GoodSense was recently invited to contribute content for the UK-based Chartered Institute of Marketing’s marketing sustainability series. Both myself and Jo Patterson are Fellows of the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing and this provides an avenue to extend and promote our thought leadership in marketing, into an international forum.  Here’s an at-a-glance summary with links to the full suite of marketing sustainability articles.

Know your negatives – Marketing sustainability

Know your negatives
Customers are seeing through the benefits of brands and calling out the hazards. From palm oil to packaging, obesity to slavery, the public is holding brands to account for the harm they do.  They’re not just moaning about it to a few friends over a pint. They’re sharing their frustration with the harm your brand does online. Humans have never before had the ability to publish, in seconds, to thousands of people, for free, like they do today. Among the LOL cats, emojis and satirical gifs lurk thousands of posts about the harm products and services do to nature and society. Some of those posts are about your brand. If you’re analysing sentiment in social mentions, you’re probably picking it up.  Research and observation suggest there is a complex mix limiting the speed of change in consumer behaviour – a cocktail of apathy, benefit of the doubt, low specific knowledge and difficult access to alternatives. Read the full article.

What good do you do?

What good do you do? Marketing sustainability

Last December, the secretary general of the European coal industry association, Euracoal, wrote to members that the coal sector will be “hated and vilified in the same way slave traders were once hated and vilified”.
As a marketer, working for an oil or coal company has to be a pretty unattractive right now. On a par with the tobacco industry for appeal according to the post-graduate business students I ran workshops with last year.  In the next ten to fifteen years the real leaders will be businesses who have a net positive impact, generating profit for shareholders while also leaving society and the environment better off.  The area is developing fast and presents enormous opportunities for innovative brands and their marketers to lead. Read the full article.

You can make a difference – Marketing sustainability

You can make a difference
It’s pretty hard to dodge sustainability now – every newsfeed is either awash with climate woes or ablaze with some clean-slate brand wooing the public with its virtue.  We all know we need to be doing something – but it can be hard to know where to start.  Often the best thing to do, when we don’t know where to start, is to begin at the beginning.  About the first thing we learn as marketers is the ‘4Ps’ – and they’re fertile lands for us to tend and harvest as we tackle sustainability. Every element of the Marketing Mix can be used as a driver to reduce the harm our brands do and improve social and environmental outcomes.  The changes we need to make are so very big every one of us needs to play our part.  The most exciting thing about being a marketer in the 21st century is the chance each of us has to be a catalyst for change in our organisations. Read the full article.

Kath Dewar, MD of GoodSense.

Kath Dewar, MD of GoodSense.

The GoodSense team has a wide range of marketing  sustainability expertise at it’s fingertips.

If you’d like a confidential discussion about how GoodSense marketing can work with your business, call Kath on 09 9730960 or contact us.