and<o:p></o:p>

Corporate performance.<o:p></o:p>

For an entertaining and yet informative introduction to the entire life cycle and the environmental impacts see the "Story of Electronics" by Annie Leonard. EPEAT was developed in an open innovation process, involving designers, manufacturers, and purchasers of electronic products as well as governmental organisations and non governmental organisations (with Apple Computers being one of the participants along with the California Integrated Waste Management Board, Dell Computers, Electronic Industries Alliance, Hewlett Packard, State of Massachusetts, Tufts University, U.S. EPA, U.S. Government, United Recycling Industries, Waste Management, and Zero Waste Alliance). The EPEAT system rates electronic products against the eight environmental performance criteria listed above. Since electronics experience high rates of change in components and sourcing from product launch through to the end of their commercial lives, (pre-) certification based on a one-time investigation is not considered adequate. Instead EPEAT requires manufacturers to commit to providing accurate information throughout their product's lifecycle and to remedying any inaccuracies discovered during the verification process. In this respect EPEAT is a self-declaration system. It enables manufacturers to participate in an easy-to-use and global registry that allows them to demonstrate their commitment to greener design (in a way that does not delay time to market). It also provides purchasers with a platform that allows them to find electronic products that reduce environmental impact and energy costs (in comparison to competition). Thus, EPEAT tries to reduce information asymmetries between producers and users, and to create (some) transparency regarding environmental criteria in the global market for electronics.

To cut a long story short: Apple has helped in developing the environmental standards and setting up the non-profit organization to run the scheme since 2003 and then it announced its withdrawal in July 2012. The likely reason behind this change of heart is Apple's current MacBook Pro with a Retina display, which does not adhere to EPEAT recyclability and repair standards. The new display is bonded to the outer casing, which makes it thinner, but which also reduces the ability of the display to be recycled. Moreover, the glued-in and sealed battery is harder to replace. The example shows the difficulties of sustainable design. Sometimes customer and environmental criteria may go hand in hand (e.g. energy-efficiency of electronics during the usage stage). However, in this case the customer's desire for thin and slim laptops seems to be in conflict with environmental criteria like recyclability and repair. <o:p></o:p>

Why did Apple withdraw from its withdrawal within a week? In this respect Bob Mansfield says:

"We've recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system."

Customers wrote emails to Apple, discussed it in online communities, and made public announcements. The city of San Francisco, for example, was the first one to halt Mac purchases, and the US government also mulled dropping Apple computers in the wake of EPEAT issues. Thus, with the prospect of losing customers Apple decided to rejoin the EPEAT program … <o:p></o:p>

The case of Apple shows that sustainable design (like sustainability marketing) is not an easy proposition and a one way-street. There are potential complementarities and conflicts between what customers want and environmental criteria. However, once an environmental system is in place and accepted by most market players, it is difficult to fall behind the taken-for-granted design and product standards - even for leading companies like Apple.<o:p></o:p>
Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-29467095374372102132012-06-26T00:22:00.001-07:002012-06-26T00:22:58.575-07:00Marketing Electric Cars (I)

These are exciting times for the automotive industry. The dominance of cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) is being challenged by electric cars. In many leading markets like <st1:country-region w:st="on">Germany</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Japan</st1:country-region>and <st1:place w:st="on">North America</st1:place> electric cars are entering the playing field. In the first edition of our text book "Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective" we have already presented the cases of the Tesla Roadster (a full electric car) and the Toyota Prius (a hybrid car). In the upcoming months during summer 2012 we will describe and discuss the marketing of electric cars in a series of posts on our sustainability marketing blog. We will see that electric cars raise interesting questions for sustainability marketers all over the world. Electric cars are radical and disruptive technologies, which will (probably) change the way cars are perceived, sold and used.

In the first present post we will define electric cars: What do we mean, when we talk about "electric cars"? In spring 2012 there are all kinds of electric cars available on international markets, including hybrids with electric engines as well as electric cars with and without range extenders. So, how do we define "electric cars"? Where do we draw the line between hybrid and electric cars?

Most of the leading automotive companies pursue a hybrid strategy of electrification without abandoning ICEs. A first step on this road is the use of small electric engines and batteries, which support the start-up process of the car and which recovers energy during the braking of the car ("mild hybrid"). The second step towards electrification is the employment of larger batteries and electric engines, which are more powerful (and usually more expensive!). The "full hybrid" allows driving short distances at low speed with the electric engine only (e.g. Toyota Prius). Similar to the mild hybrid, energy is recovered during the braking process.

"Plug in-hybrids" are full hybrids, which use rechargeable batteries that can be charged by connecting a plug to an external power source (e.g. Chevrolet Volt). Electric Cars with a range extender mainly rely on large, powerful batteries and electric engines. In the case of longer distances a conventional engine is used as a range extender (e.g. Opel Ampera). Similar to the plug-in hybrid, the battery is recharged by connecting the plug to an external source. Full electric cars abandon ICEs altogether (e.g. BYD e6, Mia electric, Mitsibushi iMIEV, Nissan LEAF, Peugeot iOn, Renault Z.E., Smart ED, Tesla Roadster).

The following exhibit shows conventional cars with ICEs and electric cars without ICEs as the two extreme poles. The importance of ICEs diminishes from the left to the right hand side (or vice versa: The relevance of electric engines increases from the left to the right hand side). Mild and full hybrids are on the left hand side, because they still rely on ICEs. Plug-in hybrids and electric cars with range extender are positioned on the right hand side, because they mainly rely on powerful electric engines and externally rechargeable batteries. In accordance with nationaldevelopment plan "Electromobility 2020" by the German government we draw the line in the middle and characterize electric cars as cars employing powerful electric engines and larger batteries, which can be recharged by plugging it to an external energy source.

Exhibit: Conventional, Hybrid and Electric Cars

Source: Adapted from Helms, H. et al (2011): Umweltbilanzen Elektronmobilität, p. 9<o:p></o:p>

In the next post we will discuss the 'nature' of electric cars: How ecological are they? What are the major factors influencing the environmental performance of electric cars? What do the latest Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) say about electric cars in comparison to conventional cars with ICEs? As emphasized in chapter 3 of our text book "Sustainability Marketing", LCA is a very important instrument for sustainability marketing. Understanding the main socio-ecological issues involved with conventional and electric cars is crucial for credible automotive marketing. Making a (false) claim like "zero emissions" may easily be exposed as "greenwashing" and backfire. As said in the beginning: These are interesting and exciting times … Stay tuned!
Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-77281326237661701472012-05-03T08:47:00.005-07:002012-05-05T08:08:42.931-07:00Clooney, Coffee, Convenience and Credibility

George Clooney loves Nespresso – what else? Well, at least he claims that in the series of funny ads, which started in 2008. Have a look at the Nespresso TV spot, called "Mistaken":

Ever since the multinational company Nestlé launched the coffee capsules in the 1990s, it has spread all over the world and has become a multi-billion business. It was a very clever marketing move by the Swiss food company.

In the beginning of the 1990s I did my PhD at the <placetype w:st="on">University</placetype> of <placename w:st="on">St. Gallen</placename> in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Switzerland</place></country-region>. I conducted research on "Ecology and Competitiveness in the Food Industry". One of my in-depth case studies was on coffee, analysing the social and ecological impacts of the product along the entire life cycle, i.e. coffee plantation, transportation, roasting, distribution, consumption, and disposal. I guess I got really involved in the world of coffee - and the world behind the bean. The exceptional taste and the great convenience of the Nespresso made me buy a machine. I must admit that I could not turn down the 'indecent proposal' (Nespresso did not offer organic or fair trade coffee at that time). You just switch on the coffee machine, put in a cup of your taste, press the bottom, and here we go: An espresso or a coffee just the way you want it.

My students in business ethics class argued that Nespresso produces so much waste in the form of aluminium capsules. This is definitely a valid argument, and Nespresso points out, that the capsules are recyclable. From my own experience I doubt, that the recycling quota is very high, and that recycling of capsules really makes sense from an environmental point of view. However, when we compare coffee capsules with regular filter coffee, we have to consider the "waste" in the case of the latter as well - beyond the coffee packaging. You know how it is at home or in the office: Someone prepares a number of cups in the morning and everybody helps him- or herself until the coffee gets bitter or cold or both. Empirical studies show that about every fifth cup is thrown away for that reason. Usually, that does not happen in the case of coffee capsules, because they are prepared one cup at a time. I would love to see a comparative life cycle analysis regarding coffee capsules and roasted coffee considering this aspect. If you know any, please, let us know.

I was probably also one of the first customers to inquire about the social and environmental conditions in the coffee plantations at Nespresso (that was back in the second half of the 1990s, when Nespresso was not available all over the world). I guess the number of inquiries from customers and other stakeholders has increased since then. As a result Nespresso launched the Triple A Sustainable Quality Programme in 2005, in collaboration with the Rainforest Alliance. Farmers belonging to the programme are paid a price premium for both quality and sustainability. This premium is around 30% to 40% above the standard market price for coffee and 10% to 15% above coffees of similar quality. Beyond this, farmers also receive the training, support, technical assistance and direct investment needed to grow high quality coffee, more sustainably. At the end of 2010, Nespresso was already working with around 40,000 coffee farmers in seven countries and sourcing more than 60% of its coffee from Triple A programme. In this case sustainability is an integral part of the high-quality of the product and the service Nespresso offers to its customers worldwide.

As the market segment of coffee capsules continues to grow at a high rate, it attracts competitors as well. One of them is the "Ethical Coffee Company", which offers coffee in capsules, which are made from organic, biodegradable material (instead of aluminium). At first glance, this is a good idea, but as sceptical scientists, and sustainability marketing scholars we would like to see some proof! What about an independent label or a comparative life cycle analysis? Taking the entire life cycle from cradle to grave into account, are the organic, biodegradable capsules really environmentally better than the aluminium capsules? What about the impacts of growing corn or sugar, and processing the raw materials into some kind of starch for the final packaging? Besides: What is it that makes the "Ethical Coffee Company" so ethical? What about social issues? Where and under what conditions is the coffee grown? Even after reading the information on the packaging and the website, many questions remain open … Play a game and name the "Sins of Greenwashing" yourself:

o Sin of Hidden Trade-Off

o Sin of No Proof

o Sin of Vagueness

o Sin of Irrelevance

o Sin of Lesser of Two Evils

o  Sin of Fibbing
o Sin of Worshipping False Labels.
Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-67425406147139740442011-12-19T04:40:00.000-08:002011-12-20T02:06:40.681-08:00Timberlands for Christmas - A Gift within a Gift
When I was a student (some time in the last century – do not ask me when), Timberlands were not necessarily green, but certainly cool boots. I still remember when I bought my first pair of Timberlands. I loved them and I wore them all the time.

For me (and probably my peers) they represented a kind of "urban ruggedness". The more I wore them, and the more worn they looked, the better it was. Over time we built up a relationship, but I am afraid it did not last (I was still a student and not ready for a long-term relationship yet). I was disappointed by the product. The real experience did not match my expectations. I thought they lasted for life, but they did not. After a couple of years they fell apart and my feet got wet. Maybe my pair were a lemon. Maybe I did not take enough care of them (too little time because of too many parties, I guess). Well, we parted. As far as I remember I inquired about repair, but it was too expensive considering the price for a new pair of shoes (I was not super sustainability conscious then). Anyway, I bought a new brand, which looked similar, and yet different. Coming from the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, "Cat" boots were considered to be even cooler at that time. I still have one black pair of Cat boots and I wear them during the winter time.

Recently, I have read about Timberland again. We also mentioned the medium-sized global apparel company in our last post on the "four Ds" of standards, certifications, and labels. I learnt that Timberland has a long-standing commitment to social and environmental issues. Well, many companies claim that, but Timberland also walks the talk. Back in 1993 Timberland signed a set of environmental ethics, introduced by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), which guide corporate conduct. Since then, Timberland has been taking steps to reduce the impact along the entire life cycle, including agriculture, tannery, transportation, retail stores, customers and communities. The company set up an internal team of people to support and review factories around the world, which make Timberland products. The Timberland representatives review the social and environmental performance against the Code of Conduct to ensure factories promote fair, safe, and non-discriminatory conditions. They build up sustainable relationships with their suppliers to implement good practices and increase productivity in the factories.

In 2006 the company also introduced indicators, which appeared on every box of Timberland footwear, to provide consumers with information about the company's environmental performance. They called it the "Nutrition Label" (similar to a cereal box in the grocery store), which is something consumers can relate to. According to life cycle analyses (LCA) the three most important environmental impacts include climate impact, chemical use, and resource consumption. Accordingly, Timberland provides consumers with information about the percentages of: renewable energy use, PVC free materials, eco-conscious materials, and recycled contents of the shoebox. In addition to that, Timberland lists the number of trees planted per year. Internally, the product specific indicators help designers to make sustainable decisions (e.g. choosing eco-conscious material). As a result of the sustainable design efforts Timberland launched the "Earthkeepers" collection, which incorporates recycled PET bottles in their linings, recycled rubber in their soles, organic content in apparel, and leather from rated tanneries, which implement good practices in water, waster, and energy management. The relevance of recycling was emphasized in an entertaining way in the following TV ad "Lost Bottle" as part of the global communication campaign:<o:p></o:p>

The company also partnered with Green Rubber Inc. to launch two new footwear collections featuring outsoles made using recycled rubber from discarded tires. Earthkeepers 2.0 pushes the limits further: This new collection is designed for disassembly, so at least 80% of this style's parts can be reused or recycled. The ultimate goal is to make "cradle-to-cradle" products. So far, the Green Index has been successful as a design tool, while driving consumer preferences towards environmental purchasing remains a challenge. There is little evidence that the Green Index has driven sales. In the absence of an independent and certified sustainability label in the footwear industry it is difficult to communicate the environmental and/or social merits of sustainable boots. In addition, these benefits just play an auxiliary role in the purchasing decision making process: "We know that no one's banging on our door to ask for a cool green shoe", says Timberland's CSR manager Beth Holzman, "So we consider our environmental attributes to be a 'gift with purchase'. It does help to differentiate us in the marketplace, but it's the fundamental quality and value attributes that attract the consumer."

Well, I won't probably bang at the door of company, but I will certainly reconsider my relationship with Timberland. After 15 years or so I decided to give it a second chance: A pair of Timberland boots is on my Christmas wish list!

Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-33652746840150596292011-12-12T21:42:00.000-08:002011-12-12T22:39:03.210-08:00Define, Deliver, Demonstrate and Demand: The "4Ds" of Standards, Certifications, and Labels
Alan Knight, the Founder of Single Planet Living, praises and questions the value of labels in the same breath: "We've created a model that has delivered real results in the market and in the field – but the coupling of standards-setting with labelling might not be sustainable in the future." What are the value and the future of labels? Will demand for labels increase or diminish? Will their role change? Against the background of these questions the think-tank SustainAbility interviewed some 85 experts, including business people, standard-setters, and certifiers. Recently, the results of the study have been published in "Signed, Sealed … Delivered?" written by Patrin Watanatada (Director, SustainAbility) and Heather Mak (Manager, SustainAbility). It is a remarkable report, which looks behind certifications and beyond labels.

The authors conclude that labels have become commonplace in many consumer goods industries since the turn of the century: apparel (organic cotton), carpets (GreenGuard, NSF 140), electronics (Energy Star), food & beverages (Fairtrade, Marine Stewardship Council, Organic, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ Certified), household & personal care (Eco-Cert, Fairtrade, Nordic Swan, Organic), and pulp & paper (Forest Stewardship Council). By the end of the year 2011 the global Eco Label Index lists more than 400 labels in 25 industries and 250 countries.

Labels are usually based on certain standards and certifications. "Standards" are set requirements to be followed by program participants. "Certification" provides third party assurance that a process, product or service is in line with certain standards. "Labels" are on-pack claims, marks or seals that indicate conformance with the standards (The State of the Sustainability Initiatives Review 2010). The following "four Ds" help to understand how the three mechanisms are linked together and how they work to achieve better sustainability outcomes (SustainAbility 2011, p. 12):

Define standards for processes, performance or measurements. Codify requirements, which are consensus based.

Deliver through capacity-building, expertise, relationships, infrastructure and networks.

Demonstrate delivery through certifications or verification. Provide assurance by third parties that a product, process or service is in conformity with certain standards.

Demand influence by identifying and appealing to wants and needs among buyers. Provide on-pack claims that indicate conformance with the standard and serve to communicate with the customers.

Not only small sustainability pioneers, but also large leading companies employ labels, which increases the outreach and impact of the programmes. In general, we can say that labels helped in establishing more sustainable supply chains, improving lives and preserving natural resources. However, there are limits to this model: Firstly, not every farm and factory can (and should) be certified and labelled: Certifications and labelling are time and money intensive. They are not aims in themselves, but a means to reach the ultimate goal of sustainable supply chains, sustainable products and services. Secondly, the sheer number of labels is confusing for consumers (and even for businesses!). "People are logo'd out", says Drew Tremblay (Business Development Manager, Domtar). In addition, a number of companies commit "sins of greenwashing". Thus, scepticism prevails amongst consumers. Thirdly, labels preach to the converted, and do not make much of a dent to the rest (read: the majority of consumers).

To overcome scepticism and reach out to the rest, Watanatada and Mak suggest further developing the model that combines standards and certification and on-pack labelling. They think that the three mechanisms are necessary, but not sufficient to make production and consumption more sustainable, and reach out for the rest. Sustainability innovations play a key role in delivering outcomes rather than standards, complement certifications with strong supplier-buyer-relationships, and use the power of brands to mobilize consumers into adopting more sustainable behaviours. There are some companies like Timberland and Method, for example, that use standards, certifications, and labels increasingly strategically based on what works for them, their supply chain, and their customers. They integrate sustainability into their business models and brands, and communicate it in a holistic and credible way to their customers. This is an emerging model which is based on increasingly demanding and pre-competitive standards, above brands compete, and collaborate with civil society (SustainAbility 2011, p. 27-42).

The new report by Watanatada and Mak is well researched and written. It provides an excellent overview of the state of standards, certifications, and labels. It shares interesting insights, and contributes to the debate over the future role of labels. As usual, there are some shortcomings: By definition, labels are limited to existing products and markets. New forms of consumption such as services instead of products are not considered. In addition to that, the report is focussed on "the perspectives of consumer brands and retailers operating in Europe and North America, where certification and labeling is relatively advanced." (SustainAbility 2011, p. 10). The state and the future of labels in emerging markets are beyond the scope of the report. Last, but not least the report and the new emerging approach focus on labels and leading consumer brands, which are positioned in (high) quality segments. What about other products, which are not branded and positioned in low price segments? Despite these shortcomings, we highly recommend reading the new SustainAbility report "Signed Sealed ... Deliverered?"
Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-31937904211984603012011-07-21T23:40:00.000-07:002011-07-25T05:24:16.030-07:00Living Sustainable Consumption – Unleashing the Creativity Potential of Your StudentsGuest Post by Dr. Roxana Codita, Technische Universität München (TUM School of Management)

As a fresh post-doc with Frank-Martin Belz, I had the opportunity to teach this year's Sustainable Consumption Seminar to Students on the Master's Programme in Consumer Affairs at the Technische Universität München. The course puts consumer behaviour in the context of sustainability, by defining sustainable consumption, showing barriers and drivers of sustainable consumption, exemplifying sustainable consumption patterns and consumer lifestyles, and discussing policy instruments. Finally, sustainable consumption is analyzed in key product contexts. A strong emphasis is put on critical discussion of concepts based on assigned readings and individual literature research. A special feature of the course was the assignment of a video project, to complement conventional teaching based on class discussions, presentations and readings. Frank-Martin Belz has already successfully implemented video projects as a teaching tool in his SustainabiIity Marketing classes. What was it all about? Teams of 3 to 5 students had the task to create a short video about 5 minutes long on "Living Sustainable Consumption". The idea was based on showing what it means to "consume" in a ("more") sustainable manner in two areas: "Green mobility" (public transportation, living without a car, electric vehicles etc.) and "Living vegan" (avoid using or consuming animal products, e.g. flesh foods, dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool, down, and cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals). Teams could illustrate these two areas either by conducting their own social experiment for a few days or a week, or by using presenting some fictitious scenarios. The videos were evaluated according to content, creativity and style. In the last class session on June 22, 2011 we watched all the videos together and awarded the three best videos based on the audience's choice. To give you an idea of the videos presented, here are the links to the three winners. The first prize was awarded to "A Vegan Love Story", featuring Marc Tello, Margarita Suazo, Romina Mehr, Anne Hinder. The video shows in a very amusing manner the troubles encountered by a young man, helplessly in love with a pretty vegan girl. Did he stay vegan and win the girl, did the girl quit being vegan and stay with the young man… or? Watch the video and you'll find out ...

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The second prize was won by the video "Green Mobility Experiment", created by Nika Eremina, Vera Panina, Evgeniya Sheveleva and Szabina Kozits. The video documents the endeavors of the three featured students to switch to more sustainable mobility alternatives as well as the resulting trade-offs. They illustrate the symbolic value of cars and how difficult it is to change habits and resist social pressure.

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The popular third choice went to "Vegan Madness", produced by Bernhard Mohr, Alexander Ingenhoff, Tonia Michaely, Anna-Helena Schnakenberg and Arne-Kristian Schulz. The five friends decided to try adopting the vegan lifestyle and shared their funny experiences with us. We know for sure that this experiment changed their life for good ...

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Not only the winning videos, but also the other "productions" were inspiring in terms of creative content. The students handled the topics in an original, funny, yet substantiated manner, illustrating in a best-practice approach what "infotainment" is. Involving the students in the "co-creation" process of teaching materials enables them to actively acquire and process information in a more efficient manner than they would do by using the classical "passive" teaching methods. The videos exceeded by far my skeptical expectations. Just tap into the creativity potential of your students; you'll be surprised what great resources lie there ...Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-4593509364588682982011-07-14T23:34:00.000-07:002011-12-12T22:30:18.627-08:00Green Wars: Turning Volkswagen away "from the Dark Side"Star Wars is an epic story of the intergalactic battle between good and evil, with many sub-plots touching on universal themes of romance, loyalty and betrayal. Some attributed the success of the series to its trick of translating the standard mythic story characters of farm boy, magician, princess, fool, pirate and emperor into the space age; resulting in the iconic characters of Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Princess Leia, R2-D2, C-3PO, Han Solo, and Anakin Skywalker (alias Darth Vader). The movies and their characters are well-known world-wide, both among younger generations (our bachelor and master students) as well as older generations (like us!).

In the beginning of 2011 Volkswagen, the third largest automobile manufacturer in the world, launched a new spot in the U.S. featuring a pint-sized Darth Vader who uses "the Force" when he discovers the all-new 2012 Passat in the driveway. The spot leverages humour and the Star Wars character Darth Vader to create an emotional commercial, which became popular on television and You Tube - with more than 40 (!) million hits as of July 15, 2011.
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In summer 2011 the "green empire" struck back: Greenpeace launched a clever social media campaign to turn Volkswagen away "from the dark side". Episode I and II feature the main Star Wars characters and have a strong resemblance to the VW commercial "The Force". The videos can be shared via facebook, twitter, and email. The "Rebel Manifesto" declares: "Our home—Earth—is in trouble. VW opposes key environmental laws we need if we're going to stop our planet going the way of Alderaan (bye bye). But all is not lost. We feel the good in Volkswagen. All of us in the Rebellion are calling on Volkswagen to turn away from the Dark Side and give our planet a chance.". Thus, the rebels demand from Volkswagen to:
1) support strong CO2 emissions cuts,
2) support strong fuel efficiency standards, and
3) to put your technology where your mouth is.

The Druid R2-D2 reveals the secret Volkswagen plans to drive climate change: slow progress on emissions, greenwashing the fleet, and lobbying against progress. Thereby Greenpeace points at the contradictory messages in sustainability communications by Volkswagen on product and corporate levels: On the one hand the multinational company aims to be the most eco-friendly automaker in the world (Volkswagen Sustainability Report 2010), on the other hand Volkswagen does not roll out its best available technologies across the entire fleet, and it lobbies against stricter environmental rules.

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Since the launch of the campaign more than 220,000 Jedis have already joined the rebellion (staus: July 15, 2011). Once registered the new Jedis receive their training. They get their own vwdarkside-website to invite others friends and interact with others. The higher the number of followers and interactions the more points the fresh Jedis get. With maximum points the master Jedis receive a special T-shirt from Greenpeace.
To conclude: Based on Star Wars episodes and the recent, popular Volkswagen commercial "The Force" Greenpeace launched a clever, interactive social marketing campaign in summer 2011. The "Rebel Manifesto" and its demands are widely discussed in the internet – even among Volkswagen customers. Greenpeace points at the contradictory messages in sustainability product and corporate communications by Volkswagen, especially regarding fuel efficiency and climate change. How will Volkswagen react? Is the company capable to turn to "the good side", as requested by Greenpeace and its followers?Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-69711629266458622352011-05-04T01:55:00.000-07:002011-05-04T02:45:18.789-07:00Open Sustainability InnovationOne of the arguments put forward in Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective is that companies need a new, more strategic, long-term and open approach to thinking about sustainability and innovation. Conventional strategic thinking, popularised by Michael Porter and Claas van der Linde in their 1995 Harvard Business Review article 'Green and Competitive', is that green innovations will allow companies to generate a competitive advantage and more effectively market themselves to those customers who are concerned about the environment. Such thinking would naturally encourage companies to innovate competitively and keeping tight control of their intellectual property, since gaining an advantage over their competitors was a prime objective. From a sustainability perspective however, such thinking is far from ideal. One company innovatively improving their products, production processes or business model is a good thing, but substantive progress towards sustainability will depend upon whole industries changing and innovating. Economic purists might argue that eventually the 'good' companies should be able to leverage their advantage to force the others to innovate or even force them out of business. However, the imperfections and inertia in markets is such that if we rely on a form of pseudo-Darwinian evolution of companies towards more sustainable technologies and business practices, then the impacts of climate change will probably have intervened in the market in a big way long before the process is complete. Progress towards sustainability is going to require companies to adopt a more collaborative perspective and a more open approach to innovation. There were some early developments in key industries during the 1980s and 1990s when the major players in the electronics industry collaborated with the goal of eliminating CFCs as a solvent in electronic assembly processes; and the quest for low emission vehicle technologies created some unprecedented levels of information sharing between the 'Big Three' car manufacturers . However, such collaborations were a long way from truly 'opening up'.

More recently open innovation has become fashionable amongst a wide range of businesses large and small (Chesbrough 2003 2006). It is often however promoted in terms of the benefits that companies themselves get from being open. It is seen as a way of spreading cost and risk, and getting a wide variety of new ideas into a company. It is becoming increasingly common for companies and government departments to sponsor open innovation competition to solve particular problems. Starbucks for example ran the 'betacup' contest for innovations to reduce paper cup use on the collaborative idea platform www.jovoto.com, attracting thousands of ideas between April and June 2010, including the winning 'Karmacup' design. Similarly Graham Hill, founder of TreeHugger.com launched an $70,000 open innovation competition called 'LifeEdited' to design him a low carbon New York apartment to live in. There are plenty of good examples of open innovation, particularly related to sustainability, on the IdeaConnection website. Open innovation and the 'crowdsourcing' (a sort of open version of outsourcing) of ideas and design services has also been significant recently in the automotive industry in creating more sustainable vehicles. At last year's Sao Paulo Auto Show Fiat launched the Fiat Mio, the world's first crowd sourced concept car, and Local Motors in the USA is using crowdsourcing to develop new and more sustainable approaches to vehicle design and assembly.
Realising the full potential of open innovation is not just a question of opening up companies' innovation processes in order for them to get better ideas in, it will also depend upon companies being more open about allowing their ideas, innovations and designs out into the world to be utilised by others. This will be particularly important in getting sustainability innovations out of market niches to allow them to spread throughout an industry. This is something that Nike sought to promote by making its 'Environmental Apparel Design Tool' publicly available with the aim of spurring the adoption of more sustainable processes across the industry. This software-based tool helps designers make real-time decisions that shape the environmental impact of their products, and led to the sustainability orientated football shirts worn at the South Africa 2010 World Cup (see our post "An Outstanding Performance with No Environmental Penalty?" from June 5, 2010).

The notion that making progress towards sustainability will depend upon openness among big market players received a dramatic boost this month when Facebook announced that it would share the design secrets of its new highly energy-efficient data centre in Prineville Oregon, with its rivals. This facility uses 38% less power than existing data centres, and spreading this technology could bring a significant improvement to the IT industry's carbon footprint. The level of energy consumed by Facebook's data centres is slightly ironic given the original argument that moving our lives into the digital domain would 'dematerialise' them and reduce environmental impacts. The logic was that the storage of photos online, for example, instead of printing physical copies, would protect the environment by eliminating all the harmful chemicals (like boric acid and benzene compounds) and water used in photo processing. What people overlooked about this brave new digital world was that the infinite numbers of digital photos people would leave undeleted on their Facebook pages and other sites would accumulate and spin on into eternity on data servers somewhere, gradually clocking up an environmental impact in terms of carbon footprint. By 2020 Greenpeace estimate that the total global energy use of data centres will reach 2 trillion kw/h based on current growth patterns and technologies. Facebook hope to improve this situation through its initiative, called the Open Compute Project, which will provide open access to the specifications and mechanical drawings of the Prineville buildings and servers. This is a marked departure from the rest of the industry who have traditionally kept the design of data centres highly secret. The company has already started using the media to pressurise some of its competitors to follow suit, and it represents and interesting example of the type of Sustainability Marketing Transformation that we discuss in chapter 11 of our book.

Prineville is Facebook's first custom-built data facility, created at a cost of $188m. The building's architecture takes advantage of natural air currents for cooling instead of depending on air conditioning, and stripped-down energy efficient versions of the servers have been built to handle the data. A number of big companies have already signed up as partners to the Open Compute Project including Dell, HP, AMD and Intel. The hope is that companies big and small can benefit from the cost savings and environmental benefits that come from sharing sustainability orientated innovations. Although Facebook have attracted some environmentalist criticism for not opting for more sustainable energy choices in terms of their suppliers, their attempts to dramatically reduce the amount of energy they use is to be applauded, or at the very least rewarded with a click on the "Like" button.Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-6631813444649215412011-04-26T06:12:00.000-07:002011-04-26T07:44:46.759-07:00Driving the Sustainability Marketing Message HomeFrank was invited to give a speech "Sustainability Marketing in the 21st Century: The Case of the Automotive Industry" for the AutoUni by Volkswagen in Wolfsburg (Germany) on the 14th of April 2011. In the introduction Frank briefly described the main ecological challenges for the automotive industry, namely climate change and peak oil. In the main part he presented our conception of sustainability marketing, and applied the "four Cs" (customer solutions, customer cost, communication, and convenience) to the car industry. When it comes to sustainable mobility, there is a big buzz about electric cars. "The electric car will be the iPhone of the automotive industry" says Robert Metzger, the managing director and organizer of eCarTec, the international fair for electric mobility. It is difficult to imagine, but before the pre-eminence of the internal combustion engine, the electric car held many speed and distance records in the end of the 19th century (!). There is some irony in the fact that the car industry is going back to its roots at the beginning of the 21st century.

Despite remaining problems like range and refuelling time of batteries, electric cars will probably play an important role in the upcoming years. An obstacle for the mass transition will be the higher price of electric cars as compared to conventional gasoline powered cars. The primary reason is the high cost of batteries. However, the use costs of electric cars are (much) lower in comparison to gasoline cars. Thus, the concept of customer cost will play a decisive role in the marketing of electric cars. Software programmes or smart phone apps will enable potential customers to calculate the relative advantage (or disadvantage) of electric cars versus gasoline cars based on the total cost of ownership considering the average kilometres (miles) driven.
The big buzz about electric cars obscures the emergence of another important trend: There are an increasing number of companies offering mobility services, especially in urban areas. Take, for example, car sharing organisations: Zipcar in the USA, City Car Club in Great Britain, Mobility Car Sharing in Switzerland, and Cambio in Germany. A new form of private car sharing (or: car renting) is offered by start-ups like WhipCar in Great Britain and tamyca in Germany. These kinds of mobility services are enhanced by the internet and smart phones. Young people brought up in the digital age want to enjoy the comfort of the car without taking the responsibilities of car ownership. If car companies want to avoid 'marketing myopia', i.e. the preoccupation with products (instead of customer solutions), they are well-advised to watch this trend and offer mobility services as well. This was also emphasized by Dr. Eike Wenzel (Institute for Trend and Future Research) and Prof. Dr. Ulf Schrader (TU Berlin). Dörte Hartmann-Kerl presented "Think Blue" expressing the attitude of the Volkswagen Group towards ecological sustainability.

The half-day seminar "Sustainability Marketing: With Think Blue towards an Environmental Approach in Marketing and Sales" organized by AutoUni and held in Wolfsburg (Germany) was attended by a large number of Volkswagen managers and employees. In the final discussion many questions were raised. One of them was with regards to the managing directors of Volkswagen. Some of them often commute with prestigious (and probably gas-guzzling) cars to work. If ecological sustainability is taken seriously, why don't they use smaller cars, hybrids or electric cars? This critical question was raised by one of the participants. It shows the importance of symbolic behaviour: Cars communicate – inside and outside the company! Nevertheless, many companies (especially Germans) still stick to prestigious premium cars – despite an active approach towards sustainability management and marketing. The status of managing directors, marketing and sales people is often defined by the car model they drive: The higher the position, the more premium the car. In the light of the ecological challenge and a credible sustainability marketing approach this kind of thinking is problematic. It calls for an inside transformation with a committed CEO to drive the change towards sustainable mobility (see ch. 11 of our book "Sustainability Marketing").Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-27786832960207582612011-03-01T06:38:00.000-08:002011-03-01T07:03:01.937-08:00Responsibility for Sustainability: Outcomes vs. BehaviorsGuest post by Prof. Michael Luchs and Rebecca Miller
College of William and Mary

While many consumers, businesses and the government are increasingly concerned with the issue of sustainability, progress towards a more sustainable future has been relatively limited. To a large degree, the problem is not the lack of recognition that change is needed, but, as our research suggests, a lack of sufficient assumption of responsibility for change. Indeed, the popular press and academic literature are replete with evidence suggesting that while many consumers believe that sustainability is important, a much smaller percentage of consumers actually make a concerted effort to change their behaviors, e.g. by consuming less and/or consuming differently.

Part of the challenge is that there is no consensus about what, exactly, "sustainability" means in the context of consumption. Some define sustainability as relating to the environment, others focus on social issues, such as fair labor practices, others focus on economic issues, and yet others combine each of these to varying degrees. A first step, therefore, is to establish an integrated, consensual perspective of what sustainability means. Only then can we begin to address the question of who is responsible for change towards a more sustainable future.

Our investigation so far has included a survey of U.S. consumers representing a broad range of ages. We asked consumers to rate the degree to which they believed that the definition of sustainability included three outcome dimensions (environmental, social and economic) and three behavioral dimensions (production, consumption and disposal) which were identified in a previous, open-ended survey. Next, we asked participants to rate the importance of each of these dimensions. Finally, we asked participants to rate the degree to which various stakeholders were responsible for each of these dimensions, first using the "lens" of outcomes and, second, using the "lens" of behaviors.

When we analyzed the data related to the definition of sustainability, we found that consumers do, indeed, conceive of sustainability quite broadly, including all of the aforementioned dimensions. The relative emphasis of these dimensions varied somewhat, however; both environmental outcomes and behaviors related to disposal (e.g., recycling) were viewed as especially important elements of the concept of sustainability. The results for the perceived importance of the various dimensions reflected the same emphasis on environmental outcomes and product disposal. Overall, there was general consensus that both outcome dimensions and behavioral dimensions are relevant to the definition of sustainability and are all important issues.

Our final step was to understand to what degree consumers attribute responsibility to themselves relative to responsibility they attribute to companies and the government – and to determine whether this depended on the "lens" through which they perceive the problem. Specifically, we asked consumers first to consider responsibility for sustainability outcomes (environmental, social and economic) and then for sustainability behaviors (production, consumption and disposal) given that these are, essentially, two different perspectives of the same problem. What we found was somewhat surprising and, we believe, partially explains the ever present gap between sustainability related beliefs and behaviors. When asked to consider outcomes, our participants believed that consumers are 31% responsible, whereas companies are 36% responsible and governments are 33% responsible. On the other hand, when asked to consider behaviors – which in the end lead to outcomes – consumers are willing to accept more of the responsibility: 38%, vs. 36% for companies and 26% for governments. In other words, when confronted with considering the specific behaviors that lead to outcomes, consumers accept more responsibility for the challenge of sustainability.

While our research continues, what are the possible implications of these initial results? Though there are many potential implications, one overarching implication is that in order to accelerate change, it is important that the various stakeholders involved acknowledge the degree to which they are responsible for change – and it appears that current approaches by policy makers and by companies that promote sustainable products, which emphasize outcomes and not behaviors, may be somewhat "letting consumers off the hook". By focusing on outcomes, which are ambiguous, shared, and more relevant in the future, consumers may not be as willing to change their behaviors as they would be if the problem were framed in a way that emphasized the present, personal responsibility and specific actions – such as reducing consumption and choosing more sustainable consumption when alternatives are available. As basic as it might sound, our research suggests that part of the solution to the sustainability problem is simply framing the issue in a way that consumer can relate to and in a way that holds them – and all of us – accountable for change towards a more sustainable future.

Sustainability web portal: http://masonweb.wm.edu/sustainability/Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-72316240213208484352011-02-23T07:18:00.000-08:002011-02-23T07:48:28.575-08:00In Search of Sustainability Marketing Metaphors A new book "Sustainable Leadership: Honeybee and Locust Approaches" has just been published which takes a fresh approach to using metaphors to better understand businesses, and in this case business sustainability. One of the authors, Professor Gayle Avery of Macquarie University in Australia, explained the nature of the book as follows:

"The metaphor is based on the age-old ideas surrounding honeybees that are constructors and build organizations and high performance for the long term, versus locusts that destroy healthy businesses in the interests of short-term satisfaction. Among other things, honeybee companies value long-term relationships with many kinds of stakeholders, focus on innovation and quality, treat their employees well and retain them, seek to be highly ethical, and promote environmental and social responsibility at the highest levels."

A metaphor is "a figure of speech in which a term or phrase with a literal meaning is applied in a different context in order to suggest a resemblance" (Sackmann 1989). Their value lies in their ability to translate the complex and unfamiliar into something familiar and simple to grasp. In recent years, philosophers, linguists and social scientists have increasingly agreed the metaphors we use are fundamental to structuring our view of the world and how we behave within it. As Lakoff and Johnson suggest in their classic 1980 book Metaphors We Live By, "New metaphors have the power to create a new reality." It is this power that makes them so potentially important in developing more sustainable approaches to businesses and marketing.

The analysis of business organisations through metaphors is well established in the disciplines of organisational behaviour and corporate strategy, but is less well developed in marketing. Gareth Morgan's 'Images of Organization' is for many people the iconic work in the field, with eight archetypal metaphors for organisations as machines, living organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, processes of flux and transformation, and instruments of oppression. The new book by Avery and her co-author Harald Bergsteiner belongs very firmly in the school of 'organisations as living organisms' metaphors, and a number of people have argued that to create more sustainable businesses we need a shift away from using mechanical or political metaphors in business towards more ecologically based ones. Of course what the 'locust' metaphor shows us is that it is not simply the case that ecological metaphors are 'good' and pro-environmental, whilst mechanical metaphors are inherently 'bad'. The locust can communicate ideas about the short-term and unsustainable abuse of resources, whilst a machine metaphor might help us to think about resource efficiency and more sustainable production and consumption. The key to any metaphor is that it helps you to understand a problem better and to reframe it in new and helpful ways.

The remarkable thing about metaphors is that they are so pervasive and used in so much of business and marketing language that we no longer notice them as metaphors (in which case they become 'dead' metaphors). The common usage of the word 'marketing' itself is a metaphor based originally on the activity of taking a tangible good to a physical marketplace. When reading about marketing strategy the metaphors come thick and fast, whether we're thinking about consumer sovereignty, targeting a particular segment of the market, supply-chain management, developing a product as a cash cow or following it through its life-cycle.

The key question is, does it matter what metaphors we use to express key marketing ideas? There is an argument that it does because the sources of the metaphors that underpin marketing thinking reflect fundamentally unsustainable processes. At the start of Chapter 6 of Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective we outline the three key metaphors which underpin marketing strategy thinking. The first is the business as warfare; the second is the company as a machine; and the final one is a more ecological metaphor of the company as a living organism interacting with its environment.

The military metaphor provides many of the key ideas used in marketing strategy, including targeting, sales territories, price wars and threats. Although military metaphors are often used implicitly, at times it has become much more obvious, as in Kotler and Singh's 1981 article "Marketing Warfare In The 1980s" or Ries and Trout's best-selling 1986 book, Marketing Warfare. The danger of such metaphors is that they stress the destruction of the opposition over and above the creation of sustainable value for the customer and the organisation. Just as in real warfare, a victory for an army can still be a disaster for both the environment and the population on whose behalf the army fights.

Another core marketing metaphor is that of customer sovereignty – enthroning the customer as the all-powerful guiding influence on marketing practices and processes. In many ways this is a curious metaphor to base the marketing philosophy around, given that political systems based around sovereigns are increasingly rare in the 21st century and, as the current turmoil in the Middle East demonstrates, they may not be very socially or economically sustainable. The danger in the metaphor is that crowning the customer as sovereign may give them a sense of power without responsibility, and it may provide marketers with an excuse to obey the customer's will regardless of the sustainability consequences. It also perpetuates a strange view that 'the customer' has a single unified will that can be obeyed, which in most markets is nonsensical. A view of customers as akin to the electorate in a democratic system, whose wants and needs may be inconsistent and at times in conflict, would perhaps help marketers to deal with the 'messiness' of reality and encourage a self-image for marketers as proactive stewards rather than relatively passive servants.

Adoption of more ecological metaphors may help sustainability marketers to become more innovative when it comes to developing more sustainable products and business models. Peter Senge and Goran Carstead writing in the MIT Sloan Management Review on the subject of innovation suggest that although machine based metaphors provided the inspiration for innovation during the industrial age of the 20th century, it may be living systems that provide the inspiration for creative marketing thought in a post-industrial 21st century. Processes like bio-mimicry, for example, are feeding very direct inspiration from nature into new product development processes.

References:
Avery, G. and Bergsteiner, H. (2011). Sustainable Leadership: Honeybee and Locust Approaches. Routledge, New York.
Kotler, P. and Singh, R. (1981) "Marketing warfare in the 1980s" Journal Of Business Strategy, Winter, pp. 30-41
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Morgan G. 1997. Images of Organization. SAGE Publications: California.
Ries, A. and Trout, J. (1986), Marketing Warfare. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Sackmann, S. (1989) "The role of metaphors in organization transformations," Human Relations, June, pp. 463-485.

Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-75948858657682048252011-02-14T22:00:00.000-08:002011-02-23T07:36:34.433-08:00Inclusive Business and Sustainability Marketing: The NexusChristina Gradl and Claudia Knobloch are the authors of the "Inclusive Business Guide: How to Develop Business and Fight Poverty", which has recently been released by the independent institute endeva. They define inclusive business as one that "integrates people in living poverty into the value chain as consumers and producers, thus making a positive contribution to the development of company, the local population and the environment (Grad and Knobloch 2010, p. 10). They use the term "people living in poverty" to emphasize that it is the living environment of those affected that leads to poverty. From this perspective poverty in developing countries is largely seen as a structural problem rather than an individual problem.
As consumers, people living in poverty represent a large and growing market. it is estimated by the International Finance Corporation and the World Resource Institute (2007) that 4 billion people in the world live on less than US$ 3000 per annum (measured in terms of local purchasing power). Altogether they spend approximately US$ 5 trillion (!) a year, mostly on basic needs like food, housing, mobility, and health.
As suppliers, people living in poverty provide agricultural raw materials for end products such food, textiles, and cosmetics. In our most recent posts we discussed two examples from Latin America falling into this category: Kuna and Natura Ekos.
Based on this definition the two authors offer a systematic approach of how to develop inclusive business models, including three phases with four steps each (pp. 30-65):

Phase 1: Development (identify opportunities, analyze the market, find solutions, develop the product);

Phase 2: Implementation (secure funding, engage partners, leverage local capabilities, test the model);

Phase 3: Growth (understand the impact, adapt the model), expand locally, transfer to other countries.

This approach is mainly developed for businesses (including social enterprises). There are a number of terms that characterize the concept of inclusive business. Some terms and concepts are favoured by business people, others by people working in development. The term "inclusive business" is mainly used by the private sector, including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which also entertains a blog on "Creating inclusive business opportunities: Linking local communities with big business". Inclusive business is a generic term for responsible supply chain management and Base of the Pyramid. The first focuses on people living in poverty as suppliers, the latter as consumers (see exhibit).

 Source: Gradl, Christina and Knobloch, Claudia (2010): Inclusive Business Guide: How to Develop Business and Fight Poverty, endeva: Berlin, p. 13.

What is the nexus between inclusive business and sustainability marketing? We define sustainability marketing in general terms as "building and maintaining sustainable relationships with customers, the social environment and the natural environment" (Belz and Peattie 2009, p. 31). More specifically, sustainability marketing refers to planning, organizing, implementing, and controlling marketing resources and programmes to satisfy consumers' wants and needs, while considering social and environmental criteria and meeting corporate objectives. So, where does sustainability marketing come in? Which role does it play in the context of inclusive business?

People living in poverty can be integrated into value chains as suppliers who contribute to the sustainable products, that are produced and processed according to social and environmental criteria. These products have to be marketed by connecting producers and consumers who often live far apart. Many producers in poorer countries live in remote rural areas, while their consumers live in urban areas (either in developing or developed countries). Successful sustainability marketing does not overcome the gap between people living in poverty and affluent consumers, but at least it builds a (communicative) bridge between the two. Sustainability marketing helps to sensitize consumers about the situation of people living in poverty within producer communities, and informs them about more sustainable product solutions offered by companies (although some will say it is more about promotion than information, demonstrating that there can be a fine line between credible sustainability marketing and greenwashing). Sustainability marketing aligns the broad social benefits of sustainability solutions with the individual benefits to the consumer in the form of motive alliances. Sustainability marketing is therefore a key element in inclusive business.

If people living in poverty are perceived as consumers, sustainability marketing is vital as well. First of all, strategic aspects of sustainability marketing, such as targeting and positioning, have to be considered. Multinational companies are just starting to learn about people living in poverty as new customer groups. In many cases they have to employ new market research techniques to get some more insights into these markets. On the operational level, the sustainability marketing mix will have to be adapted focussing more on affordability (offering quality product and brands for low prices) and accessibility (offering products in remote and rural areas) to establish new kinds of distribution models.

By developing business models and markets that are based on bringing poorer people into production processes to generate more sustainable livelihoods, and extending the consumption of poorer people in ways that improves their quality of life, inclusive business is clearly an important aspect of sustainability marketing and vice versa. The inclusive business approach clearly implies expanding both the number of people involved in productive work, and the levels of consumption amongst the global poor. Unless this is done through a sustainability orientation that seeks to develop more sustainable consumption and production systems, then ultimately it will be counterproductive in terms of worsening sustainability challenges and impacting on the quality of life of the poor.
Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-84554528039292416942011-02-07T22:25:00.000-08:002011-02-07T22:37:08.670-08:00Natura Ekos: Respectful Relationships, Brazilian Biodiversity and Soaring SalesIf Natura had a theme song, it would be Aretha Franklin's "Respect." Since Natura was founded over 40 years ago, the Brazilian company has flourished on a philosophy of respect for the natural environment that supplies its products' ingredients; respect for its suppliers, including traditional populations who live in the rain forests; respect for its employees; respect for its sales consultants; respect for its clients; and respect for its shareholders. Sustainable relationships with the natural, social and business environments are core beliefs for Natura, which is one of the leading manufacturers and marketers of cosmetics, skin care, perfume, and hair care products in Latin America (see Annual Report Natura 2009). Natura offers different kinds of product lines (Natura Chronos, Natura Mama and Bebe, Natura Ekos, Natura Todavia, etc) in the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. More recently the company has also secured a foothold in the "old" continent: In 2005 the first Natura House was established in Paris (France) as part of their international strategy. The vision of the company is to become an international brand, which is "… identified with the community of people who are committed to building a better world, based on better relationships among themselves, with others, with nature of which they are part, with the whole." This vision is also expressed in the Portuguese tagline of the beauty brand "Bem Estar Bem". The tagline is a pun. The literal translation from Portuguese into English would be "well-being/being well". It means that Natura strives, through its products and services, to help people enjoy better relationships with themselves (well-being), with others, with nature and the world around them (being well). It is Natura's "reason for being".

The holistic sustainability approach also pays off in financial terms (see Annual Report Natura 2009): In the year 2009 the revenue of the company totalled R$ 4.2 billion (= US$ 2.5 billion, and 1.8 € billion respectively). The net income was more than R$ 640 million (= US$ 400 million, and € 280 million respectively). At a time, when jobs are scarce, there were 1 million (!) Natura consultants, who earned R$ 2.3 billion (= US$ 1.4 billion, and € 1 billion respectively). The personal selling approach is one of Natura's success factors. It was introduced by the founder Luiz Seabra in the 1970s. As of today, direct selling still is the main distribution channel. The one-to-one communication between the trained Natura consultants and the customer allows them to explain the personal benefits of the Natura products as well as "the world behind the cosmetics", i.e. their environmental and social benefits. Natura Ekos is a typical example of a product line which needs some extra explanation. In the Brazilian indigenous language Tupi-Guarani, ekó is synonymous with life. In Greek, Ekos is ôikos, our home. In Latin, echo corresponds to everything that has resonance, or reverberates, and is therefore heard. The deeper meaning and possible interpretation of the brand name "Natura Ekos" might be that we are the echo of all those peoples who have obtained their living from, and lived with nature before us. Natura Ekos draws on the wealth of Brazil's biodiversity and on the traditional knowledge of Brazilian people who live from the land and understand it better than anyone else.

For centuries, Brazilian people have used the plants as food, remedies, cosmetics, and perfumes. Based on this idea, Natura researched the most interesting Brazilian plants and their traditional uses and brought to the Ekos range the colours, textures, smells and active ingredients from nature, with clinically proven results (see for this and the following the case study Natura Ekos by Bocheat and Mokrejs Paro 2008). Besides expanding the Natura brand and targeting new customer groups the key objective of Natura Ekos are: to preserve and disseminate the Brazilian cultural heritage; to raise awareness in each customer of the Brazilian wealth of biodiversity; and to start "inclusive business" for local communities. Priprico is an essential ingredient for the Natura Ekos line. Originally, Priprioca was planted by the Indians of Amazonia on their land and was grated or scraped with dried pirarucu fish for use as medication and an ingredient in baths. Its medicinal use has dwindled, but Prioprioca continues to be renowned for its striking and unusual scent, which attracted the researchers. In the beginning Natura started with three local communities (Boa Vista, Campo Limpo, and Cotijuba). Natura trained the participating families in the practices of sustainable agriculture and helped them to set up formal associations to secure stable relations and supply. Key pillars of the concept were rigorous social and environmental standards; inspections; certification; transparency; and an "open value chain", where costs and profits were transparent to and agreed by all parties involved (Natura, small suppliers, processors, and consultants). Since the first pilot project the certification programme has been expanded to 16 other ingredients. In 2010 the Natura Ekos line includes soaps, shampoos, conditioners, moisturisers, and perfumes. In line with the concept of sustainability, Natura Ekos products are biodegradable. The bottles and packaging contain recycled material, and refills are offered by Natura for each product, which both reduces the environmental impact and increases the price competitiveness.Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-30804577420897486032011-02-01T00:51:00.000-08:002011-02-01T01:21:11.364-08:00Kuna – The Gold of the AndesLlamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas are "the Gold of the Andes". In former times, the South-American camelids were a gift from nature for the inhabitants of the Andean inhabitants. They represented a vital source of food and clothing. Without them the survival in the inhospitable, harsh environments of the Andes would not have been possible. The Andes is the longest continental mountain range in the world on the western coast of South America. This range is about 7,000 km long, about 200 km to 700 km wide, and with an average height of approximately 4,000 m. The Andes mountains form a north-south axis of cultural influences. A long series of cultural development culminated in the expansion of the Inca civilization and Inca Empire in the central Andes during the 15th century. For thousands of years cotton and wool from llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas have been woven into elaborate textiles in the Andes. Kuna tribal members of Panama and Colombia are famous for their molas, cotton panels with elaborate geometric designs created by a reverse applique technique.

Against this background Oliver Patthey and Hugo Corzo Morales established a textile company to produce and promote the merits of alpaca fiber in 1957. Over time the company developed into "Grupo Inca", which is immersed in diverse industrial, commercial and cultural activities, including textiles, agriculture, tourism, health and trading, offering products and services linked to the cultural identity of Peru. Despite product and market diversification the breeding of the animals, the processing and the manufacturing of high quality finished garments from the fibres of the four South-American camelids (llamas, alpacas, guanacos, vicunas) always was and still is the core competence of the group.

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Its main brand is Alpaca 111, the oldest and most prestigious Alpaca brand in the market, which is well known and recognized around the globe. To target younger customer groups and to appeal to the growing LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability) market segment, the Kuna brand was introduced a couple of years ago, offering fashionable and yet traditional clothes for women and men. The brand represents the amalgamation of two different eras and worlds: The past, through the inspiration of the rich aesthetic and the technical expressions of the old Andean cultures; and the present day, through the hands of skilled designers who select each colour and create each sketch to give new life to traditional roots. Sustainability is an integral part of product quality: The ecological breeding of the animals, the preservation of ancestral knowledge, social working conditions, and the education of the communities about the environments are part of the CSR programmes, which are certified according to Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP).

In 2010 the company was awarded with the prestigious CEMEFI award as an exemplary business model for social responsibility in Latin America. The Kuna brand is distributed in exclusive Kuna retail stores in Peru, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, and United Arab Emirates. In addition to that there are online stores which make Kuna products available in North America and Europe as well (e.g. www.alpacacollections.com). When you enter Kuna stores, you enter the brand. The design and the colours create an elegant and entertaining atmosphere. Communication is both at the product and company levels, employing classical offline media (e.g. fashion shows, print advertising, and information leaflets) and online media (e.g. internet, videos, and Facebook). The main sustainability oriented appeal is euphoria, invoking the naturalness and cultural heritage of the product. As compared to other prestigious fashion brands, the price is high, but reasonable. It is in line with the high quality of the product.Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-86240401074491453702011-01-20T20:32:00.000-08:002011-01-22T11:02:01.164-08:00Sustainability Marketing goes South ESAN University in Lima (Peru) is one of the leading business schools in Latin America. It was established in 1963 accredited by the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University (California). ESAN University offers a number of masters programmes for graduate students, including Master of Business Administration (MBA), MSc in Finance, MSc in Marketing, MSc in Supply Chain Management, MSc in AgriBusiness Management, and MSc in Energy Management. Recently, ESAN University has also introduced undergraduate study programmes.

For the past decade, ESAN University has been organizing a unique event: The International Week. Leading scholars from all over the world come to teach master students about the latest developments in business administration. The XXII International Week of ESAN University took place from 10th to 14th January, 2011, including courses on global management, cross cultural management, social media in marketing, and integrated marketing communications. Frank was invited as guest professor to teach a course on "Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective". Twenty-two bright students signed up for his class. Most of them study at ESAN University. Some of them came from other Latin American countries to take part in the course (at their own expense!). The students were eager to learn about the sustainability challenges of the future, the impact of products along their entire life cycle, and its consequences for marketing. They learnt about the "Four Cs" of the sustainability marketing mix, and how European as well as North-American companies have started adopting an active approach towards sustainability marketing. The learning process was mutual, however: Frank learnt a lot about the development and status of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability marketing in Latin America, particularly Peru.

In spring 2006 the Journal of Corporate Citizenship published a special issue on CSR in Latin America. It contains a collection of papers, which give a good overview of the topic in this region. Vives (2006) presents the results of a survey on CSR of small and medium sized companies in Latin America. More than 1,300 SMEs took part in the survey. SMEs in Chile and Argentina have the highest level of CSR activity, while those in Brazil and El Salvador have the lowest. Most CSR by SMEs is focused on internal activities (especially employee welfare), whereas external (philanthropic) and environmental activities are less common. CSR among large companies and multi-national companies in Latin America is more common as emphasized by Schmidtheiny (2006). He states that CSR is seen by many Latin Americans as the hope for positive change in the face of persistent poverty, environmental degradation, corruption, and economic stagnation. Araya (2006) conducted research on CSR reporting among the top 250 companies in Latin America: Overall, 34% of the top companies publish sustainability information in a separate report, in the annual report, or both, mostly from the energy and natural resources sectors. The annual report is the more common format (27%, versus 16% using separate reports), with Brazilian companies being the most likely to report (43% disclose sustainability information in annual reports and 22% in sustainability reports).
Especially during the last couple of years of companies have started adopting CSR. Business associations such as Accion RSE (Chile), Cemefi (Mexico), CERES (Ecuador), Coborse (Bolivia), Ethos (Brazil), Fundacion del Tucuman (Argentina), and Peru 2021 (Peru) all promote CSR in their respective countries. The business associations are united in the Forum Empresa Network, which gives a good overview of leading organizations in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility from Canada to Chile.

In sum, we can say that CSR is becoming increasingly important in Latin America. However, market oriented approaches to CSR applying the principles of sustainability marketing are still uncommon. The following companies might be considered sustainability pioneers and leaders in this respect: Orgäanika Coffee & D'lites (organic coffee), Grupo Inca (sustainable textiles), Natura (sustainable cosmetics), and Lider Sac (solar energy). In the next couple of weeks we will present these Latin American sustainability marketing stories in some more detail. Stay tuned!Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-90689637846252214342010-12-23T00:54:00.000-08:002010-12-23T01:13:59.527-08:00Sustainability Marketing: Christmas Issue(s)The topic of the moment in Northern Europe is undoubtedly snow. Where usually the weather is the small item at the end of the news, now it is the news. The main news, the travel news, the sport news and local news are suddenly dominated by snow and some of the worst winter weather in 30 years.

The sudden fixation with the winter weather, and its arrival during peak Christmas shopping and traveling season has raised a lot of issues which resonate with key themes in Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective. One obvious one is climate, and climate change in particular. Progress towards more sustainable patterns of production and consumption will be hampered unless consumers accept and act upon the real and present risks that climate change presents. The problem is that the clear evidence of changing (and warming) climate in the long-term is somewhat disguised and overshadowed by the short-term impact of the weather on our lives and consciousness. This is rather clearly illustrated by the comments of Michael O'Leary, Boss of Ryanair recently:

If the boss of a major company cannot tell the difference between climate and weather, and is given a platform in the media to further confuse consumers, then the prospects of mobilizing consumers to act on climate risks are much diminished. The problem is that when people look back on 2010, the thing they'll remember is the worst winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere for 30 years. The fact that early indications are that global average temperatures for the year are likely to reach a new high is likely to be both overlooked and forgotten.

This weather and its impact also illustrates our dependence on the environment, and the extent to which our societies and economies depend on relatively stable and benign environmental conditions. This is particularly true as our economies and markets become increasingly globalized. More globalized supply chains can create economies of scale and scope which allow financial costs to consumers to be minimized, and make seasonal produce available virtually year-round to deliver convenience to consumers. The downside is that it introduces greater vulnerability into the supply system because if any one link in the chain is adversely impacted by the weather, the whole system can grind to a halt. More localized systems of production and consumption may find it difficult to match the prices of the global supply chains (despite the greater transport costs), but they are potentially more resilient. Shoppers all over Europe are discovering that a centralized retailing system based on the move towards out-of-town retail parks comes at a price when car journeys to them become impossible.

Talking of car journeys, another interesting aspect of this weather has been the change in social status of 4x4 car drivers in urban areas. Usually people driving huge 4x4s between their homes and their places of work or shopping or their children's schools are frowned upon for their environmental profligacy. Now suddenly they find themselves in demand for socially important tasks like getting medical staff to hospitals, getting brides to weddings and taking basic supplies to the elderly who live alone. Rather like for businesses, a sudden burst of socially responsible activity does not really absolve you from a year's worth of environmental sins, but it must be nice for 4x4 owners to feel popular for a change. Whether or not this winter will lead to an upswing in demand for 4x4 vehicles will be interesting to see.

Another issue raised by this very Christmassy weather is the impact that it has had on the traditional Christmas shopping season. In the UK there have been some very gloomy economic forecasts about the impact on retailers' financial results in 2011. One commonly cited statistic is that for many retailers the sales during the two weeks prior to Christmas represent their annual profit. The other 50 weeks of the year generate the necessary income to cover their costs, and the festive season generates their profit. This has to raise some questions about the sustainability of businesses that are so dependent on sales during two weeks of the year when there is a reasonable chance that shoppers will find it difficult to get to the shops. The problem with Christmas sales is that it is not necessarily custom that will be deferred into the New Year, and even if it is, it may not be so profitable. As Nick Hood, of insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor, explained on the BBC news website this week, deferred sales tend to mean a real loss for retailers as would-be Christmas items are instead purchased in the January sales. As he stated: "The other problem is about 20% of all Christmas spend is impulse and that dies on Christmas Day. You're not going to buy that extra chocolate cake or that extra present for Auntie Flo. You stop." That last quote perhaps says a great deal about Christmas's new role as a festival of impulsive and symbolic purchasing and consumption more than as a religious festival or even as a festive window of enjoyment to brighten up an otherwise rather long and dark winter period. As we explored in this blog exactly a year ago, Christmas is a tricky subject for anyone interested in promoting sustainability marketing. Attacking the over-consumption and the sheer volume of consumption of items with apparently little (or highly temporary) value or utility, leaves you sounding like a kill-joy or a more environmentally aware version of Ebeneezer Scrooge. But if you join in too enthusiastically, you're open to the charge of hypocrite. Perhaps the solution lies in a 'downshifted' Christmas where the emphasis is on time spent with friends and loved ones, doing things you enjoy doing, and finding resourceful (and resource efficient) ways of enjoying the holiday season. If the current arctic airstream continues coming out way, many of us might not have too much choice about that last part !

So as last year, we wish everyone a happy and relatively sustainable Christmas, and best wishes for a peaceful and rewarding 2011.

Frank and Ken.Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-49340242331102778862010-12-15T00:55:00.000-08:002011-01-24T21:02:19.225-08:00The Battle of Bags: Consumer and Ecological ChallengesIn 2009/10 FritoLay introduced the world's first 100% compostable snack chip bag in the USA and Canada. Helmi Ansari, Sustainability Director at FritoLay Canada, wrote a guest post about the launch of the new SunChips packaging in our blog. Initially the public applauded the company's move to compostable bags. However, in October 2010 FritoLay USA withdrew the SunChips bag, just 18 months after introducing it. What happened?

Consumer Challenges
Launched with extensive publicity that highlighted the compostability of the bag, the new packaging soon became the target of negative attention. Consumers started complaining about the "noise pollution". Many called up the customer service line or wrote letters to the company. The digital natives left their comments and led a lively discussion on the SunChips facebook group, which was joined by more than half a million people (!). The arguments were not one-sided, though: "There was a lot of feedback that asked for changes to the packaging" said FritoLay spokesperson Aurora Gonzalez. "But there were a lot of consumers who gave us kudos for this innovative step."

Some consumers even created videos, and uploaded them on YouTube. One of most popular videos regarding the subject of noise in the case of SunChips was created by a user named Mark Mosk. It is just 13 seconds short, no words, only the sound of the crinkling SunChips bag and a non-verbal face gesture in the end.

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The video was seen more than 150,000 times on you tube and even made it to ABC news. In light of consumer complaints and dropping sales FritoLay USA decided to go back to the original packing for five of its six flavours. The original, plain flavoured chips will still be sold in the supposedly "eco-friendly" wrappers. This strategic sustainability marketing decision compromise sends three signals: 1) It shows responsiveness to the high number of consumers who complained about the noise of compostable bag. 2) It leaves the compostable bag still available for those who are more concerned about the natural environment than the crinkliness of the SunChips bag. 3) By keeping one flavour the company shows its continuing pursuit of more eco-friendly packaging, which is "a little less noisy". FritoLay Canada even decided to go further and take a stand. Despite the criticism it kept the compostable bag on the shelves and made a "public service announcement", featuring Sustainability Officer Helmi Ansari on YouTube:

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He explains the trade-offs between a little noise and compostability of the bag in an informative and yet humorous way. Arxces, one of the viewers, comments:

"Well done SunChips for taking a stand and keeping the bag. But also well done for treating your customers like the intelligent people that they are, by explaining why these noisy bags are worth it."

Ecological Challenges
Despite consumer challenges FritoLay also faces ecological challenges. Most consumers readily assume that the compostable bag is more environmentally friendly than petroleum-based, non-recyclable bags. At first glance this seems to be the case. It is intriguing idea that the new packaging stems from renewable resources and that it is 100% compostable in the end of the life cycle. It realizes the "cradle-to-cradle" approach introduced and promoted by Braungart and McDonough (2002).

However, it is not that easy and straight-forward (as usual in the real world). One of the latest Life Cycle Assessment was published by Tabone et al. in Environmental Science & Technology 2010, 44, 8264-8269. The interdisciplinary study was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of chemists and engineers from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Life Cycle Assessment compared one litre of polymer (= unit of analysis) made from 1) petroleum or other fossil fuel feedstock, 2) biopolymers from renewables resources, and 3) hybrid bio/petroleum polymer. The Life Cycle Assessments were completed in accordance with the ISO 14040-14043 series. The results show that there biopolymers do not score better than conventional polymers based on petroleum in all dimensions. There are environmental trade-offs in the case of bioplastics. The advantages in the form of renewable resources and compostability come with a price: there are impacts on the natural environment and human health at the beginning of the life cycle. More specifically, the agricultural production of crops like corn and maize result in the use of land, fertilizers and pesticides, which have an impact on categories such as eutrophication, human health, and eco-toxicity. In addition to that, the fermentation and processing of the crops also have quite an impact. A severe limitation of the study is the exclusion of disposal scenarios, which should be included in future studies. In light of these results companies like FritoLay should be cautious claiming that there SunChips bags are 100% compostable (without saying that the agricultural production produces impacts). There is the danger of committing a sin of greenwashing (the "sin of hidden tradeoff").

Yet, it is worth mentioning, that bioplastics are relatively new materials. Several long-term trends will drive their growth: volatile oil prices; energy security concerns; environmental benefits; favorable regulatory intiatives; and the improving performance and competitiveness of bioplastic resins. The ecological "battle of bags" has just begun…

The case of the compostable bag demonstrates that both at the consumer end and the producer end there are typically trade-offs involved in moving towards more sustainable solutions and that pure 'win-win' trade-off free solutions are relatively rare. This is one of the challenges sustainability marketing faces in the present and the future.Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-80028279006303759122010-11-22T04:34:00.000-08:002011-01-24T21:02:54.676-08:00Sustainability Marketing 2.0Consumers, Communication, Conversations and Communities

Online and social media play a vital role in sustainability marketing. They enable pioneers and performers to inform consumers about sustainability issues, and to interact with them. They can create transparency and build trust. Online and social media employed by companies in the area of sustainability marketing include (inter alia): websites; blogs; videos; Facebook; online idea competitions; and online communities. Whereas the former tend to be one-sided and informative, the latter are two-sided, allowing direct interactions between companies and consumers (see exhibit).

 Websites: Unlike mass media, which are limited to short bits and pieces (e.g. 30 second TV ads), websites allow companies to present their (more or less) holistic approach to sustainability marketing – beyond the desired consumer values. Online media have the potential to show the world behind the product, and what the company is doing to tackle sustainability issues along the entire life cycle. Take, for example, Birds Eye Iglo, the leader in the European market for frozen food: In addition to product information regarding ingredients and nutrition (calories, sugars, fat, saturates, salt) the company illustrates, where the products come from, how they are processed, and what they do provide sustainable food forever ("Forever Food"). Followfish, a niche player in the market of frozen fish, has a special feature on its packaging and website: By means of a tracking code the consumers can see, where the fish was cultivated according to which guidelines (e.g. organic aquaculture in Vietnam), and which way it was transported. The results are presented with Google maps. Similarly, Patagonia, the world's leading company in marketing sustainable clothing and gear, provide interesting and yet entertaining information about the world behind the textile products. The Patagonia Footprint Chronicles is a website, which allows consumers to track the impact of specific products from design to delivery (including text, images, and interviews). This type of information makes the whole product life cycle transparent. It reduces information asymmetries between producers and consumers. The alliance with credible partners (e.g. WWF, Rain Forest Alliance, Marine Stewardship Council, Fair Labour Organization), and the use of independent labels both build trust. Ultimately, the information provided on corporate websites transfers credence qualities of the customer solutions that companies provide into search qualities.

Blogs: To inform consumers and other stakeholders on a regular basis, a number of companies which take an active stance towards sustainability marketing, host a weblog for employees. Patagonia's blog "The cleanest line" was established in early 2007 and contains hundreds of posts regarding environmental activism, footprint chronicles, innovative design, "soul of the sport", and the company's "uncommon culture".
Frosch (= frog), "The most trusted brand" and one of the leaders in the German market for cleaning products, has a dedicated team of employees writing posts for the "Froschblog" on a regular basis. These employees might be considered as "sustainability brand ambassadors" within and without the company. The corporate blogs are read by an increasing numbers of employees, critical stakeholders, and interested consumers, but usually there is a hardly any interaction between the writers and readers. Very few people leave comments.

Videos: on channels such as YouTube may be informative, entertaining or both, providing some form of "infotainment". They tend to generate more comments and even some kind of interaction in the form of comments and/or even videos as a response to previous videos. The Canadian company FritoLay makes extensive use of this online medium, promoting their sustainable flagship product "SunChips". At the end of the selected video featuring the sustainability manager Helmi Ansari they refer to the Facebook group "SunChips" which has almost half a million members discussing the merits of SunChips (and the downsides of the "noisy" compostable bag!).

Online Idea competitions: launched by companies who ask the general public or specific target groups to submit ideas, concepts or projects relating to sustainability issues in a given time period. The submitted ideas are evaluated by the participants of the idea competition and/ or a group of experts. Usually, some kind of monetary or non-monetary award is given to the winner(s). To reduce waste produced by youngsters McDonald's Germany launched a campaign in 2010. A key element of the national campaign was an online video competition in which participants were asked to show how to get rid of waste in a creative way. The Mc Donald's winner of the video contest were rewarded with a trip to the World Cup in South Africa:
Walmart, the largest retailer of the world tries to unleash the creative potential of students by running the "Better Living Business Plan Challenge". The competition challenges students to invent sustainable products or develop sustainable business solutions and present them to a panel of Walmart executives, suppliers, and environmental organizations. In addition to gaining an audience with some of the top business and sustainability leaders in the United States, the winning team will receive $20,000 to invest in their business or product. The idea competition is communicated online (via Netimpact, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin) to reach the target groups, while the students' presentations take place in selected colleges all over the United States.

Online communities: There are a number of online communities dedicated to sustainable consumption (e.g. http://www.treehugger.com/ and http://www.utopia.de/). These communities represent far more than a potential audience to communicate with. They represent a source of expertise and insight about the sustainability agenda from which marketers can learn, and with which marketers can develop and test new ideas, strategies and campaigns. Forward-thinking online communities are invaluable inspirations and sources for new product development towards sustainability, but these are seldom exploited by companies.Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-43855479798250651702010-11-09T10:00:00.000-08:002011-01-22T11:14:27.380-08:00Innovative Sustainability EducationLast week Ken attended an International Education for Sustainable Development conference. This drew together a really interesting mix of delegates from many different countries; working in educational levels that went from young school-age children through to universities and life-long learning; and from disciplines that went from microbiology, engineering and architecture to business, sociology and geography. One of the highlights of the conference was the keynote speech delivered by Michael Wadleigh. He is best known as the Director of the movie Woodstock, the highest grossing documentary of all time, for which he won an Oscar in 1971. Rather quirkily, because he felt that it was the way 'the people' had embraced the movie that had made it so successful and won him the award, he felt it was a 'People's Oscar'. So instead of putting it in a glass case at home and displaying it, he travels with his statuette allowing anyone to hold, admire and have themselves photographed holding a 'real' Oscar (much to the conference delegates' delight).

Perhaps even more quirkily for an American Oscar-winning movie director, instead of retiring to the beach in Los Angeles, he's moved instead to not far from the beach in South West Wales. Michael is probably the nicest, most unassuming and down-to-earth Oscar winner on the planet. He was also an entertaining raconteur partly because of his familiarity with icons like Jimi Hendrix, Bobby Kennedy and Edward Olmos (who is an icon if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan!) and partly because of the new work he's engaged in relating to sustainable development. Although Michael found fame as a film-maker, his original training was in science, and he's decided to go back to his roots to combine science and communication in a project to educate children about sustainability. His Homo Sapiens Foundation has created a UNESCO-funded educational resource 'The Homo Sapiens Report: The Future of Humanity'. This begins from the principles of ecological foot-printing science to work out what a 'fair' earthshare is, and what the implications for sustainability are of current trends in population growth, resource use and technology. The principles are very much in line with that of the Ehrlichs and their IPAT formula – that our impact on the planet is a function of population, the average level of material affluence we enjoy, and the average eco-efficiency of the technologies that deliver it.

The twist taken to interest children in the sustainability challenge from a resource-use and population perspective, is to translate the challenges that sustainability throws up into a different context – that of the inhabitants of a space station. Those aboard a space station face the same challenges as those aboard Spaceship Earth in microcosm – limited resources, everything has to go somewhere, and a number of different people that resources and problems need to be shared between. Michael's logic was that not only did the space station analogy turn some rather abstract sustainability principles into concrete and easily visualized problems, but astronauts represent the type of 'cool' people that young children are likely to relate to and want to be like. It also provides a novel and interesting way to illustrate the social and ecological challenges explored in Chapter 3 of Sustainability Marketing: a Global Perspective – because, lets face it, you can't get a more global perspective than the astronaut's view of Spaceship Earth.

In addition to the report and teaching slides for The Future of Humanity Report, there is also a slightly mind-blowing Homo Sapiens report imagining what an Alien Reporter might make of the human race and the unsustainable mess it seems to have gotten itself into. It is an amazing document – a collision of science, history, philosophy, poetry and anthropology all rendered in an extraordinary visual style. It is the type of document that only an artist with a background in science who lived through the 1960s would be capable of dreaming up. If you want to find an entirely unique and original way of looking at, understanding and communicating the challenges of sustainability, it really is a wonderful piece of work – but its one to look at with your preconceptions put away and your mind well and truly open. Which is probably the only state of mind that allows real progress towards sustainability to be made. If there was an Oscar for most challenging, intriguing and original sustainability educational product, it would be pretty much certain to win.Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-50866953305435969202010-09-28T21:37:00.000-07:002011-01-22T11:17:21.635-08:00Longer Lasting Products: Some Throwaway RemarksThere is probably no word whose changing use illustrates the swing from the deeply unsustainable approaches to marketing of the 1970s to mid-1980s and the more sustainability orientated approaches we see today, than the word 'disposable'. There was a time when the word disposable was proclaimed as a product benefit applied to previously durable product types such as razors, cameras, lighters and tableware. It signified a freedom from care and maintenance of products and somehow implied a very 'modern' and streamlined approach to living. Such products still exist, although they are often now sold as 'single use' or 'recyclable'. There are occasional new products still promoted as disposable, barbeques being one such example – although this is possibly only because lightweight reusable varieties had already taken the label 'portable'.

Growing concerns about dwindling landfills and resource scarcity has made the idea of disposable products seem anything but modern, and has led to a new emphasis on the total lifecycle of products, and the length of useful life we can expect from them. A major new book has now been published by Gower on this subject, which is a recommended read for anyone interested in sustainability marketing principles or practice. The title is 'Longer Lasting Products: Alternatives to the Throwaway Society' and it is edited by Tim Cooper, Professor of Sustainable Design and Consumption at Nottingham Trent University. Tim has a long and outstanding track record of research on the specific topic of product durability, and he has pulled together a range of contributors to the book, including a chapter on re-orientating marketing thinking for durability from Ken.

The book takes a multidisciplinary approach reflecting the wide range of issues and disciplines that will play a part in moving towards an economy based on more durable products. Chapters cover issues including design, engineering, marketing, regulation, government policy, consumer behaviour, systems approaches and managing product life cycles. The range of consumer products discussed within the chapters include cars, kitchen appliances, electronics, furniture, flooring, hardware, garden tools, clothing, recreational goods, DIY goods and packaging. It aims to provide stakeholders with an interest in product durability, from policy makers through to consumers, with evidence and analysis demonstrating how and why we both can and should move away from a throwaway consumer culture towards an economy sustained by more durable goods.

The book is now available from book sellers. Appropriately it is also available in a resource efficient ebook format for all you Ipad and Kindle lovers out there as: ISBN 978-1-4094-1043-0.Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-74598246854969742232010-09-16T23:26:00.000-07:002011-01-24T20:42:35.899-08:00Employees as Sustainability Brand Ambassadors: A TypologyIn one of our most recent posts we emphasized the importance of building up strong sustainability brands. In this context we suggest eight essential elements, the "8 Cs" of sustainability branding: Core, Co-operative, Credible, Consumer Benefits, Conversational, Consistency, Commitment, and Continuity. We stated that sustainability branding requires the commitment of top management and marketing decision makers. No doubt, this is important (if not crucial). However, the commitment of employees is equally important, especially in the context of sustainability communications, which is characterised by conversations, dialogues, and interactions.

Research shows that the commitment and the understanding of brands by employees impacts brand and company performance. The empirical study by Thomson et al 1999 and further surveys by the global brand agency The Brand Union (formerly: IG Enterprise) indicate that strong commitment and good understanding of brands by employees have a positive impact on brand and business performance. According to the (emotional) commitment and the (intellectual) understanding of brands we may segment employees into four major categories. These include: Weak links, Bystanders, Loose Cannons, and Champions.

Weak links neither really understand the deeper meaning and messages of sustainability brands nor do they care. Often broader sustainability issues are difficult to understand. They may occur somewhere else in the value chain and do not relate the everyday experience and work of employees. Ideally, companies want a (very) small percentage of weak links. Bystanders have the information they need, but they do not care (anymore). This group might even have a negative impact on brand and business performance. "We've all seen situations where employees have been through a very difficult time. They are jaded, they've seen layoffs, and they don't feel good about it" says Parish from Enterprise IG and adds: "That's a very dangerous population. If that population gets out of control, they can actually undermine a brand." Loose cannons are those people that really mean well. They have a strong emotional connection. They are loyal, but they do not necessarily have the understanding and the means to support the sustainability efforts of the company, its products and brands. Brand champions have both the intellectual connection and the emotional commitment to the sustainability brands. Parish from Enterprise IG emphasizes: "Our studies and our work have shown that clearly there is a very strong link between brand champions and ultimate business results and performance. Champions actually generate a service, as advocates for products and for their company as a good place to work."

We assume that sustainability pioneers and leaders, who are really serious about sustainability issues and linking them to the core of their business and brands, already have a large percentage of brands champions (as compared to conventional companies). Future studies and surveys might shed light on this hypothesis. In the case of loose cannons (and weak links) it is important to enhance the understanding of employees regarding the deeper meaning and messages of sustainability brands. Sometimes the sustainability issues are far away (in space and time) and difficult to grasp. Instruments to describe and explain complex issues include seminars, speeches, newsletters, open discussions, internal prize competitions, and so on. Here, continuity and clarity are important (the latter might be added as the ninth "C" to sustainability branding!). It becomes obvious that internal sustainability branding is crucial and complementary to external sustainability branding. Since employees are not easy to fool, they (might) play a vital, credible and authentic role as sustainability brands ambassadors.
Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-19983969585068832742010-09-02T01:59:00.000-07:002011-01-22T11:19:10.864-08:00More Sustainability Marketing: It is in the BagCertain products and technologies have achieved iconic status within the sustainability marketing debate (and many of them are featured in "Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective"): Hybrid cars, long-life lightbulbs and organic food are just a few of the positive sustainability icons. On the negative side, one of the more infamous is the disposable plastic shopping bag, a product which has been the focus of controversy and tussles between environmentalists, lawmakers and retailers for many years. Plastic bags are one of the key areas for action in the sustainability marketing world. It is an area where regulators have intervened to try and influence consumers, with the Irish government taking a lead with its successful levy introduced in 2002 at 15 Euro cents, then raised to 22 cents (with 44 cents planned). Retailers like Marks and Spencer and Lidl have also introduced their own charges for single use bag. The Chinese government's decision to ban free bags in 2008 has reportedly cut consumption there by over 40%. Put 'plastic bags' into YouTube and a range of videos pop up, particularly from California where contributions range from tearful activists pleas to earnest documentaries to protect San Francisco Bay or the Pacific in general from the scourge of plastic bag litter. Speaking of online creativity, there is also a growing use of the internet by NGOs and social marketers seeking to discourage us from releasing our disposable plastic shopping bags 'into the wild' at the end of their lifecycle. This reached a pinnacle of sophistication with the wildlife 'mockumentary' – The Majestic Plastic Bag. It's a good example of the use of subversive humour online to influence consumers, and with nearly a trillion of the 'majestic' little suckers joining us every year, we need to be pretty careful about where they end up.

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What is perhaps remarkable is that a product that is so peripheral to our consumer lifestyles has become such a focus for so much controversy and so much activist attention, regulatory intervention and retailer action. Perhaps this is exactly the point. Plastic bags represent a 'side show' to the main consumer lifestyle event, where changing consumption habits and imposing taxes makes gives everyone a warm glow and the illusion of progress. This is not to say that such changes are not worthwhile. It is however fair to say that, like recycling as a consumer behaviour, the attention given to plastic bags is probably disproportionate to the actual sustainability impacts involved.

Exactly how many of these bags are produced each year is uncertain, but estimates are in the range of 500 billion to some 3 trillion bags worldwide. A major criticism leveled at these bags is that they represent a waste of resources. The WorldWatch Institute estimates that it takes 430,000 gallons (1,6277, 720 litres) of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags. This would account for a lot of oil with global bag production in at least the hundreds of billions. However, although literally true, this is a misleading way of looking at the problem. Most typical shopping bags are made from high density polyethylene, which is a by-product of gas or oil refining. So although plastic bag manufacture does consume resources, the resources concerned are mostly a waste product anyway.

The fact that these bags are created from waste doesn't make them sustainable, but it does make comparisons between their environmental impacts and those of alternatives such as the brown paper 'kraft' grocery bags which are popular in America more complicated. This highlights the importance of performing proper lifecycle analyses on alternative products and technologies (as emphasised in Chapter 3 of "Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective" - sorry for the self-promotion ;-). In the case of shopping bags, such an analysis was the focus of a report published this summer by BRS on retail bag impacts and options.

The real sustainability impacts of a disposable plastic shopping bag are therefore much less to do with where they come from, but instead reflect what is done with them and where they end up. This is a subject where the Internet can provide an amazing range of creative ideas about what you can do with old plastic bags. You can learn how to fuse plastic bags to create a material from which you can make your own unique bags, coats and cushion covers. You can even turn old bags into a yarn that can be knitted or crocheted into bags, rugs or even sandals.Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-26760984485927683312010-08-23T22:51:00.000-07:002010-09-02T02:44:13.691-07:00Sustainability Marketing in an Era of Tough Oil"We are moving from an era of cheap abundant energy to an era of scarce, hard to get expensive energy" says Terry Lynn Karl, Professor for Political Science at Stanford University in the movie "A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash" (an enlightening documentary – a must see for concerned citizens, consumers, and corporate leaders!). Hard to imagine the transition from cheap to expensive oil? Yes! Why is that so? Probably, because it is beyond our empirical experience. Most of us were born and brought up in the 20th century, an era of cheap oil. As a consequence of its relatively cheap price, oil is ingrained in modern societies. It is the fuel of globalisation and the economy. Most of our economic and human activities depend on oil, whether we fly around, drive a car, eat food, heat the house or use a computer. Our entire infrastructure (roads, buildings, agriculture, food, IT) depends on oil. The high dependency on oil might soon lead to "A Crude Awakening".

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"The Oil Crunch", the second report of the UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security is a wake-up call for economy. Based on numbers and different, credible sources the report states that after the credit crunch in 2008 we will face another crunch within the next five years – the oil crunch. As we reach the maximum oil extraction rates, oil prices are likely to be both higher and more volatile, with severe consequences for economies and societies. It will become tough (and costly!) to extract more oil from the surface of the planet (e.g. deep sea and tar sands). After Peak Oil, and the transition to 'tough oil', the likely next step will be into an economic trough.

Is that an issue for sustainability marketing? Yes, definitely! What can corporate leaders and sustainability marketers do about it? We suggest three steps to anticipate a (not so distant) future, which might be overshadowed by economic, political and social upheaval.

The first step is to analyse the oil dependency of current products and services offered to customers by the company: What is the oil input for the production of the products and services? How far does the product travel from cradle to grave and how much oil is needed along the way? Does the product consume oil during usage? If so, how much? To get an overview, an energy balance from cradle to grave of the product will do, putting a special emphasis on oil as an energy source. It gives an idea, how much oil the final product contains and uses up.

The second step is to create scenarios: What will happen if the price of oil doubles from 80 US$ per barrel to 160 US$ per barrel in the year 2013 (2015, 2017)? What will happen if oil prices triple or quadruple in the coming years? To which extent does it affect production, transportation and use costs? How does it affect the demand? The higher the oil dependency during use the higher is the likelihood of significant demand shifts. Think of cars, especially sports utility vehicles, and air travel. In order to create awareness and sensitivity in the company it useful to involve key decision makers in the development and interpretation of these oil price shock scenarios.

The third step is to take action and reduce the dependency on oil. Looking for alternatives is not an easy task and takes (a lot of) time. Forward-thinking companies like Interface, Patagonia, Nike and FritoLay have already done so. By increasing the energy-efficiency of their products, and switching to renewable resources, they become less dependent on oil (and eventually they become independent). It does not take a prophet to predict that these sustainability pioneers and leaders (as also described in our text book "Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective"!) are more resistant to oil price shocks than their peers, maintaining (and probably) increasing their competitiveness in the upcoming era of tough oil.Frank and email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5183531718643081490.post-46506089615215734962010-08-17T21:27:00.000-07:002010-08-17T22:32:24.723-07:00Sustainability Marketing Takes a HolidayGiven that it is holiday (or vacation, for those viewing this from the US) season, it seems like a good moment to take a break from our normal lives and think about sustainability marketing in the context of 'getting away from it all'. Holidays are an interesting type of consumption to consider from a sustainability perspective for several reasons.

For one thing our holidays can account for a considerable amount of our ecological footprint as consumers. How much depends on exactly how and where you holiday, and how you calculate the impacts. Estimates vary but some research suggests that up to one sixth of our personal ecological footprint for a year may be left on the beach where we spend our two week holiday. In 2002 WWF created a holiday ecofootprinting tool and tested it on some typical overseas holidays (two week Mediterranean holidays flying from the UK). Not surprisingly around half the impact was related to transport, and particularly the flights. The next most important category was waste, which accounted for roughly a quarter to a third of impacts. Food accounted for 6-9% and excursions a surprisingly low 3-6%.

Some of these impacts depend on the hotel operators and service providers at destinations, but there are obvious things that we can do as consumers to reduce our footprint. Looking for alternatives to flying, trying to avoid waste, and eating local seasonal produce are among the simple steps we can take.

The interesting thing is that some research evidence suggests that when we go on holiday we may sometimes forget to pack our environmental concerns. An interesting paper published last year in the journal Environment and Behavior by Dolnicar and Grün (Vol. 41/ 5, pp 693-714) found that people did not tend to maintain their normal domestic pro-environmental behaviors when on holiday. Psychologically we seem to treat those two weeks as a break from our ecological responsibilities as well as our work responsibilities. Similarly the consumer segment identified by McDonald and Oates which they labelled 'Exceptors' (see chapter 4 of "Sustainability Marketing"), is made up of people with strong environmental values who generally seek to integrate them into their consumption and other behaviors. However they also designate a certain section of their lives as 'off limits' in terms of considering the environmental consequences. The two big exception categories they identified were use of the private car, and – you've guessed it – foreign travel. The psychology at work here isn't hard to understand - I've worked hard for the last 50 weeks and I've done my best to recycle all I can, avoid waste, reduce my energy usage, purchase sustainable products and choose green travel options. I definitely deserve a holiday and some sunshine !

Two years ago Ken and his wife Sue hit upon a novel solution to this problem. They decided to have a foreign holiday at home. This was sparked off by their teenage children deciding they were now too embarrassing to travel with, but then developed into the idea of 'Why don't we do all the things that we usually do when on holiday in Brittany, but do them at home ?'. So for a week they only did the minimum level of domestic chores which they would do when in France. They cycled down to Cardiff's Riverside market and loaded their bikes with produce from the French baker who has a stall there. They cycled up to Caerphilly and pretended the castle there was a quaint chateau. They bought French food and wine from their local supermarkets, watched French movies on TV in the evenings and read the sort of books they'd normally read on holiday. The interesting thing was that once the 'game' of having a pretend French holiday began, it became an increasingly fun and funny exercise in itself. So perhaps there is a way to have some of the benefits of a foreign holiday without the hefty ecological footprint (and bill for travel and accommodation) that goes with it. All you need is a little bit of imagination – and probably some luck with the weather too!

Would the planet be saved if we all stayed at home ? Probably not, the dependence of many financially poor but ecologically rich nations on tourism income makes it more complicated than that. If no tourists arrived the likely consequence would be the liquidation of their ecological resources in pursuit of an alternative source of short-term earnings. Whether or not tourism is the largest industry in the World, or one of the five largest depends a bit on who you listen to, whether you believe it is a single industry and how you classify it. Either way, it is too large a chunk of the global economy to simply abandon without severe social and environmental repercussions. The challenge for the future will be for tourists and tourism providers to find more sustainable ways of satisfying our need to get away from it all.

Happy Holidays from Frank and Ken.Frank and firstname.lastname@example.com