Greener Marketing

John Grant

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781119689119
• eBook ISBN: 9781119689133
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

***BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS - FINALIST 2021***

This timely book is a sequel to John Grant's Green Marketing Manifesto (2007) the award-winning and bestselling definitive guide to green marketing (and not greenwashing).

Fast forward to mid-2020. Climate Change is back at the top of the public and political agenda. Even after covid-19, hundreds of big-name CEOs are committing to a #greenrecovery. And surveys show widespread global public support for this and recent shifts in sustainable behaviours and attitudes in markets ranging from organic food to flying. Sustainable brands are significantly outperforming conventional ones. As are sustainability related stock prices. Companies like Unilever continue to set ambitious targets related not just to climate, but biodiversity and deforestation, plastics, social justice, regenerative farming. Sustainability related trends such as plant-based foods and electric vehicles are showing steep growth and creating tomorrow's superbrands (Impossible, TESLA...).

This book is packed with up to date learnings, case examples and trends, covering everything from eco labelling, transparency and the circular economy; to rebound effects, sustainable finance, blockchain and regenerative farming. A core message being that to drive sustainability, marketers firstly do really need to properly understand sustainability, its many applications and implications. Secondly to be effective, marketers need to understand what it means to their consumers and other significant audiences. Hence the book takes a long hard look at what was driving all the protests, boycotts and petitions in 2019 and what ideas, causes and platforms caught the public imagination.

The ultimate goal is to go beyond marketing that simply looks good, to marketing that does good.

This book helps in achieving that goal by showing the reader how to:

• Uncover strategies for sustainable marketing that actually deliver on green and social objectives, not just greenwashing
• Reconceptualise marketing and business models, and learn to recognise the commercial strategies and approaches that are no longer fit for purpose
• Learn how hot topics like the climate crisis, biodiversity, social justice, single use plastics and supply chain transparency influence green and social marketing
• Read about numerous examples and case studies from both brand leaders and challengers that have developed innovations and fresh creative approaches to green and social marketing
• Get practical tools, models, facts, strategies, workshop and project processes and business case rationales - so that you can build your own plans and proposals

This book is intended to assist marketers, by means of clear and practical guidance, through a complex transition towards meaningful marketing that makes a positive creative impact on the climate crisis and on improving human life in troubled times.

Aimed both at big companies that are trying to be good, and good companies that are trying to be big.

SECTION II
Net Good

What Is Net Good?

I met this idea 10 years ago at an extraordinary meeting. Once again with IKEA.

We gathered in 2010, invited by IKEA to help develop a sustainability strategy for the next 10 years. Two thirds of the attendees were from IKEA. The rest were externals like me; including people from labour rights, the UN, the manager of a factory in China.

The event took place in winter at a rural Swedish family holiday camp. I was sharing a chalet for the week with the head of retail from Holland. The event was facilitated by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff from Future Search (it’s well worth checking out their extraordinary work and Marvin’s books; I’ve never been to a session more like a ‘group mind’).

Our output was a simple vision – backed up by a detailed plan with five action points per area, from manufacturing, to logistics, to stores, to communications. The vision was this:

IKEA will be like a forest, putting more good into the ecosystem than we take out.

That’s what Net Good is. Be like a forest.

2.1 Year of the Street Protest

In this section of the book, we will track how business is responding to the crisis with a shift from sustainability (Not Bad) to purpose (Net Good). This shift could not have taken hold without a dramatic shift in public mood. And the demands of a new generation. So, in this chapter we will look at this context of protest and concern.

Let’s start with an extract of a speech given by Greta Thunberg at Davos in 2019:

We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation – and the entire biosphere – must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be. We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility. Adults keep saying: ‘We owe it to the young people to give them hope.’ But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.¹

The Washington Post described 2019 as ‘the year of the street protest’. French historian Mathilde Larrère described the world as being gripped by an ‘insurrectionary mood’. These protests have swept across the world; a second Arab Spring in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Algeria; a Latin American Spring starting in Venezuela and spreading to 18 countries across the region; calls for independence in Hong Kong and Catalonia; protests against austerity and taxes in France, against corruption in Malta and Lebanon. And, of course, protests about government inaction on the climate crisis and the environment – including climate strikes in 2460 cities in 158 countries. At the time of writing, 500 000 protestors joined Greta Thunberg marching in Madrid on the eve of the Cop25 talks, demanding that world leaders wake up and agree to do something. With mixed success; but it is clear there is growing public pressure for action.

The school strike protests are clearly directly about climate change. Whereas the yellow jacket protests in France were triggered by the government hiking up the tax on fuel in an attempt to tackle climate change. So, it is not a simple picture. Common features of these protests include a leaderless structure that is spontaneous and hard to repress, massive street demonstrations, protests being directed at governments, and the prominent role played by young people.

Simon Tisdall wrote in the Guardian that ‘About 41% of the global population are under 24. And they’re angry.’² Pointing out that although the specific grievances might range from the price of onions in India to pro‐democracy in Russia, the one key factor is youth. That a demographic baby boom and the economic, social, political, and environmental stresses of the world are an explosive combination. America in the 1960s was a historical example of similar forces; a teen‐dominated society in the midst of the Vietnam war, civil rights movements, and the rise of the counterculture all happened when a baby boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964) started to reach adulthood and again accounted for 40% of the population.³

There are three main prongs to the protests. One is protest against economic injustice, unemployment, and suffering. The second is against corrupt political establishments and for greater democracy. The third is climate change, environmental collapse, and the perception that a new generation have had their future stolen.

Social media not only amplify and organise protests, they give young generations direct access to global events and increase expectations. The What’s App revolution in Lebanon follows on from Arab Spring where Facebook played a key role. I wouldn’t say social media cause protests. But they do facilitate and shape protests. The protests have spread internationally like wildfire as disaffected groups in one country are encouraged by the scenes from other protests. And the protestors reference each other. When protestors in Catalan came out after the jailing of nine political leaders, they chanted ‘we are going to do a Hong Kong’. Ideas about how to organise spread between the groups. For instance, learning to ‘be water’; being fluid, flexible, fast moving. And learning about the use of digital tools to keep everyone involved informed.

There are lots of reports, surveys, and think tanks exploring what lies behind this.

I think that one key to the whole historical development can be seen in an Ipsos 2018 study⁴ with this key question – a question that gets to the heart of the legitimacy of the political situation. Respondents were asked how much they agree with the statement:

My political leaders care about me.

Only in Saudi Arabia and India do the majority think that they do.

The global average percentage of adults who believe political leaders care about them is 23%.

In nine out of the sixteen countries, less than 20% believe this.

That is a massive crisis of political legitimacy.

It is this issue that looks to be predictive of both the protests and also the rise of populism (reactionary ‘strong man’ leaders promising to tackle a broken system). And when the promises aren’t delivered – and the nasty sides of populism become visible – protests return. As they have in Italy where the Sardines movement is currently packing public squares.

The Edelman Trust Barometer⁵ has been tracking a global crisis of faith in leaders and institutions for many years. One interesting finding of their survey is that there is a growing gap between informed publics (college educated, follow the news) and the mass population. Their trust index (the average percentage who trust NGOs, business, government, and the media) has always been higher among the educated minority. But the gap has grown from 9 points in 2012 to 16 points in 2016, and interestingly this is not because of declining trust in the general population but the rebuilding of trust among the informed elites. Trust in business is improving for all groups.

Looking at different industries, people most trust the Tech sector (78%); the least trusted are Fashion (65%), Energy (65%), Consumer Packaged Goods (64%), and Financial Services (57%). It’s interesting how much of the noise about sustainability comes from these last four. It starts to paint a picture of companies feeling public pressure to demonstrate a positive role.

The killer question came when Edelman asked people: ‘is the system working for you’? Only 20% agreed among the general population and 21% among the informed public. High proportions of people in both groups felt a sense of injustice (72% and 74%) and expressed desire for change (70% and 76%).

Back to the question of ‘why all the protests’?

It doesn’t seem to be that much to do with a generation gap in terms of attitudes and concerns. The Ipsos MORI global study compared youth and adult attitudes and they were very similar – young people’s only outlying attitude was much higher concern about education.

It doesn’t seem to be only about climate change either. Although you could make an argument that all of this is due to climate change, because the economy is a subset of natural ecosystems. And chaos in one drives the other.

According to surveys, the following four ideas seem to be driving protes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Foreword for ‘Greener Marketing‘ By John Grant
• Introduction
• SECTION I Not Bad
• SECTION II Net Good
• SECTION III Aim, Frame, and Game
• What Now? (Concluding Thoughts)
• Index
• End User License Agreement