www.strategymag.com/socialresponsibility/2008
This week I attended my first Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility and it was a great learning experience. It was put on by Strategy Magazine and was hosted by two engaging social marketing veterans, Marc and Peter.
So after a few fun barbs between the MC's the stage was set for the first presenter.
The Story of the Victoria's Secret Catalogue
The Story of the Victoria's Secret Catalogue was a great way to start the day. First you have to know that Victoria's Secret sends out on average a million catalogues a day. That's more than 365 million catalogues that are printed every year. I haven't seen the catalogue since I was much younger ;) but I remember it had at least 15 glossy pages. That's almost 5.5 billion sheets of paper a year for just lingerie.
The story begins with ForestEthics, an NGO that is fighting to protect the Boreal Forests around the world. They identified direct mail catalogues as a key culprit to the huge loss of trees in our old growth forests (those are forests that haven't been tainted by human development). They took the fight right to Victoria's Secret doorstep. With an aggressive marketing campaign, they used some ingenious guerilla marketing practices to raise the awareness of consumers of this travesty and used market pressures to get Victoria's Secret to the sit at a table and deal with this unsustainable issue.
In comes Tom of Limited Brands to the table. Now Tom tells the story of Victoria's Secret, a company that tries it's best to be sustainable but simply doesn't have the experience in sustainable practices to understand the impact of their business to the climate problem.
This is the part that I love about the story. Tom and his company sat at the table with ForestEthics and worked together to understand the issue from both sides. Limited Brands makes a good portion of its income from that specific marketing practice and could not stop sending catalogues.
ForestEthics helped them to understand that there were better practices and helped them identify the best sustainable sourcing options that their suppliers were offering. In the end, Victoria's Secret picked a paper source that was certified and used recycled material. It was a good first step towards building a sustainable marketing practice for the Limited Brands catalogue business.
As a leader in the industry, Limited Brands has shown their leadership by bringing in the ForestEthics to help them make informed paper decisions. My hope is, other catalogue producers will see Limited Brands leadership and start to offer consumers a more sustainable engagement.
Hey Tom, GO Paperless!™ with your Catalogues. Call me. :P
The Panel Discussion on Greenwashing
This was a panel on a topic I was interested in. The idea of greenwashing is concerning for my organization. I wouldn't want any of my users who trust me as a sustainable brand to think I was helping an organization to greenwash.
What makes a brand message greenwashing?
The panel identified what was a sustainable message, essentially what wasn't greenwashing. That was good. It helped me to quantify what a green message should look like.
Here is what a green marketing message should accomplish:
- Provide a TRUE story of sustainability practices
- Based on RESULTS and not a new spin on an old feature
- Show TRANSPARENCY of business processes
- Build INTEGRITY into the organization’s core values
I think as a consumer, I just want to know that companies are trying to change, and are willing to do it for me, my children and my neighbours. I want companies to be honest with me and tell me how they are going to try to be more sustainable in the future and that they are willing to do anything to make that happen. And I want them to tell me in-depth information and not glossed over marketing shtick. I want companies that I buy from to be green champions. And a champion is honest, has integrity and produces positive results.
Don’t get me wrong, LG is a great example of the right thing to do in the marketplace. I respect their responsible choice of not greenwashing, but I also expect future sustainability results when they develop their plan. And when they have their plan, I hope they share it with me and deliver on their promise.
High Voltage - GMs Greening Products and Customer Experiences
David talked about General Motors and their efforts to provide sustainable choices throughout their product line. It was interesting because he touched on something that is important to remember about automobiles.
There is no true sustainable solution for our transportation woes. We have to look at a number of competing technologies to provide the right solution for our lifestyle. We all use cars in different ways and GM believes that developing sustainable choices for the consumer. So instead of various models and features, we’ll have the choice of different sustainable technologies.
They are developing multiple levels of sustainable cars. From cars and trucks that run on electricity, to hybrid technology, bio-fuels and other technologies. Their model is about providing the choice for right type of sustainable car for a person’s specific lifestyle makes a lot of sense. You don’t really need a Hummer in an urban centre. It just doesn’t make any sustainable sense.
I heard a lot from David about the green products, but unfortunately I was interested in the greening of the customer experience and he didn't touch on it. So David, if you can hear me, answer a question about how GM is greening the customer experience.
On a side note, I can see the retrofit of cars to new sustainable technologies will become a big market opportunity for the auto sector. Taking an old car and replacing the gas engine with a sustainable alternative is probably the best way to conserve our resources. I believe in taking existing technology and turning it into new greener options.
It's the second R in the 3Rs. Reuse. Did you ever watch the A-Team or McGyver? They were the masters of reusing old stuff and that is where I got my passion for applying new applications to existing technology.
Paper. My Enemy. My Friend
The next speaker was really interesting to me. Norman Lecours from Cascades Fine Papers provides eco-friendly paper alternatives to the market. What I loved about Norman was he understood that their organization can be more environmentally friendly with their business practices by choosing the right markets to service.
They are based in the East Coast and they recognized that if they were delivering their eco-friendly paper to the West Coast, the transportation and emissions costs were enormous. It just didn't make much environmental sense to ship recycled paper from the East Coast to the West Coast.
They decided that as business they would not ship to the West Coast unless the customer took the responsibility of shipping. They didn't want to be the ones responsible for the carbon emissions of transporting their paper to a market they didn't think was environmentally friendly to serve. That shows class and integrity and enough respect for Norman and his team.
Even though I don't like paper and I'm trying to promote the paperless life, it's important for companies like Cascades to recognize the importance of their role in the climate crises and make business decisions that are better for their business and our environment. Cascades is a smart company and I wish them well.
But really. Down with paper. GO Paperless!™
"Good" en Francais c'est Bon
Now I'm excited to talk about the Cirque du Soleil initiative. They don't have one. They are just a company that tries to do good. It's woven into their brand because it is who they are. They don't try to be good to satisfy customers expectations of them, they simply are good and have the best intentions in what they do.
They have a 50 person Global Citizenship Group that makes sure that Cirque is doing good everywhere they go, and making sure that their employees understand kindness, giving and integrity is part and parcel with being a part of the company.
Good people make good companies. Cirque seems like it is full of good people that use their power for good and not evil. They aren't worried about growth and profits because they know that being good is enough for everyone in their organization to be happy and successful.
Wouldn't you like to work for a company that tried to do good and made you feel like you were doing something worthwhile for humanity?
I had the opportunity to talk to Gaetan at length between sessions. I have to say I just love French people. Growing up in New Brunswick I was always exposed to the French Canadian culture and Gaetan epitomizes the gallantry of our brothers en Francais. If you ever see him around tell him I said Salut.
Lunch Roundtable
Good food, good conversation, good people. It was nice to hear from different attendees about Corporate Social Responsibility. Although I found most of the talk was centred around cause related marketing and not green marketing but I guess that's to be expected.
Most companies haven't done anything green yet to justify green marketing. They've been doing cause related marketing for many years and it's the easiest place to start talking about corporate social responsibility. It’s not their fault, there aren’t many green business options out there yet. (we hope to start a trend)
My fear is that the CSR message in the marketplace with too much cause related marketing will dilute the importance of CSR as our climate change vehicle and will lead us down the wrong objective. Don’t' get me wrong, I truly believe causes are important to our society and supporting charities and NGOs is a noble and good practice and should be continued with more funding and resources.
But.
The climate crisis is the reason that CSR is top of mind. We should never lose sight of that. Humanity has been irresponsible with our business practices and we have been eating away at our planet's resources without any notion of sustainability.
We need to take a good hard look at our own company and office and look at how much we consume and how much we emit. That's the Corporate Social Responsibility that is the most important to our future and that's the problem we need to deal with right now.
What's Next for Sustainability
The next speaker was Chris Laszlo from Sustainable Value Partners a consulting company that has worked with WalMart, DuPont, GE and Unilever. To be honest, I was getting tired. I needed a coffee but the presentation had already started.
I think it was engaging, but honestly there was nothing I really remember from it. So I took the session off. You only get one per conference.
Cause-Related Marketing
I suck. I took another session off. It was cause-related marketing, which has great synergies with GO Paperless!™ but I didn’t hear anything I didn't already know before.
Cause-Related Marketing has been the only CSR programs for a lot of years, so there is not much new to learn. It's simple, a company sponsors a cause. The cause wins with the corporate financial support and the company wins with the association with the cause. Pretty simple stuff. The rest is just creative and logistics.
The reality is that we aren't going to market our way out of this climate mess. We are going to have to change our habits and behaviours in our lives and our work to find ways to be more sustainable with our planet.
So who is the Ethical Consumer?
This was probably the most informative presentation because it was based on hard research and an understanding of what identifies a market and the growth of it.
So who is the ethical consumer?
- They are generally female
- They are 35+
- They live in urban centres
Creative Campaigns
Last session. Woohoo. It was a great conference but I found it was valuable in the morning and light in the afternoon. I'd reached my limit of learning and now it was time to think through all the knowledge I had acquired.
The MCs finshed with some creative CSR campaigns, one that was pretty ingenious. A UK Organic Beverage Company was getting people to knit little hats for their beverages and putting them on the bottles that were available on the shelf. Every time a beverage and hat were bought, they would donate 50 pence to charity.
Pretty cool engagement, except I wonder how sustainable it is. What are they going to do with all those knitted hats? Are their little people with little heads in the UK who's heads are cold? They could recycle the wool, sell them in partnership with a doll company or stitch them together to make a big wooly tiny hat jacket. I’d wear it if no-one else would.
That's the end. I had a great time at the event and it was amazing to meet people with similar core values and informative opinions. These experiences are great for learning about corporate responsibility and it's also a great place to share sustainable ideas and make new friends.
That's the only way we'll get out of this mess is if we work together.
So I only took an 8.5 x 11 equivalent in business cards, didn't hand out any paper, and refused any of the paper that was offered. I didn't need anything since I had the Conference Program on my Tablet PC. Living a Paperless Life isn’t always easy but it can be done.
Thanks for reading my long recap. I hope you found it valuable listening to me drone on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on… ;)
Cheers
HH
www.gopaperless.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment