16
May

5 Lessons on Consumers’ Preference for Purpose

For consumers worldwide, values are the new currency and purpose is the new paradigm. You might think this sentence was taken from the Occupied Wall Street Journal, but actually this is a quote from the latest goodpurpose study, Edelman’s annual global research study that explores consumer attitudes around social purpose. This research is an impressive effort (8,000 participants) to figure out how important purpose and values really are to consumers. The study found that purpose has a growing importance among consumers – “the power of Purpose is driving consumer preference and loyalty in a world where trust in corporations is low and differentiation between brands is negligible.”

For example, 53 percent of the responders said that when quality and price are the same, social purpose is the most important factor for them, up from 41 percent in 2010. Also, 47 percent reported that they make purchases of cause-supporting brands ‘at least monthly’ compared to only 32 percent in 2010. The study has some valuable lessons both for consumers and companies. Here are five of them:

1. Don’t take people’s word when it comes to paying premium on green products

According to the report 43 percent of the consumers are willing to pay a premium for purpose. The numbers are higher in developing countries like China (80%), India (71%) and Brazil (55%) and lower in more developed countries like Japan (29%) or UK (29%). My advice to companies would be to read these figures with a grain of salt. Usually the assumption is that about 10 percent of the consumers will pay premium for green products (see BBMG’s New Consumers research for example). Given the global economic environment and especially when 85 percent of the respondents report being affected by the global recession, there’s a better chance the average number now is lower than 10 percent, certainly not higher.

2. The bull and the bear

The report presents an interesting differentiation between Rapid Growth Economies (RGEs), including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, UAE and Brazil, which are bullish on purpose, and “Bear” Markets, like the US and Western Europe. RGE consumers have much higher expectations of and engagement with brands and corporations on societal issues, whereas levels commitment to purpose and values seem to be lower in developed countries. This is not the first study showing this trend, although it seems to be more reflective of respondent attitudes than in actual behavior. We’ll have to wait for further research before we can really establish who is a bull and who is a bear when it comes to intention.

3. Companies need to do more, but also need to communicate more effectively

According to the report, while 87 percent of global consumers believe that business needs to place at least equal weight on society’s interests as on business’ interests, less than a third believe business is performing well at addressing societal issues. “This performance gap is likely to drive disillusionment, disengagement and outright distrust from consumers,” the report explains.

This finding presents three challenges to companies: First, companies need to act more sustainably or as Paul Polman puts it, “to recognize that the needs of citizens and communities carry the same weight as the demands of shareholders.” Second, when a company already acts, it needs to make sure that consumers know about it – how many buyers of Dove soaps know about Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan? How many customers of M&S know about its Plan A? Third and this might be the trickiest one, companies should learn to communicate effectively – the problem is that while consumers have higher expectations from companies, they don’t trust them too much. So companies that act and want to spread the word about their good work should find how to communicate smartly to make sure consumers not only get exposed to the news, but also find it reliable.

4. What should companies be doing anyway?

For companies that wonder what consumers are expecting them to be doing, exactly, the report provides answers. Approximately half of respondents believe organizations should donate a portion of profits (51%) and products or services (50%), while 49% believe companies should be creating a product or service that helps address a societal issue. They also think companies should be providing educational information (47%), partnering with NGOs (43%), and somewhat surprising – working with the government (45%).

5. The power of the sticks

According to the report, consumers are willing to praise those brands and corporations that support a good cause, and they will also punish those that do not. I have a feeling that companies are paying more attention to the sticks so they might want to pay attention to the favorite ways customers use to punish those companies that don’t actively support a good cause: refuse to buy products (44%), criticize it to others (44%), share negative opinions and experiences (44%), not want to work for it (48%) and not invest in it (53%).

As we can learn from the case Apple, where its sales set a new record last quarter alongside a waterfall of accusations about the working conditions at Foxconn, boycotts doesn’t seem to be too popular, no matter what people say. Still, the example of Apple shows that the power of online protests is no less and might be even greater than the power of boycotting.

Article as published in Triple Pundit, May 4, 2012 by Raz Godelnik, an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Department of Business Administration, CUNY and the New School, teaching courses in green business and new product development.

 

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9
May

Nike Challenges Customers to Design Their Own Virtual Green Athletic Wear

Nike has just released its most recent sustainability report, and it is quite possibly one of the most compelling and engaging I have ever come across. Few corporate social responsibility reports keep me up past my bedtime: in fact, many hasten that hour. But Nike has launched an interactive sustainability report that educates, innovatesand brings sustainability alive.

Not all of the news coming from Nike’s Beaverton headquarters is sunny. Excessive overtime is still a nagging problem in the company’s contract factories, and Nike admits many of the factors are within the company’s control. The complete elimination of hazardous chemicals from its supply chain will take time. And the company’s water footprint is still huge. But Nike is charging ahead with a sustainability agenda that just a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable. And rather than taking a self-congratulatory tone, Nike draws stakeholders in on its journey to share the company’s successes and shortcomings.

One example of how Nike engages stakeholders is by demonstrating the impact that the 16,000 various materials used to manufacture its sporting apparel have on the environment. A tour of the Nike Material Index (NMI) allows users to compare organic versus conventionally grown cotton, learn about recycled polyester and how it outperforms nylon, and explains the various components that comprise a pair of athletic shoes. While users design their version of green athletic wear, they learn how Nike assesses the overall sustainability performance of the materials based on energy, chemistry, water and waste. Jargon that often weighs down sustainability reports is replaced, dare I say, with fun.

Such an exercise is important because it reminds customers about the challenges that emerge with the convergence of performance and sustainability. Leather, for example, is sourced from tanneries that are certified by the Leather Working Group (LWG). More consumers would rather avoid leather altogether, and Nike is open to synthetic alternatives. But all synthetics on the market use solvents that are harmful to the environment. To that end, Nike in some ways is not just a branded athletic wear company, but a chemistry research and development firm. Curiously, Nike is becoming a leader in green chemistry that would make companies like Dow Chemical squirm.

From waste diversion to improving labor rights to revamping its manufacturing operations, Nike’s driving goal is accomplish what seems impossible: stay profitable in a world with constrained resources. The company has structured its long term plan at three levels: aim for what it aspires to do, set targets and demonstrate commitments for each goal. Such an approach works because it keeps the company focused on its long term goals, holds the company accountable to what it has promised stakeholders and prevents Nike from setting expectations too high.

Start exploring the company’s corporate responsibility report and see for yourself. What Nike has accomplished is far more than just demonstrating that it is a clothing manufacturing company that is doing good. In fact, exploring the site makes you wonder why Nike still bothers with shoes and athletic gear – it should become a sustainability strategy consulting firm in its own right.

Article was written for Triple Pundit (Published May 4, 2012) by Leon Kaye, a Sustainability consultant and editor of GreenGoPost.com

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17
April

Optimism: Abundance is our future

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5
April

10 Lessons from 11 Business Sustainability Journeys

There are many valuable lessons to be learned by reviewing the ways companies relate to sustainability. An increasing number of companies around the world are engaging major sustainability initiatives ahead of government regulation and in the absence of strong public demand.

Corporate sustainability is now part of strategic business decisions that are determining everything from manufacturing processes to marketing communications. As explained in a Sustainable Brands article, “Companies increasingly recognize that a proactive stance on sustainability is becoming a competitive necessity in attracting investors, employment talent and supply chain partners, as well as customers.”

Each company has had to deal with a unique set of circumstances and each company’s experience reveals a different insight. Here is a selection of ten companies and some of lessons that we can take from their sustainability journeys.

1. Eastman Kodak Corporation: Adapt or Die

Companies that proactively engage sustainability are rewarded while companies that ignore sustainability are punished. This holds true for Eastman Kodak, which is forced to reinvent itself by the changing marketplace. The company must radically change its product offerings and its culture of complacency or it will die.

As reviewed in a Triple Pundit article, Kodak is already teetering on the brink. To raise capital, they are close to selling off some of their lucrative patents, and they have one year to submit a reorganization plan to bankruptcy court.

To survive, the 120-year-old film company is morphing itself into a digital imaging company. Through its partnership with Natcore Technologies, Kodak is also investing in inexpensive patented thin-film solar technology, specifically flexible solar cells, through a New Jersey-based startup. The solar cells cost as little as half as much as traditional thin-film solar cells to manufacture. This is a bold move for Kodak, but it will need to make similar bold moves if it is to regain its foothold.

2. Toshiba International Corporation: Bold Strategic Move

Adapt or die is a motto that applies equally to thriving businesses as well. Toshiba, once a leader in incandescent lighting, is now betting on LED technology as the future of lighting. As revealed in a recent press release, Toshiba completely abandoned production of incandescent lights in March 2010 and is now diving fully invested in LED lighting. Toshiba is the first major lighting manufacturer to proactively discontinue the production of incandescent lamps.

Toshiba is one of the largest lighting companies and LED light manufacturers in the world, they produced their first light bulb in 1890. On July 13, 2011, Toshiba announced that twenty of its energy-efficient LED lights have received the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Energy Star® label. An Energy Star qualified LED lamp uses up to 75% less energy, lasts at least 15 times longer than incandescent lighting and has a light quality, which remains consistent over time.

Being awarded the Energy Star certification is an important payoff for Toshiba’s bold strategy.

3. LG Electronics, Inc.: Lead through Public Private Collaboration

LG Electronics USA is based in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and it is the North American subsidiary of LG Electronics, Inc., a $49 billion global force and technology leader. LG Electronics Inc. is reducing emissions by collaborating with government.

As reviewed in an April 3, 2012 PR Newswire release, LG Electronics USA plans to cut its carbon footprint in half by 2020. To help achieve this ambitious objective, the company is working in cooperation with the EPA’s Green Power Partnership, which is a voluntary clean energy program.

As part of the Partnership, LG USA will power its Englewood headquarters by purchasing more than 1.5 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power over the next 18 months. This translates to carbon emissions reductions equivalent to more than 200 passenger vehicles per year, or more than 100 average American homes annually.

Blaine Collison, director of the EPA Green Power Partnership, said LGs effort “provides an excellent example for other organizations.”

In addition to their partnership with the U.S. EPA, LG is also part of South Korea’s Green Technology Center (GTC), a research institute that will focus on developing environmentally friendly technologies.

4. Samsung: Get There First and Keep Innovating to Stay on Top

As reviewed in an Ecoleader article, Samsung has a green vision that will only get greener in the future. Like LG, Samsung is also part of South Korea’s Green Technology Center (GTC) research center and the company is already a leader in energy-efficient products.

In 2007, Samsung was first with internet connected appliances to increase energy savings and reduce costs, and in 2008, Samsung launched an eco-phone made with corn-based bioplastics. In 2011, the company launched more Green IT products and services and in the summer of 2011, Samsung joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI).

Samsung will continue to innovate by increasing energy efficiency, reducing CO2 emissions and being less harmful to the environment when its products are recycled or disposed.

5. PPR Home: Innovative Metrics Shed Light on Supply Chains

As reported in GreenBiz, the parent company of some of the world’s biggest luxury and sporting brands, including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and PUMA, are embarking on one of the world’s most ambitious green accounting programs. PPR Home has announced that it will adopt a group environmental profit and loss statement (EP&L) by 2015.

This new approach to accounting will help to monitor and manage greenhouse gas emissions, water use, pollution, and land use change. According to PUMA executive chairman, Jochen Zeitz, EP&Ls are superior to conventional sustainability reports.

”As the manager of a business, all you need to look at now is one page and you know what you need to do because it tells you exactly where you need to attack in order to get rid of your footprint,” Zeitz said. “But once you visualise and measure, you can actually manage the impact. Whereas before the visualisation was so hypothetical that it didn’t lead to concrete day-to-day decisions.”

The EP&L provide a more transparent view of the supply chain. PUMA’s E P&L revealed that 94 percent of its environmental impact was created in the supply chain, which has encouraged the company to find alternative materials to reduce that impact. Zeitz said that the company was looking into requiring firms to measure and report their environmental impact when PUMA is selecting suppliers in future.

6. HP and Dell: Manufacturing or Recycling

According to an article by Carol Baroudi, HP and Dell are each taking different approaches to sustainability. HP is emphasizing removing toxic compounds from manufacturing while Dell is focused on recycling through take back programs.

HP has been far better than Dell at removing toxic compounds from their designs. They have reduced PVC and BFRs, and they have completely phased out beryllium and other compounds.

Dell is better than HP at recycling their products at the end of their life cycle. Dell is working with the EPA on the National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship. Dell and the EPA are promoting recycling for electronic waste. The goal of the Strategy is to “encourage electronics manufacturers to expand their product take-back programs, and use certified recyclers as a minimum standard in those programs.”

7. Unilever: Go Big or Go Home

Greenbiz has lauded Unilever’s efforts if for no other reason than the sheer scale of its sustainability ambitions. By 2020, the company, with annual revenues exceeding $63 billion, plans to cut its massive environmental footprint in half through its Sustainable Living Plan.

Big efforts get noticed as is evidenced by the fact that Unilever won top honors at the 2011 International Green Awards in London. Unilever was named the Grand Prix award winner because it has “the greatest capacity to change the way society and business is perceived, supported by factual evidence of systemic change.”

Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan articulates the view that business must prepare itself for a future in which resources are rare and more expensive.

“We are preparing ourselves for that future. We’re also trying to develop products and services which will allow our consumers to adapt to a very different world,” Gavin Neath, Unilever’s senior vice president of sustainability, said in an interview. “People talk a lot about things like climate change adaptation. In a real sense, part of what we’re doing in the Sustainable Living Plan is about climate change adaptation.”

8. ARAMARK: Training a Workforce

You do not need to be a multi-billion dollar company to develop innovative approaches to address sustainability challenges. One such concern involves securing qualified employees. ARAMARK has launched an Environmental Internship Program designed to meet the growing need for employees who have a practical understanding of environmental initiatives plus fundamental business knowledge.

The program provides young professionals with corporate experience and creates an awareness of the role environmental stewardship can play in all jobs. ARAMARK is a world leader in professional services, providing award-winning food services, facilities management, and uniform and career apparel to health care institutions, universities and school districts, stadiums and arenas, and businesses around the world.

“Environmental practices can be incorporated into virtually any job, and through the ARAMARK Environmental Internship Program, we can help develop employees who make the connection between the work that they do, and its impact on the environment and on our business,” said Rick Martella, ARAMARK Vice President, Business Affairs. “Embedding these internships in key roles across the company will provide environmental knowledge and skills that are not confined to a single position or type of job, and can be easily shared.”

9. Berg Engineering Consultants Ltd.: Be Proactive

Green is also growing in the building sector. As reported in the Daily Herald Business Ledger, the green market was 2 percent of non-residential construction starts in 2005; 12 percent in 2008; and grew to 28-35 percent in 2010. By 2015, an estimated 40-48 percent of new non-residential construction will be green. Experts say green building will support 7.9 million U.S. jobs and pump $554 million into the U.S. economy over the next four years.

By 2015, the green share of the largest non-residential retrofit and renovation activity will more than triple, growing to 25-33 percent of the activity by value — a $14-18 billion opportunity in major construction projects alone, industry experts say.

When Brian Berg Sr. established Berg Engineering Consultants Ltd. (BEC), there was no green market and there was no LEED certification. However, when he set up shop in the midst of the 70s energy crisis, he paid heed to prevailing conditions and positioned himself to be ahead of the curve in energy-efficient designs.

Now his firm has won numerous energy awards using energy efficient design in a huge and growing market.

“Dad had to invent energy efficient design,” explains Brian Berg Jr. “Today it’s not so much a process, but education — staying on top of innovations, showing clients how spending a little more for a more energy efficient building envelope is a smart investment.”

10. Bluehorse Associates: Doing It for the Money

Bottom line benefits are driving the adoption of sustainability. As Sara Pax, President of Bluehorse Associates, noted, it is ‘not about tree-hugging’: Sustainability is simply good for business. According to Pax, companies should be concerned about their environmental sustainability – but it has more to do with ensuring profitability than it does with saving the planet.

Bluehorse Associates is the maker of a tool for measuring environmental sustainability for the food industry called Carbonostics, which Pax claims can give food and beverage companies tangible information about which measures make most sense for business, as well as for the environment.

Consumer engagement should not be a top priority for companies, Pax said, as only a very small percentage of consumers change their purchasing decisions based on any environmental work that a company has undertaken.

Conclusion

Businesses are drawn to sustainability by the returns they see in the real world experience of other businesses. Research bears out the hypothesis that businesses that adopt a sustainable culture “significantly outperform their counterparts over the long-term, both in terms of stock market and accounting performance.” This was the finding in a November 2011 study conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School and London Business School.

Business is doing more for the environment than governments or grass roots populism. We can learn a great deal from the sustainability journeys of the brave pioneers who have dared to lead.

Article written for Global Warmingis Real,  as published in Sustainable Life Media by Richard Matthews,  a consultant, eco-entrepreneur, green investor and author of numerous articles on sustainable positioning, eco-economics and enviro-politics.

Source: Global Warming is Real (http://s.tt/18OZN)

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3
April

Volkswagen’s green commitment: $52 billion by 2016

German automaker Volkswagen aims to drop the average emissions from its new vehicles to 120 grams CO2/km by 2015, as part of a “fundamental ecological restructuring” likely to be worth more than €40 billion (US$52 billion by 2016.

The company says more than two thirds of its entire €62.4 billion (US$82.1 billion) investment programme for the coming five years will be directly or indirectly spent on “ever more efficient vehicles, powertrains and technologies, as well as environmentally compatible production.”

VW has been looking to bolster its green reputation since being targeted by campaign group Greenpeace over its alleged lobbying against deeper cuts to EU emissions targets.

The company’s new emissions reduction target would represent a 30 percent cut on 2006 levels for Europe’s largest carmaker, and a sizeable reduction on its current average emissions for new vehicles of 135.5g/km, which sits fractionally below the E.U. average of 136.1 g/km in 2011.

VW said that under the new plan it wants every new model generation to be on average 10 to 15 percent more efficient than its predecessor, while emissions will also be cut from both production processes and manufacturing plants.

As part of the announcement the company unveiled a new €600 million (almost US$790 million) investment designed to expand its use of renewable energies such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, in order to achieve a 40 percent reduction in emissions from energy supplies by the end of the decade.

Plants will also aim to reduce water and energy consumption, as well as overall emissions, by a quarter over the next six years.

Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, chairman of the Volkswagen Group Board of Management, also declared that 2013 would be the “year of e-mobility” for Volkswagen, starting with the release of the two door mini e-up!, which will then be followed by further all-electric or partially-electric vehicles from many of the Group’s brands.

“Our declared goal is to make Volkswagen the leading automaker in ecological terms, too,” he said on the eve of the Geneva motorshow, before stating that Volkswagen’s new five year strategy will focus on responsible conduct towards employees, society, and the environment.

“To take pole position and to sustain that lead over the long term, you have to understand all these dimensions of our business and to practice them convincingly at every level,” Winterkorn added. “We are raising the bar much higher when it comes to sustainability.”

 

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15
March

Is Your Brand’s Sustainability Really Worth Talking About?

Once upon a time (until recently, actually), the sustainability story of an iconic cosmetics brand focused on contributing to reforestation – doing its bit for climate change, biodiversity and cleaner water.  This brand said little about what it was doing to reduce toxins in its products or source and manufacture those products more sustainably.  (Not that much, it turned out.)  This despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of most product companies’ environmental footprint is, of course, in the products themselves.  To savvier consumers, investors and employees, the reforestation story was the equivalent of a deflecting nervous laugh trying to divert attention from the brand’s core sustainability reality.

Over time, every company’s sustainability ROI boils down to just two things:  reality and perception.  From atop the growing mountain of evidence, we’ve already seen that sustainability reality, done right, reduces costs and risks while driving innovation and product appeal.  Meanwhile, each year sustainability perceptions have a larger impact on brand equity and its attendant revenue, pricing power, and customer and stakeholder loyalty.  Regardless of how you tell your sustainability story in an increasingly transparent world, whether brand impact will be positive or negative is utterly dependent on your sustainability reality.  So as communicators, every day we have to ask if our sustainability performance – not just professed values or stated corporate commitments  – is actually worth talking about.

Whose job is it, anyway?

It’s critical to get very clear on what part of achieving your brand’s desired sustainability perceptions is up to Marketing/Corporate Communications and what part is up to product development.   Is your sustainability reality weaker than the story you’re telling, or is it actually stronger?

If perceptions lag reality as they do for many brands (Dow, L’Oreal, Merck, Nokia, Shell among them), there is uncaptured ROI in unrealized brand equity.  That’s up to communicators to fix, staying current on the brand’s legitimate sustainability proof points and weaving them into an appropriate and powerful tapestry.  But when reality is weaker than the story (the more common scenario; you know who you are), reality is your ceiling for how compelling your sustainability communication can be without significant greenwashing exposure.  In product companies, it’s up to product development, supply chain, and product lifecycle managers to raise that ceiling.

In that context, the big problem is that CMO’s/corporate brand stewards seldom have a seat at the table when product design and development decisions are being made.  How can CMO’s be accountable for brand health when sustainability perceptions will be largely determined by product content, sourcing, manufacture, packaging, distribution, use, and disposal/re-use?

Yet that doesn’t mean just accepting the hand we’re dealt.  It means we must persistently and urgently ask the executives responsible for product development decisions  “What more can we do to ensure that sustainability criteria are systematically encountered when product ideas/improvements are being evaluated for development?”

This requires ensuring that product sustainability is not a segregated assessment, but that preliminary assessments are integrated with other non-sustainability criteria impacting customer appeal – and always occur early enough in the development decision cycle to prevent investments that diminish or even cripple your sustainability reality.

What’s a brand steward to do?

1.  Know where you stand.  In the absence of sustainability-focused primary research designed to assess where you are today on sustainability reality vs. perception, reports like those linked above (from Interbrand and BrandLogic) are useful inputs.  If your brand is not included in such reports, you may need to undertake primary research or at least piece together other secondary research with whatever you already have.

2.  Define communication objectives calibrated to what degree your sustainability reality is truly worth talking about.  If your reality is stronger than your perception, portray that reality aggressively and compellingly to meet those objectives.  If it’s weaker, urge your senior executive leadership team to keep up the pressure on reality with systematic, integrated sustainability assessments in your product development pipeline – before product development projects are approved.

3.  Ensure that your perception monitoring mechanisms do all they can to gauge whether your story is going far enough so that you don’t leave unrealized brand equity on the table, but not so far that it greenwashes.  Savvier customers are already punishing brands that selectively tout the good part of their story while burying the bad.  The transparency imperative will keep increasing the pressure on your reality.

Just to be clear, I think contributions to reforestation are great.  But when products companies give short shrift to the harder part, they can punish their brands (and brand communicators) as much as the environment.

Steven Cristol is founder of Strategic Harmony® Partners and has advised some of the world’s most innovative companies on brand strategy and product strategy. Article was written for Sustainable Life Media.

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6
March

Communicating a Change of Heart

Everything changes during the moment when you wake up, realize that things need to be better, and understand that you have a role to play in the story.  Companies that are implementing a sustainability strategy are doing so because somewhere in the organization, someone had what Ray Anderson called his “spear in the chest” moment, and realized life would never be the same.  Yes, there are some who only see this opportunistically and recognize sustainability’s power to reduce risk and costs while increasing efficiencies.  Yet as the revolution of real change unfolds, what happens is a change of heart for  entire organizations.

The communications implications for this are significant.  How the brand’s purpose is understood and expressed must now reflect a deeper purpose.  First, alignment around and commitment to   that purpose must be created.  The challenge is for businesses – who are facing a growing activist consumer – to clearly and credibly express a new dimension of their business. A dimension that is not held hostage to short term profitability but rather integrates service to greater good alongside financial well-being.

We as sustainability communicators understand the power of the narrative to help organizations’ achieve their goals.  After more than 25 years, I see the role that communications plays in five distinct co-creation areas and believe that this is the core of what we – the storytellers of commerce — are working toward:

1.  Establishing credibility. From branding initiatives to corporate reputation campaigns, brands are creating a new series of communications (CSR reports, ads, web sites, forums) that provide the detailed transparency for telling a complex sustainability story. Truth-telling and hero’s journey are the themes here.

2.  Removing barriers. There is a range of stakeholders whose buy-in is essential in successful sustainability implementation.  Employees, supply chain, distribution partners, governments and NGOs, local communities must all become part of the team and be persuaded to set aside self-serving agendas and biases.  A call to community is at the heart of this effort.

3.  Accelerating acceptance. Clarity can speed goal attainment when players in the system understand how their contribution and connection contributes to success.  Participation in a greater goal that is a both-and proposition is the key theme.

4.  Building consensus.  In today’s always-on world, successful communications must not only break through the cacophony but be designed to create cohesion among disparate groups.  This is really about helping orchestrate a theme amongst varied voices.

5.  Empowering advocates. Businesses now rely on a host of advocates who share the narrative – they tweet, post, like, share and rate.    Everywhere you can read about how business as we know it has changed – that social media and the new connected customer require a new way of doing business.  This means creating narratives that are distinct, sharable messages designed so that others can say-it-forward.

Co-created communications with stakeholders can only come from a strategic approach and the realization that it must be carefully constructed for every transaction.  Sustainability communication is there to give people on all sides of the revolution a voice.  And that beautifully expresses a change of heart.

Article written for Sustainable Life Media by Sandy Skees, CEO, Communications4Good.

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28
February

Canadian ‘B Corps’ Put Their Money Where Their Branding Is On Social Causes

For-profit companies that trumpet a commitment to social and environmental causes often struggle to prove to investors and customers that their dedication to betterment runs deeper than a clever green-washing campaign.

But that has begun to change.

A growing number of Canadian companies are now becoming certified as “B Corps,” a new designation that seeks to distinguish firms that are committed to improving more than their bottom line.

Jay Coen Gilbert, Founder of B Corps shares his vision to harness the power of business to solve society’s problems through B Corporations — a new standard labeling socially and environmentally responsible companies. B Corps will help corporations be profitable while solving society’s problems.

The aim, says Dermot Hikisch of B Lab, a Pennsylvania-based non-profit that has certified more than 500 B Corporations in the U.S. since 2007, is to do the same thing for companies serious about addressing social and environmental issues as Fair Trade certification has done for firms dedicated to ethical labour practices.

“Consumers, investors and even employees aren’t necessarily believing what a company says until they have a third party seal of approval on it,” Hikisch told The Huffington Post. “B Lab acts as that third party standard to make sure these companies are as good as they say they are.”

Since 2009, 39 Canadian companies — ranging from engineering firms to coffee retailers — have become designated B Corps, with 27 new companies certifying in the past year.

As Hikisch explains, achieving certification is “no small measure.” In addition to passing a social and environmental “impact assessment,” companies must articulate their commitment to these values directly into their articles of incorporation.

“You have to have a board meeting to really walk through [it] with your board and your shareholders [and] say, ‘I’m going to make this amendment to my documentation to say that we shall consider stakeholders within our business,’” he says. “They’ve baked it right into their company.”

Altering the company bylaws is intended to prevent these values from being abandoned in the event of a big corporate shake-up, such as a merger or acquisition.

Tim Masson, executive vice-president of The Ian Martin Group, an Oakville, Ont.-based employment consulting firm, didn’t mind the added paperwork.

“We became a B Corp to help clarify, define, and articulate our purpose as an organization,” he said in a press release. “We hope to learn from other B Corps, improve our impacts, measure our progress, and become more transparent and accountable to that purpose.”

Some of the allure no doubt stems from a desire to attract capital from the burgeoning impact investing industry, which seeks to put its money on precisely the kind of firms that B Lab certifies.

As Bill Young, founder of Toronto-based Social Capital Partners, a non-profit social finance organization, explains, “A certification process on social business helps an investor who wants to do that kind of thing, but doesn’t have the time themselves or the means to really test the legitimacy of the social purpose. It’s a valuable service to know that someone has done that.”

Impact investor Joel Solomon concurs.

He says it’s “still too early to expect that [all companies] would be aware of the designation,” but he has begun to take notice when a company has achieved B Corp certification.

“B Corp certifications add a layer of confidence and are a signal of a level of commitment and values by an entrepreneur or company,” Solomon, who is chairman of Vancouver-based Renewal2 investment fund, said in an e-mail.

The B Corp movement has had to overcome several hiccups in the U.S., where corporations that make decisions that prioritize environmental or social goals over profits can face legal action, and some states prohibit corporations from making changes to their bylaws.

To address this, B Lab spearheaded legislation, which has been adopted in seven states since 2010, to create a different class of company. Among other commitments, so-called “benefit corporations” are required by law to make “a material positive impact on society.”

California-based outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia Inc. is among the corporations that have made use of the new legislation, and ice cream icon Ben & Jerry’s plans to incorporate as a benefit corporation in the state of Vermont in the coming months.

According to Allyson Hewitt, director of social entrepreneurship at the Toronto-based MaRS Discovery District, which has been at the forefront of the Canadian B Corp movement, it’s somewhat easier for Canadian corporations to become B Corps.

As she explains, corporations on this side of the border must already “consider other stakeholder interests besides shareholders,” and are required by law to abide by some of B Lab’s standards, such as offering relatively generous (at least compared to the U.S.) maternity leave benefits.

Still, Hewitt’s team is investigating the possibility of drafting benefit corporation legislation in Canada, which she says may strengthen the designation. Their findings will be released in a white paper in the next few months.

As Hikisch sees it, there is significant “upside” potential for the movement in Canada, which is now home to the second-highest number of B Corporations after the U.S.

“Canada is one of those places [where] business owners do believe and know that they can be a big part of the solution, and not have to wait for … governments to act or the consumers or anyone else to do the job for them,” he says. “I have no doubt that there [are] over 500 to 1,000 potential B Corporations in Canada.”

6 CANADIAN B CORPS THAT ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE:

        • DIRTT, which stands for “doing it right this time,” designs and builds custom, sustainable office interiors. Among its offerings are floors that house telecom and electrical cables, and “living walls” that turn room dividers into hanging gardens. Headquartered in Calgary, DIRTT now has offices across Canada and the U.S., including in New York, Chicago and L.A. The company employs 580 people.
        • British Columbia-based Salt Spring Coffeecelebrated its 15th anniversary of selling fair trade coffee in 2011. The company boasts it “pays above market rates to farmer-owned coffee co-operatives that do not harm the environment with their production methods.” The company reports $10 million in sales annually and employs 60
        • Founded in 1994 by Carol Newell and Joel Solomon, Renewal 2 is a social venture fund that aims to turn a profit by investing in socially conscious enterprises. The fund says it has placed “$7million of equity investments” and also placed “$20 million in conservation financing, social purpose non-profit real estate, social enterprise business lending, education, convening, capacity enhancing shared services for charities, and the building of financial services for philanthropists.” Among the companies in its portfolio are Better Energy Systems and Sensible Organics.
        • Vancouver-based Ethical Bean has been selling fair trade coffee since 2003. One dollar of every unit of coffee sold at the retailer goes to charities helping children in Guatemala. The company has 26 employees.
        • Fairware provides custom-branded products to companies and organizations that want to increase their brand exposure with promotional product lines. The company is involved directly with causes, providing products that can be used as prizes for charity raffles, for instance. Among its clients are Aveda, BC Hydro and Amnesty International.
        • Vancouver-based Lunapads offers reusable cloth sanitary napkins, as well as a line of women’s underwear. The company describes itself as a “women-owned and operated social mission-based business.” It has been in business since 1993.

Story run by Huffington Post, February 3, 2012

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9
February

50 Fastest Growing Brands Serve a ‘Higher Purpose’

New research on the world’s 50 fastest growing brands found a cause-and-effect relationship between a brand’s ability to serve a higher purpose and its financial performance.

Brand consultants Millward Brown and former Proctor & Gamble marketing officer Jim Stengel developed the list of 50 brands, which they say built the deepest relationships with customers while achieving the greatest financial growth from 2001-2011. Furthermore, investment in these companies – the Stengel 50 – over the past decade would have been 400% more profitable than an investment in the S&P 500.

The list includes numerous brands with strong reputations for sustainability, such as Method, Seventh Generation, Stonyfield Farm and Chipotle.

The study forms the backbone of Stengel’s book GROW: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies (Crown Business; December 27, 2011).

“We wanted to uncover which brands grew the most over the past decade, both in terms of customer bonding and shareholder value,” said Millward Brown Optimor VP Benoit Garbe, who led the study. “Once we identified these brands, our burning question was what, if any, were the common principles that sparked and sustained their growth.”

To arrive at the Stengel 50, Millward Brown Optimor valued thousands of brands across 30+ countries. The list included both B2B and B2C businesses in 28 categories ranging in size from $100 million in revenues to well over $100 billion:

Ideals – The Ultimate Growth Driver

A research team – comprising Millward Brown Optimor brand strategists, Jim Stengel, Professor Sanjay Sood and MBA students at UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management – uncovered that the most successful brands were built on an ideal of improving lives in some way, irrespective of size and category.

“We define ideal as the higher-order benefit a brand or a business gives to the world,” said Stengel. “Some companies are very explicit about their ideals, like Zappos – their ideal of delivering happiness is on their boxes, all over their offices, even on t-shirts employees wear. Other brands, like Louis Vuitton, are more implicit about it. But all their actions – throughout their products, stores and communications – amplify their ideal to luxuriously accentuate the journey of life.”

Added Garbe, “We found that this ideal is both a source of inspiration externally among customers, as well as a compass for internal decision making. So whether it’s Red Bull which seeks to Uplift Mind and Body or Pampers which is all about Caring for Happy Healthy Development of Babies, an ideal influences all facets of the business from HR and Marketing to R&D and Finance.”

Through case studies, GROW demonstrates how brand ideals aren’t simply about altruism or corporate social responsibility but a fundamental human value that is authentic to the brand and ultimately a driver for extraordinary growth. In fact, Millward Brown Optimor’s analysis discovered that those who centered their businesses on ideals had a growth rate triple that of competitors in their categories.

How Ideals Impact the Consumer Mind

Millward Brown’s team also determined that the 50 brands touch on five fundamental human values:

  • Eliciting Joy: Activating experiences of happiness, wonder, and limitless possibility
  • Enabling Connection: Enhancing the ability of people to connect with each other and the world in meaningful ways
  • Inspiring Exploration: Helping people explore new horizons and new experiences
  • Evoking Pride: Giving people increased confidence, strength, security, and vitality
  • Impacting Society: Affecting society broadly, from challenging the status quo to redefining categories

The list of companies is as follows:

Accenture, management and enterprise consulting services

Airtel, mobile communications

Amazon.com, e-commerce

Apple, personal computing technology and mobile devices

Aquarel, bottled water

BlackBerry, mobile communications

Calvin Klein, luxury apparel and accessories

Chipotle, fast food

Coca-Cola, soft drinks

Diesel, youth- targeted fashion apparel and accessories

Discovery Communications, media

Dove, personal care

Emirates, air travel

FedEx, delivery services

Google, Internet information

Heineken, beer

Hennessy, spirits

Hermès, luxury apparel and leather goods

HP, information technology products and services

Hugo Boss, luxury apparel and accessories

IBM, information technology products and services

Innocent, food and beverages

Jack Daniel’s, spirits

Johnnie Walker, spirits

L’Occitane, personal care

Lindt, chocolate

Louis Vuitton, luxury apparel and leather goods

MasterCard, electronic payments

Mercedes-Benz, automobiles

Method, household cleaners and personal care

Moët & Chandon, champagne

Natura, personal care

Pampers, baby care

Petrobras, energy

Rakuten Ichiba, e-commerce

Red Bull, energy drinks

Royal Canin, pet food

Samsung, electronics

Sedmoy Kontinent (“Seventh Continent”), retail grocery

Sensodyne, oral care

Seventh Generation, household cleaners and personal care

Snow, beer

Starbucks, coffee and fast food retailer

Stonyfield Farm, organic dairy products

Tsingtao, beer

Vente-Privee.com, e-commerce

Visa, electronic payments

Wegmans, retail grocery

Zappos, e-commerce

Zara, affordable apparel

Bart King is regulat contributor to Sustainable Life Media and a PR consultant at Cleantech Communications

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31
January

Can The iPad Revolutionize Rural Agriculture?

The high-tech gadget is finding fans in an unlikely place: rural farms, where it can be used for everything from training to creating a connection between the farmers and customers in the developed world.

The iPad is a luxury toy. It’s also a powerful, adaptable tool. That much has become obvious over the past two years as the device has made its way into classrooms, cockpits, and hospitals.

The iPad’s fairly steep price, however, has kept it firmly entrenched in the developed world. That’s starting to change, as evidenced by efforts from Exprima Media and coffee importer Sustainable Harvest to bring the iPad to coffee co-ops and farmers in East Africa, Mexico, and South America.

Over the past two years, Exprima and Sustainable Harvest have unveiled a suite of efficiency and traceability iPad apps–the Relationship Information Tracking System (RITS) suite–for coffee farmers in the developing world. The companies don’t market directly to farmers; instead, they sell to coffee co-ops, which either purchase the iPads themselves or seek out third-party-funded grants.

The RITS Ed app, piloted this year, features over two hours of training videos in a variety of languages related to everything from agronomy best practices to growing protein-rich mushrooms out of coffee production waste. “The people we work with have limited infrastructure, and dialing up YouTube is not a reality,” says Debra Rosenthal, Director of Technology Development for Sustainable Harvest. “The training videos featuring industry experts, so we’re putting experts in the hands of trainers that work for those co-ops.” In 2011, seven Tanzanian farmers used the app to train their fellow local farmers. They were able to train an incredible 106 farmers in a month.

The RITS Producer app, a supply chain management program that has been used in Tanzania since 2010, allows producers to track the coffee they process–how much is produced, how it’s milled, payments received, and where its final destination is located. This past year, Sustainable Harvest sold some raw coffee beans to Allegro Coffee (the Whole Foods coffee brand) for sampling. The company stuck a QR code on the back, so that when the quality control manager at Allegro received it, he could see scan the bag and see all the coffee roasters involved, the ratings of various coffees that came from the co-op, and more. “It’s an unprecedented level of transparency in what has historically been an opaque supply chain,” says Rosenthal.

“This replaces what used to be a suitcase of papers on the back of an agronomist’s motorcycle.”

Finally, the RITS Metrics app, first piloted in Tanzania this year, allows agronomists or other coffee co-op leaders to speed up the third-party certification process by storing surveys from members offline. When the farmers return to a place that has an Internet connection (the coffee co-op headquarters, for example) the information is uploaded to a cloud server. “This replaces what used to be a suitcase of papers on the back of an agronomist’s motorcycle,” explains Rosenthal.

There’s a reason that these apps haven’t been customized for cheaper netbooks instead of the pricey iPad: The learning curve to master the iPad is much shorter than that of traditional computers because the device is so intuitive. It’s also proving to be an attractive tool to keep the younger generation interested in farming–the iPad is easy to use as a training tool and it’s hard to deny the “cool” factor. “We went to Peru and introduced the RITS app to co-op employees. The president of the co-op got emotional and started talking about how he saw this as way of engaging children and women to keep them in agriculture,” says Corey Pressman, president of Exprima Media. Score another point for the iPad: the gadget that’s preserving agricultural traditions.

This article was written by Ariel Schwartz and published in Sustainable Life Media. She is an Assistant Editor at FastCompany.com.  She has also contributed to SF Weekly, Popular Science, Inhabitat, Greenbiz, NBC Bay Area, GOOD …plus many more.

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