Jacquie discusses the consumer revolution that is driving the phenomena of green marketing outlining six new rules being written by consumers for manufacturers and marketers. While in the past consumers bought solely on price, performance, and convenience, today they are increasingly making their purchasing decisions based on additional criteria such as how products are sourced, manufactured, packaged, disposed of – and even such social aspects as how factory and farm workers are treated – now all of these other factors also matter.
With the Sustainable Brands 2010 Conference quickly approaching, consumers are asking more and more the same questions: What is a sustainable brand? How are they different from the rest?
Your company has been progressing nicely up the sustainability curve from compliance to cost savings. The next logical step is reputation and revenue generation, and itʼs here that many sustainability pros hit a roadblock. Without a CEO mandate, business units usually have little incentive to deviate from whatʼs been working in the past. Sustainability and CSR initiatives have safely been tucked away behind the scenes, dealing with internal and supply chain issues that reduce risk and cost to the business. Objections to customer-facing sustainability initiatives range from “Why put our neck out and riskgreenwashing charges?” to “Itʼs still a niche market” and “Why would we promote our values for commercial ends? Weʼre doing this because it’s right, not to make money from it.”
