By Tina Ly.
Since the beginning of this column, tips and best practices examples taken from organizations have been given. Other media, even your favorite celebrities are giving some DO’s of how to live sustainably or acting more sustainably. Of course, the first common reaction is: “nice but this involves a budget! Not anyone can afford it”. True. Besides, the reality from which we cannot escape is that (1) we are living in a fast-moving consumption world (2) where greener products are more expensive (3) and old consuming (bad) habits are difficult to change. 2050 is coming soon and common efforts should be made by then. Therefore, shall brands lead us to live more sustainably? Actually, rather than wondering what we should expect from brands for this New Year, let’s wonder what is expected from them?
Since the beginning of this column, tips and best practices examples taken from organizations have been given. Other media, even your favorite celebrities are giving some DO’s of how to live sustainably or acting more sustainably. Of course, the first common reaction is: “nice but this involves a budget! Not anyone can afford it”. True. Besides, the reality from which we cannot escape is that (1) we are living in a fast-moving consumption world (2) where greener products are more expensive (3) and old consuming (bad) habits are difficult to change. 2050 is coming soon and common efforts should be made by then. Therefore, shall brands lead us to live more sustainably? Actually, rather than wondering what we should expect from brands for this New Year, let’s wonder what is expected from them?
So far…
1. More and
more actions are made to raise awareness among people but also within
organizations.
At Changi Airport, Singapore
2. Organizations
are moving forward in engaging their employees, e.g. use of recycling garbage
bins, internal training even in Turkey (!).
3. Standards
for reporting are increasing; Sustainability Accounting Standards have recently
started to be defined per sector.
4. A basic
criteria in some brand campaigns, such as Unilever, BASF, Coca Cola, Pepsi,
Levi’s, Marks & Spencer, H&M campaigns.
Source:
"We create chemistry" BASF International Film
5. Thinking
locally is more and more popular, this matters more to consumers. For example, Tropicana’s
last campaign in Turkey showed the use of local fruits for the production of
its famous fruit juice.
6. Public
contribution is more and more required to ensure organization’s strategy is in
line with its target audience.
1960’s = consumer society, 2010’s =
caring-consumer society?
How to integrate more sustainability in our way of consuming
daily? Going on raising people’s awareness and educate people in using better
way of consuming. But time is passing and to reach a wide audience and have large
impacts, leading brands may show us the way, since their investments in
marketing and advertising are already quite significant. What better than
campaigns to communicate sustainability values and best practices? Some leading
brands already started to pave the way…
1. In 2010, Levi’s in collaboration with Procter
& Gamble made a campaign to inform customers about how to take care of
their jeans: the best way being not washing them! With cold water if necessary.
2. In 2012, Patagonia encouraged customers not to
purchase more than necessary during the holiday season with its “Don't Buy This
Jacket” campaign.
Source: http://urbantimes.co/magazine/2011/12/digging-beneath-patagonias-dont-buy-this-jacket-campaign/
3. In 2012, M&S started Shwopping, a program
inviting people to donate their clothes of any brand each and every time they
buy something new. Shwopped clothes are given to Oxfam.
Source: Campaign Türkiye
4. H&M is not only the world’s largest buyer
of organic cotton. In 2013, the second-largest clothing retailer in the world launched
a quite similar operation: “Long live fashion!”. Customers are invited to give
any clothe of any brand in any condition into an H&M store. In exchange,
they receive a 15% discount voucher on their next item purchased per bag
donated. The purpose of this operation is to reduce the amount of clothes
ending up in landfill by being recycled by H&M’s partner: I:Collect.
Source: from the packaging of a product I bought
5. In 2012, the World Bank highlighted in a
report on municipal solid waste (MSW), that the world’s cities are generating
around 1.3 billion tons of MSW a year, with nearly half of it generated by OECD
countries. Therefore retailers and food companies have a big challenge: educate
consumers to not buy excessively and create more waste. M&S took the
challenge by: (1) educating customers on how to shop better and reduce waste at
home using leftovers through animated games; (2) improving its packaging
technology so that perishable food products can be kept longer; (3) diverting
many foods from landfill; (4) decreasing prices of food products closed to be
expired; (5) donating, composting or diverting not saleable food to anaerobic
digesters for energy. Inspiring!
Agencies: a key role?
Communication
is key, interacting and collaborating with its target audience and more
generally with people, are essential to engage change towards sustainable
lifestyle. Creativity is thus a ‘MUST’ required to attract people’s attention. So
here enter major game players: agencies. Their main role is to translate the
message of companies. And if these companies want to show their commitment to
sustainability, then agencies have to find new creative ideas to communicate on
this matter. They must create authentic content, create new challenges for
people that turn sustainable actions into entertaining activities, and create new
ideas to raise more and more awareness.
This year, hopefully, we will see more brands, more
collaboration, more actions towards a common target: engaging people and make
things (really) happen sustainably.
