Greening brands

Chris Sherwin and I recently did some research into a selection of companies to find out what it takes to build a green brand, and came up with some top tips for branding and marketing practitioners wrestling with these issues.

I won’t list all our findings here, as the full paper and a related article are available on brandchannel.com and the ‘What’s New in Marketing’ websites. What I do want to point out here is that one of the more important things to think about is that simply getting sustainability as a brief to your marketing and branding departments or agencies does not guarantee progress. It has to be backed up by good quality content.

Some people may be of the opinion that most if not all efforts to green a brand equates to some level of greenwashing and that marketers and branding people should stay away from the sustainability strategy. Well, I would disagree with that. I think our research clearly shows that by unleashing the power and influence of branding and marketing people some compelling sustainability programs and campaigns have been brought to market. Many of them are almost sub-brands or brands within their own right (think M&S’ Plan A, GE’s Ecomagination, Ariel’s ‘Turn to 30’; BskyB’s ‘The Bigger Picture’, etc). These are the first encouraging signs of what can happen when you get the mix of marketing and branding creativity and customer sensitivity and the sustainable development content and commitments just about right.

To the seasoned sustainability practitioner, our top tips may seem like plain common sense – but judging from the number of brands and initiatives that are exposed as nothing more than a thin layer of greenness, it is obvious that there is a need for guidance and advice on how to credibly align your sustainability ambitions with your brand identity.

Building on our involvement with the 2008 CSR Superbrands publications and our work around communications and messaging in our recent Ecopromising study, our article on top tips and the more extensive guidance on green branding, are available free in places used by the marketing and branding audience. Do take a look if you’re wrestling with these issues – it might contain some useful guidance.