Creating a Sustainable Brand

A Guide to Growing the Sustainability Top Line

Henk Campher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351274708
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Sustainable brands may have started as "doing less harm" and shaving costs off the bottom line. But brands today, supported by over a decade of phenomenal changes in sustainability, are looking for the holy grail of sustainable business – a fusion of products and branding that can actually drive sustainability and grow the business top line.Consumers have already joined the party. Just look at TOMS, Patagonia, Method, Seventh Generation, Dove and many more. What is missing isn't the consumer but a better understanding of what fully-rounded consumers really want in their quest for a healthy, fulfilling life.This guide by sustainable brand expert Henk Campher is the model for creating a sustainable brand that people can trust, buy and above all, advocate for. Campher cuts through the myths and noise to offer an experienced expert's 101 for creating an irresistible brand, clearly setting out: what makes a product or service sustainable; the basic elements of sustainable branding strategy and a deep understanding of how consumers connect with a brand; an original model for assessing the sustainability of your brand, and; a host of examples of sustainable brands, drawing on the author's firsthand experience as part of the team at Edelman and Oxfam and founder of the Nelson Mandela initiated Proudly South African campaign.

PART 1
The Changing World of a Sustainable Brand

1. The search for a sustainable brand

FOR MOST COMPANIES the holy grail of sustainability is a breakthrough with consumers. We live in a world where competing on price and quality alone has become increasingly difficult. Consumers expect more from brands but companies remain mostly disillusioned with the lack of consumer support for sustainability. On the other hand, consumers don’t trust businesses and are weary of greenwashing and empty promises. Somewhere there is a disconnect between what consumers want and what companies are offering them. How do we bridge this gap? The answer lies in knowing what a sustainable brand is and how a company can or cannot create a sustainable brand relevant to their product and brand promise. The aim of this book is to define what a sustainable brand is and to provide a model to guide the development of a sustainable brand. But let’s start at the beginning – the changing world of sustainability.

2. The changing world of sustainability

We’ve gone a long way down this sustainability road. We’ve found new and innovative ways to cut the impact(s) that companies have on the environment and society by switching off lights, turning off taps and recycling waste. We’ve even found new ways to measure all of these good things we’ve done through our commitments to cut carbon, report to the latest GRI G4 levels and fine-tuning materiality assessments in order to focus on those areas where we have the greatest impacts. Heck, we’ve even had time to create a few new concepts like shared value and carbon neutrality.

Those lauded as being at the leading edge of sustainability have managed to tie their sustainability initiatives to business benefits. It’s not just about cutting carbon but reducing energy use to reduce that energy bill. It’s not just about recycling but finding new ways to reuse and repurpose to help the business bottom line. We didn’t just turn off the taps; we managed to save money by recycling water. Every good act had a societal benefit and a positive business impact on the business bottom line.

But has all this ‘doing less bad’ helped us get closer to creating a sustainable world? We’ve focused so much attention on doing less harm in the hope that it will create a more sustainable world that we’ve forgotten to focus on the most important part of business – the top line. Reducing costs through efficiencies is great but successful businesses are judged on growth. You don’t grow a business by cutting cost or spark growth by only looking at the business bottom line. Could it be that, despite all the cost savings and business bottom line focus, we’ve yet to bring sustainability to the heart of business?

Maybe the answer lies in bringing sustainability to those who bring growth to companies. Those pesky things called consumers.

3. The pesky consumer

Assumption 1: The consumer

This book uses the term consumer to describe a person or organization that uses a product or service. This definition therefore includes Business-to-Consumer and Business-to-Business relationships and refers to what some businesses might call customers, shoppers, buyers, users, purchasers or even punters.

As often as they conduct materiality assessments and engage with all stakeholders to define the areas where the greatest impacts are, companies care about two groups of people – those who can take their money away and those who can give them money. There are very few groups who can take their money away: competitors can via a new product that consumers prefer or by finding a new value proposition that resonates with consumers. Regulators can through taxes, fines and regulations. Activists hope they can but very few activist campaigns hurt the business bottom line of companies. But from a growth perspective, we want to focus on those who can help companies make money – the consumer. Yes, investors will invest and give money to companies but only insofar as they believe that the company will make money through growth. Investors don’t stimulate growth; only increased consumption of the company’s products or services creates growth. So what we really need to focus on is the consumer in order to bring sustainability to the business top line.

This is the holy grail of sustainability after all – getting more consumers to buy into the idea of sustainability. Or more specifically, getting more consumers to buy truly sustainable products – even if they do sometimes cost more. But it seems as if we will never really get there and this is validated by the experts and leaders in the sustainability field.

Marc Gunther, a leading light in the sustainability field, wrote about the elusive green consumer, pointing out that while market research shows that consumers want greener products, their purchasing behavior doesn’t follow suit. Similarly, Triple Pundit has shared statistics about consumers (becoming) increasingly skeptical of green products (http://goo.gl/8IRuK0). And we were told by GreenBiz that we need a dose of reality (http://goo.gl/Zfwvnx) when it comes to the presence (or absence) of green consumers. It’s enough to drive us crazy – this elusive pesky green consumer. Or maybe we need to reassess the ways we look at consumers when we use our sustainability lens.

But let’s start with the question of whether consumer behavior has changed when it comes to sustainability. Is it true to think that consumer behavior hasn’t changed?

4. Changing consumer behavior

Of course it has. It has changed around us every single day – and continues to do so. But it is difficult to see it grow. Maybe it is because we desire rapid and immediate change – whether the MTV generation or the reality show generation, we all want our ‘fix’ right away. Quick fame and fast money. But consumer behavior is less revolution and more evolution. Like everything else in evolution it moves slowly but surely. But don’t expect to see a big moment in time where it hits you in the face. You’ll have more luck watching the grass grow or the paint dry. But over time, we have to recognize the changes.

Let’s just consider how much the world has changed over the last 20 to 30 years.

• Fairtrade: Remember when Fair Trade (http://goo.gl/yxcMHx) was just a little sparkle in the eyes of activists? Today it continues to grow at a rapid pace, outstripping the growth of more ‘traditional’ ways of doing business – growing globally by 12 percent in 2011 alone (http://goo.gl/73uY2C).
• Auto: How are those hybrid sales going? Yes, they may still be behind traditional car sales but sales of electric and hybrid cars grew by 72 percent in 2012 and were the fastest growing sector in the US automotive industry (http://goo.gl/hMe3H).
• Cleaning & personal products: How about those Method guys? Or Seventh Generation? Or Greenworks? New cleaning products are coming onto the market almost daily. And how about Dove soap? It was ‘just another bar of soap’ until Unilever (http://goo.gl/Rt5UN4) adopted real beauty for women, a popular social issue, and turned that into a core brand quality and differentiator. It didn’t just transform the brand but changed the whole product category. And it was done focusing on one of the three key pillars of sustainability – social issues – and how that intersects with both the brand and the target consumers.
• Clothing: TOMS has been a bit of a revelation, right? Patagonia continues to disrupt the marketplace through their edgy sustainability initiatives and positioning. Notice how clothing companies like Levi’s and Timberland are constantly bringing new sustainable products to the consumer and adding new value to their business top line and values bottom line. Timberland Earthkeepers played a key part in transforming the business during a difficult time for the company. Even today Earthkeepers is Timberland’s fastest growing and largest product line (http://goo.gl/lU6GqU).
• Food: Have you noticed changes in your milk lately and how it doesn’t have as many hormones or other unsavory ingredients in it anymore? Have you noticed how organic products have grown far faster than most other consumer products? Walk through grocery stores today and you’ll see the huge variety of green, ethical, organic goods on the shelf today. No one thinks of Stonyfield Farms as some hippie yogurt business anymore. Or Ben & Jerry’s as some small ice cream company.

Imagine how few of those products were on that same shelf 20 years ago. Many of these products have become mainstream. They are so much a part of our lives today that we forget that they are still new when considering the life of a consumer product.

Sales continue to grow each year and new products create breakthroughs almost continuously. And consumers are buying them. Some are growing fast and some not so fast. That is simply the nature of the beast – it grows and will continue to grow.

Just don’t expect a revolution. It’s not – it’s an evolution. Maybe part of the reason is because of a natural progression along the hierarchy of increasingly rich societies and better off people having different tastes, even if only marginally. Whatever the reasons, things happen but they usually happen slower than expected. Not every product is an iPhone -some take time to grow.

Not only do consumers buy more sustainable products each and every day but companies are using this evolution to transform their products and brands to drive new growth in sales and consumer support. We need to realize that sustainable products have grown up faster than we did – and so have consumers. We are wrong when we think consumers aren’t buying into sustainability and aren’t buying products and brands they believe add to a more sustainable lifestyle and world. They are but not the way we want it. And that is our problem, not theirs. This is a business problem to solve, not a consumer’s. We know they want to buy sustainable products (or products with sustainability as part of the brand value proposition) and we know they want to buy more.

The biggest question isn’t whether consumers are buying green or sustainable products. We know they are. And we know they want to buy more of these sustainable products. The problem is to find better ways to bring sustainability to life for the consumers in ways that will resonate with them, and foster even faster growth. To find the solution we need to look closer at brand – the soul of a product identity.

5. The need for brand transformation

Almost every consumer study shows the consistent changes in consumer behavior when it comes to sustainability. The SustainAbility, Globescan and BBMG study (http://goo.gl/gwUksB) shows that we now have more than 2 billion aspirational consumers that combine style, status and sustainability. That is over two thirds of the global consumer population. Even more important, that is almost half of the primary shoppers of each household. This fast-growing group stands out as they are more advanced in the sustainable consumption world than other shoppers – they believe they need to consume l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Abstract
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• 1 The Changing World of a Sustainable Brand
• 2 The Birth of a Brand
• 3 The Anatomy of a Sustainable Brand
• Reference