Marketing a Greener Business

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Marketing a Greener Business

• David Thorp
• Director of Research Information

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The Code of Professional Marketing Practice

• 3. A Professional Marketers Responsibilities
• A marketer accepts that first and foremost he or
  she is a member of wider society and should never
  through their acts or failures to act when action
  is required, carry out work that is counter to
  the interests of wider society or to individual
  members thereof. This is an overriding moral
  obligation carrying equal weight to any
  legislation or regulatory codes that may apply
• All members of this Institute have a
  responsibility for raising awareness amongst the
  wider community of the benefits marketing can
  deliver economically, environmentally and
  socially.

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500,000 tonnes of plastic bottles enter the UK
waste stream each year 6.7 million tonnes of
household food waste is produced in the UK each
year 5 million tonnes of packaging is thrown away
in household bins in the UK every year
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Weight of packaging in a typical 29 food item
basket

• Retailer Weight
• Lidl 799.5g
• MS
• Morrisons 779g
• Sainsburys 749g
• Asda 710g
• Local Markets/Shops 710g
• Tesco 684.5g

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Amount of recyclable packaging in above example

• Retailer of recyclable packaging
• Marks Spencer 60
• Lidl 61
• Tesco 62
• Morrisons 68
• Asda 70
• Sainsburys 70
• Markets/Local Retailers 79

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• the cumulative impact of billions of corporate
  dollars, spent marketing their products, year
  after year after year, stimulating, reinforcing
  and exacerbating peoples consumerist fantasies,
  is almost wholly pernicioustodays marketing
  spend constitutes a major impediment to achieving
  a more sustainable society. Without that
  sustainable society, there will be fewer and
  fewer commodities to be marketed.
• Jonathon Porrit (2007)

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Q/ To what extent do you agree or disagree with
each of the following statements?
Strongly agree
Strongly disagree
Tend to agree
Tend to disagree
A companys sustainability practices affect
customers buying decisions
I believe our customers/ customers will have
more of a commitment to sustainability in five
years time
Base All (1,664)
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• Evidence from other countries has shown that
  when local authorities work with supermarkets to
  educate consumers there is a significant increase
  in the sale of products with less packaging. It
  is important shoppers are actively encouraged to
  consider the environmental impact of their
  purchases
• Paul Bettison
• Chair Local Government Association
• Environment Advisory Board
• The Guardian Tuesday 23rd October 2007

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What is Marketing For?

• Marketing is the management process responsible
  for identifying, anticipating and satisfying
  customer requirements profitably

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But..

• Marketing conjures up images of deceptive
  practices, creation of false needs and cultural
  pollution
• The pressure is on marketers to show through
  action that they can contribute to an alternative
  sustainable future
• If we as marketers are to take this task
  seriously, we are faced with an inescapable
  challenge acknowledging that radical change is
  needed in how we view ourselves what marketing
  is and what it does
• Dr Ingrid Kajzer Mitchell
• University of Strathclyde Business School

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Materials

• Use less materials
• Use fewer materials
• Avoid toxic substances
• Encourage the choice of renewable or recyclable
  materials

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• Some of their marketing depicts them as an
  ethical company, but they are ultimately selling
  non-organic fruit in plastic bottles
• Ruth Rosselson
• Ethical Consumer Magazine

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Dematerialisation

• Design things to be multifunctional
• Find different ways to deliver the same benefit
  to the consumer

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Smart design

• Make things that can be repaired, serviced,
  upgraded, remanufactured or recycled
• Lead the charge away from built-in obsolescence

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Develop product propositions that are built
heavily around lower energy requirements

• Move towards the use of renewable energy sources
• Minimise energy use
• Consider disposal options
• Consider extraction of energy from waste disposal

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Extend the life of your products

• Keep the products or their component parts in
  productive use for as long as possible
• Develop products that are not subject to the
  whims of fad and fashion and which will have a
  long-term future

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Consider distribution

• Identify ways in which you can reduce the impact
  of distribution at all stages of the supply chain
  from raw materials to customer.

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Embrace life-cycle thinking

• Short-term thinking in marketing terms produces
  short-term or short-life products.
• Life-time value

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The Future of Marketing

• This is a strategic challenge, which requires
  us to step outside the safe and accepted
  boundaries of conventional wisdom and embrace a
  wider stakeholder perspective, including todays
  and tomorrows customers, suppliers, competitors,
  communities, the general public and the
  government to name a few.
• Dr Ingrid Kajzer Mitchell
• University of Strathclyde Business School

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is stakeholder management

• Employees
• Customers
• Investors
• Suppliers
• The Wider Community
• Environmental Groups

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The Triple Bottom Line
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Marketing Challenges

• A shift from the downstream focus on individual
  consumers toward upstream and lateral marketing
  activities
• Value proposition shifts to include ideas,
  opinions and ultimately behavioural change that
  simultaneously provide social and ecological
  value.
• Rethinking how marketing success is defined
• Central to the development of strategies that
  help make the transition from the unsustainable
  now to the sustainable future

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Marketings New Role

• Ideally-positioned to use its tools and
  techniques to accelerate change towards
  sustainable production and consumption.

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3 Giant Leaps for Marketers to Make

• Accept that Marketers will become change agents
• Move away from the sovereignty of the customer
• Realise and embrace the fact that marketing is
  about more than generating customer satisfaction.

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• In ten, or even five, years, sustainability
  will no longer need to be debated because it will
  be embedded in legislation. Businesses therefore
  have two choices one is to be driven by
  legislation, the other is to contribute
  positively tothe defining issue of this century
• Lindsey Parnell
• President CEO
• InterfaceFLOR EMEA

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What you need to do right away!

• Identify your level of commitment
• Get the message out there
• Deal with the image problem marketing has
• Make the business case for sustainability
• Identify the marketing metrics youll be relying
  on
• Open up a dialogue with your customers
• Identify your markets
• Create new markets where necessary