Marketing

Hallmarks of a leader in marketing

  • Marketing activities promote and enable sustainable choices by customers.
  • The company’s brands incorporate a promise that includes sustainability, which should be a key component of brand and corporate identity.
  • The organisation is able to provide hard facts and verifiable evidence in support of claimed product and service sustainability credentials.
  • There is an active and honest dialogue with customers on sustainability issues, coupled with an understanding of how sustainability issues relate to different market segments.
  • The relationships between sustainability, brand and reputation have been explicitly recognised and, in some cases, quantified.
  • New market opportunities are exploited by communicating with the customer to create more sustainable behaviours. New markets are created in both mature and developing economies.

Case studies

npower business is starting to prepare for the transition to a low-carbon economy by developing new products and services that encourage its business customers to use less electricity. The company has, for example, developed Encompass - an energy monitoring and targeting software tool - to enable its customers to reduce energy consumption whilst simultaneously lowering energy bills.
However, while the company has been able to enter into strategic partnerships to tackle energy demand with large customers such as Sainsbury's, it has found its SME customers to be less aware of the implications of a move towards a low carbon economy.
 
npower business therefore partnered with Forum for the Future to produce a white paper, Making Sense of the Low Carbon Economy, which provides an accessible overview of the scientific, political and economic drivers behind the low carbon economy, and the potential implications for UK business.
 
By engaging existing and potential customers with this white paper - and with its annual npower Business Energy Index, which canvasses 200 senior managers and energy buyers about their attitudes to business energy use, costs and CO2 emissions - npower business hopes to encourage more sustainable behaviour while simultaneously creating new markets.

The Innocent smoothies brand represents a sustainable brand in many respects, reflecting the company’s hard work in aligning its identity with green and ethical business practices. The product is marketed as inherently good for you, fresh and healthy. The brand message is about feeling good and being good to yourself and the planet.

Innocent consistently wins awards for its employment practices. The company also engages regularly with the wider community by supporting good causes and staging the annual ‘Fruitstock’ music festival in London (now rebranded and expanded beyond the capital). 

Innocent runs charitable campaigns through its Innocent Foundation. These have included a fundraiser for the elderly in partnership with the charity Age Concern and a ‘buy one, get one tree’ environmental awareness campaign.

There are still issues to address, including the company’s reliance on plastic bottles and imported exotic fruit. Initiatives to start tackling these include more seasonal and local sourcing, the development of 100% recycled bottles, and using only renewable energy at Innocent’s main site, Fruit Towers.

Thames Water and the Mayor of London are working together on a behaviour change campaign to encourage customers to order tap water in restaurants. Using less bottled water will help tackle climate change by cutting carbon emissions associated with its production, storage, transportation and disposal.
 
The campaign, London On Tap, aims to raise awareness of the impact of bottled water on climate change and the environment, as well as tap water’s benefits to health and well-being. The campaign encourages customers in bars and restaurants not to feel embarrassed when asking for tap water, and engages with establishments to encourage them to serve tap water as standard.
 
Campaign partners include London Remade, the Crafts Council and WaterAid, the supporters include Friends of the Earth and London Sustainability Exchange.
As part of the campaign they are holding a competition to design an iconic carafe made from recycled glass to be used in bars, restaurants and hotels to serve tap water. Proceeds from the sale of the carafe will be donated to WaterAid, helping to fund water and sanitation projects in the developing world.
 
The message is simple: In the UK, tap water is the clear choice. It is healthy, it is up to 500 times cheaper than bottled water and it’s kinder to the environment -emitting 300 times less CO2 during processing than bottled alternatives.

 

As part of its Plan A sustainability programme, Marks and Spencer is re-thinking the way in which it engages with the consumer – including product and service development, delivery, choice editing and consumption. In an effort to minimise environmental impact M&S has committed to buying raw materials from the most sustainable sources possible, which includes sourcing timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and fish approved by the Marine Stewardship Council.

All of the company’s tea and coffee is now Fairtrade certified. It is also looking to promote healthy eating and animal welfare through ingredient choice editing, allowing for free range eggs only and removing artificial colours and flavourings. M&S is by no means the only retailer to offer a wide choice of Fairtrade labelled products nor is it alone in choice editing ingredients. It is, however, leading the field in embedding sustainability concerns in all aspects of its business and in taking clear sustainability messages to its customers.

In early 2008 M&S and Oxfam launched the Clothes Exchange campaign. Designed to raise money for Oxfam to tackle poverty and reduce the one million tonnes of clothes sent to landfill every year, the exchange rewards customers with a £5 M&S sales voucher for donating items of old M&S clothes to Oxfam.

M&S was the first large retailer to introduce a 5p charge for its food carrier bags to encourage customers to reduce the number of bags they use. Proceeds go to the environmental charity Groundwork to be used to create or improve ‘greener living spaces’ such as parks, play areas and gardens in neighbourhoods around the UK.

Ariel launched the ‘Do a Good Turn’ campaign to promote their cool clean technology washing powder. Through research they found that 80% of energy consumed by washing machines is used in heating water and by washing at 30 degrees up to 40%, almost half, of this energy can be saved.
 
In partnership with the Energy Saving Trust, Ariel is encouraging individuals to do their bit to help reduce climate change, not only by turning to 30°C degrees when washing but also spreading the word and recommending this small but significant change to their friends and family. The product development to achieve clean at 30°C may not be unique but Ariel was the first to design a large-scale campaign to actively try and get people to turn down the temperature.
 
According to Ariel, over 1.6 kWh of electricity can be saved annually by washing clothes at 30 degrees. The detergent manufacturer found that washing at 30 instead of 40 degrees showed no significant reduction in cleaning performance and the reduction of stains. In addition to this, Asda’s George and Marks and Spencer both now include energy saving washing instructions on the labels of their clothing ranges, advising consumers to wash at 30°C degrees. 

In 2005 General Electric unveiled Ecomagination. Much more than a marketing ploy, Ecomagination has established itself as strong overarching brand that ties together an impressive range of energy efficient and low environmental impact products and services.

Ecomagination uses a scorecard to select technologies that measurably improve their environmental performance in addition to improving the operating performance for customers.  These technologies are then developed and promoted. The Ecomagination Product Review Scorecard qualifies a product’s relative environmental impacts and benefits, the results being verified and adjusted by a third party.

The aim is to provide a central platform for new and diverse businesses and at the same time boost the proportion of GE revenue derived from environmentally advanced technology.

In 2007 the company reported that revenues from its Ecoimagination portfolio crossed $14 billion.  GE’s original target was $20 billion in revenues from new projects by 2010, however it forecasts that it will surpass $20 billion by 2009, a year early of schedule, and is consequently raising the annual Ecomagination revenue goal to $25 billion by 2010.

Examples of Ecomagination’s 50 or so projects to date include
· a $27 million contract with the US department of energy to develop next generation offshore wind turbines
· rural electrification programmes in India
· a collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture to reduce the impact of pesticides
· earth rewards and banking cards

Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco Chief Executive, has spoken of his desire to deliver a “revolution in green consumption”, by empowering customers to make environmental choices through better information and cheaper products. Having taken initial steps towards stretching targets to cut its own emissions by 50% by 2020, Tesco has established a credible basis on which to now engage its consumers in this discussion.

In store Tesco is piloting carbon labelling, supported by educational leaflets and online information, to raise consumers’ awareness and help them understand the value of this initiative. In parallel with engagement activities, it has directly addressed the price point, permanently halving the price of energy-efficient light bulbs, supported by preferential product placement in store.

Helping customers to reduce their packaging starts in store, and Tesco has committed to reducing the packaging on all the products it sells by 25% by 2010. This target is ambitious and necessitates working with its branded suppliers as well as own-brand manufacturers. One early example of success is the doubling of the concentration of Tesco’s fruit cordial in order to reduce packaging and transport miles.

In 2006 Tesco introduced Green Clubcard Points – earned in the same way as the original points but linked with activities that benefit the environment. Members receive one point for reusing a plastic bag, 100 points for each inkjet cartridge recycled and up to 300 points for recycling a mobile phone. Over one promotional period, double points were awarded for a wide range of ‘green’ products including energy-efficient and energy-saving appliances and all organic products.

Like all Clubcard points, one of the things Green Clubcard points can be used for is to get free air miles, which is obviously in conflict with the retailer’s objective of encouraging sustainable behaviour. This inconsistency aside, Green Clubcard has been a simple and effective way of rewardingcustomers for ‘greener’ behaviour.