“The challenges ahead require us to do a great deal more than just putting a Fairtrade logo on products.” – Marketing Week
From my own research into local independent businesses, it seems a lot of you got started because you were frustrated with the offerings available from competitors. Most of these frustrations stem from an ethical or sustainability standpoint – you knew there were better options and you wanted to make them available to others.
Often, the biggest challenge around these issues (outside of the political) is in educating people. These are complex problems with wide-reaching effects, but marketers are uniquely situated to feed this messaging to the consumer in an accessible and thought-provoking way. Where once in the not-so-distant past, marketers may have been considered master-manipulators, now we strive to act as informers and educators. Rather than shouting over the conversation, we are leading it.
There will always be those who try to reap the benefits without putting in the work. Greenwashing is the practice of providing misleading (or straight-up untrue) information about the environmentally friendly nature of your business. It’s an attempt to capitalise on the growing demand for sustainable products, and it’s an insult to those of you who are actually making real effort in these areas.
Luckily, the rise of Google and social media has inadvertently ushered in the Age of Transparency. As Stephen Reed, Product Lead at Kin + Carta so eloquently puts it, “If you lie in a marketing campaign, the internet will figure it out.”
In part, social issues are so important to millennials and generation Z because we have grown up with the information at our fingertips. In fact, one report by Nielsen found that nearly 3 in every 4 millennials are willing to pay more for sustainability. We’ve been able to educate ourselves and others via the internet and this pattern is likely to continue well into the future.
In 1970, acclaimed economist and statistician Milton Friedman published an essay in the New York Times titled “A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits”. In it, he argued that businesses had no social responsibility to the public or society at large, and instead should focus their efforts solely on making as much money as possible for shareholders. His viewpoint was that, should a business decide to invest in social causes, it is effectively spending money that rightly belongs to its shareholders.
As controversial as this may sound now, the Friedman Doctrine has been the accepted theory of business ethics for much of the last fifty years. Of course, it has garnered its fair share of criticism over that time. As a logical exercise, much of what Friedman says is true, but do we really want to live in a world where corporations are so narrow-minded?
Thankfully, a new dawn is upon us. The B Corp movement began in 2006 with three friends who fundamentally disagreed with the Friedman Doctrine and left careers in business and private equity to launch an organisation to help companies improve their social, environmental, and ethical impact. Now, 100,000 companies globally use their quality system to improve their business practices, and nearly 4000 have achieved B Corp certification.
James Perry was one of the founders of B Corp, and now heads up B Lab UK, the national certification board for B Corps. James recently appeared on Can marketing save the planet?, a new podcast exploring sustainable marketing practices, where he discussed the importance of embedding social causes into the DNA of the business.
“If you intentionally set out to serve society as well as serving shareholder, then you have a much richer conversation about strategy… about how you communicate and about what it is you’re communicating – how you’re designing your product. For me, it’s where marketing becomes meaningful.” – James Perry, Can Marketing Save The Planet, Episode 02
In order to finalise their B Corp certification, businesses need to sign the Declaration of Interdependence, agreeing “that, through their products, practices, and profits, businesses should aspire to do no harm and benefit all” and that “to do so requires that we act with the understanding that we are each dependent upon another and thus responsible for each other and future generations.” And for those businesses who aren’t yet at the point of certification, but still want to make positive changes to their business, there’s the B Impact Assessment – a free and open platform that analyses current practices and recommends improvements.
And it’s not just consumers who take interest in ethical businesses. Birds Eye’s UK general manager, Steve Challouma, said “It’s also an increasingly important factor for investors in the businesses – it can affect the attractiveness of your business as an investment through measures such as the Dow Jones Sustainable Index, which gives it weight at board level.” So, everyone wins.
The problem is this – consumers seem to be all bark and no bite. The value-action gap describes the difference between a persons’ personal beliefs and the action they end up taking. Historically, the value-action gap has been explained by an ‘information deficit’, but we now know that’s not the case. Yet the phenomenon is widespread.
Multiple surveys have found the value-action gap to be prevalent, with one recent report from Getty Images finding that while 81% of people consider themselves to be eco-friendly, only 50% say they only buy products from eco-friendly brands.
It seems that convenience and price are still the winning factors when it comes to buying decisions. Getty’s survey also revealed that 92% of people believe the way we treat our planet now will have a large impact on the future, but 48% say that although they know they should make environmentally friendly purchases, convenience takes priority.
Nowadays, it’s believed that the value-action gap can be explained by what is known as attribute tradeoff, whereby the action requires a person to accept an unwanted side-effect. In the case of sustainable products and services, that side-effect is often an increased price point or a less convenient service.
For a long time, marketers have relied upon an age-old tactic to convince consumers to take a particular action. The guilt-trip. Unfortunately, it really isn’t powerful enough to close the value-action gap. But don’t be disheartened, because luckily, we have some idea of what might be…
There are three types of value that consumers look for when making a purchasing decision, and these should form the basis of your marketing messaging. Ethical qualities might swing the decision in your favour, but like it or not, human beings are fundamentally selfish, so answer this one simple question: What’s in it for me?
Another useful tactic is Storytelling. Many marketers are so keen to get to the key message that they miss vital context that engages and resonates with the consumer. Explain what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, who or what it is going to benefit and how, and how consumers can get involved. Inviting people to take part is a great way to build community and brand awareness, all while helping out a worthy cause.
Most of all, stay honest. If you hit a bump in the road to ethical practice, be open about it and learn from the experience. This is not a fad – it’s a lasting, wide-scale change in consumer preference. Do it well and you will be rewarded in the long run.
