Are you a “sustainable” marketer?

How do you define “sustainability” and how do you showcase your efforts within your marketing initiatives … without being perceived as “greenwashing”?

In the last couple of years, “sustainability” has risen in the ranks as a purchase criteria for food and supplements. People are becoming more conscious of how products are manufactured, how the ingredients in them are sourced,  and how they get to the shelves. At the 2010 Focus on the Future, we were treated to a keynote by Dr. Jay Golden, Director of the Sustainability Consortium. This is a group of academics and global businesses who have come together to develop a scientific foundation that will improve consumer product sustainability throughout its lifecycle. The reason? Walmart’s 15-point supplier sustainability assessment, replete with specific dates to comply.

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Tags: Good Guide, green marketing, greenwashing, marketing sustainability, Sustainability

Social Media Will Never Replace Advertising

Recent articles on various blogs are finally raising the question, “Do you see social media as a replacement for traditional advertising?”

Last year, the Year of Social Media, was a learning curve for all marketers to embrace the various social media marketing tactics and begin to understand where and how social media can fit within the marketing mix. Eventually someone is going to look for cost-efficiencies and pose the question “if I can build a following on (favorite social network here), why spend money and resources, elsewhere?”

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Sweaty Palms for Nestle

We have all heard about Nestlé, maker of Kit Kat, using palm oil from companies that are destroying Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orangutans towards extinction.  When Greenpeace released this information the result was a flood of protesters drowning the Nestle Facebook Fan page with negative comments and sending tweets about the company and its practices.

What has helped this story gain traction is the extremely poor response from Nestle itself.  When Facebook fans started using altered Nestle logos as their profile pictures, Nestle posted a reply which added fuel to the fire; “we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic–they will  be deleted”.

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Tags: facebook, Greenpeace, Nestle

What we Eat

1. A decade revealed

For a fascinating reveal of America’s eating trends, check out Guess Who’s Turning 100?

The answer is, the USDA’s Economic Research Service’s time-series data on US food availability, now spanning a century.  You’ll find insights into how technology, policy, social and economic forces have changed the way America eats. You should note that “availability” doesn’t necessarily equal “consumption”, and that the data measures the flow of raw and semi-processed commodities through the US marketing system … not accounting for waste and spoilage.

However, it can be used to assess the health of Americans and forecast direction of eating patterns.
Such as:

- Milk availability, which grew from 31.3 gallons per person in the 1910s to a peak of 44.7 gallons in 1945. Now? 20.8 gallons, thanks to soda, water, fruit juice and the desire to choose lower fat foods.

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Tags: eating patterns, food consumption trends, USDA

Still Evolving: Sustainability Marketing in the Energy Sector

The ability to market sustainability brings to mind the color grey more than it does the color green. Grey as in grey space. Fuzzy territory. This thought emerged Wednesday at the Chicago BMA Breakfast Roundtable in which CBD’s Lori Colman lead a panel discussion entitled From Green to “Greenwashing” : How B2B Companies are Succeeding (and Failing) at Marketing Sustainability.”

Lev Goldberg, Marketing Director for Constellation NewEnergy, shed light on the areas of uncertainty. As a retail energy provider selling to businesses in all eligible markets, Lev noted that Constellation NewEnergy encounters a broad range of energy conservation and sustainability visions developed by corporations. “Most companies have set goals for sustainability, but they don’t know how to go about accomplishing them,” said Lev. “They don’t know what they are looking for. And they don’t have a plan.” Lev went on to mention that this lack of clear understanding about solutions keeps corporations from proactively asking about sustainable energy products. Instead, energy sustainability messages are driving most of the market interest. Constellation NewEnergy is helping to overcome this barrier by producing a series of environmentally-focused collateral pieces that provides companies with a list of ways they can help companies meet sustainability needs.

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