Can good marketing make the world more sustainable?

Last week, General Mills announced its intention to purchase the purpose-driven, organic brand Annie’s, a food company rooted in sustainable business practices. This is the latest announcement from a major company that shows moves towards sustainability – and perhaps an unexpected one, given that Annie’s started out in farmer’s markets.

By its very nature, marketing is constantly in a state of flux, finding new ways to sell, package and communicate. But these things tend to exist at the micro level: product by product, brand by brand, company by company.

In a broader sense, we begin to see how marketing needs more than just a makeover – the concept of which is rather transient and superficial – because the requirement is much more radical. Marketing has done a good job of reinventing itself, but it is still locked into a way of working that has failed to keep up with advances in technology, advances that have radically shifted the relationship between brands and consumers.

Marketing needs change, and two changes in particular if it is to be effective:

1. Structural transformation – to cope with technological advances that have radically shifted the relationship between brands and consumers.
2. Sense of purpose – and to embrace engagement through marketing in order to evolve its relationship with consumer audiences. In doing so, brands may find that they have the sufficient influence to change consumer behaviour and have a positive impact in areas such as sustainability.

Structural change

The agency model is built to make things, and that sort of “muscle memory” can be compounded by the way client teams brief their agency roster. For years (decades even) that proposition was a simple one, in that they knew if they made a TV spot and some print they’d be OK.

Alberto Brea recently argued that agencies should concentrate on “brand experience rather than channel or capability expertise”.  And Adam Ferrier presents a strong argument in The Advertising Effect: How to Change Behaviour – which is that part of the problem is our need to persuade our audience rather than change the way they behave.

A simple fix is to stop asking “what can we make?” and instead figure out where do we need to engage our consumer audience to change their behaviour and how does the brand need to behave as a result?

Purposeful marketing

This possible area of change has been embraced by a few marketers who understand that the products and services they offer to consumer audiences are sometimes no longer enough, and that brand engagement based on purposeful behavior – activity that encourages moves towards sustainability or well-being – has traction beyond mere promotion.

It seems simple, but brands that stand for more than just their place in the aisle stand for more in the hearts and minds of consumers.

Of the consumers in a recent Corporate Executive Board study on brand loyalty, who said they have a brand relationship, 64% cited shared values as the primary reason for that loyalty. Meanwhile, a recent Millward Brown study for the World Economic Forum noted that while most marketers are aware of their company agendas on (for example) sustainability, the awareness rarely translates into meaningful action. This is because brand managers don’t feel empowered to prioritize sustainable strategies. Of the brand managers surveyed, 54% felt that barriers exist in prioritizing sustainability. Among them, 25% feel there is no incentive to incorporate sustainable strategies (Engaging Tomorrow’s Consumer, 2012).

At Effie Worldwide, we are aware of the need to promote and stimulate the creation of effective purposeful marketing. Recently we were proud to announce a collaboration with the Forum to introduce the Positive Change Effies. This month, we are launching two category competitions, one in Europe and one in North America. The Positive Change Effie Awards will celebrate brands that shift consumer behaviour towards sustainability.

So what else can we do?

The recent success of the ALS ice bucket challenge is the ultimate manifestation of both points: it broke the mold of how we need to structure our communications – and it had bucketfuls of purpose (pun intended)!

A lot has been written about this marketing phenomenon, but a recent article by Rosie Yakob stands out by providing clear lessons that marketers can learn from the ALS challenge; lessons that show how companies can break their own muscle memory and be purposeful in their marketing.

Yakob cites 10 reasons why the campaign was effective, but they can be boiled down to two key ways in which the campaign changed its ways:

1. Make it easy for yourself and for others. The beauty of the ice bucket challenge is that it kept the participation barrier low for both participants and marketers.

• For the consumer audience, there was almost no barrier to entry as they were motivated by a simple, specific and urgent call to action.
• Many marketers worry that they will never be able to change because they find it difficult to come up with new content and breakthrough ideas. The ice bucket challenge demonstrates that originality is a myth. Brands can join existing conversations; they don’t always needs to start their own

2. Don’t be precious – just do it! The ice bucket challenge proved that if content is short, digestible and entertaining, it doesn’t have to be branded to be successful. Many marketers approach engagement communications from a perspective of “Where does my logo go and is it big enough?” and “Is our core messaging front and centre?” Again, the beauty of the ice bucket challenge is that it wasn’t branded, although the ALS did make it ownable. And, despite not being driven by a specific call for donations, the donations came rolling in.

The lessons to be learned for anyone interested in achieving effective marketing communications are clear: here is a success story that overcame traditional muscle memory and won. It gave marketing more than a makeover and gave us all a roadmap for engaging with our audiences in a new, effective way – simply by changing their behaviour.

Author: Neal Davies is the president and CEO at Effie Worldwide, Inc, overseeing the Effie Effectiveness Index and 40+ Effie Awards programmes around the globe.

The Positive Change Effie Award, a collaboration of the World Economic Forum and Effie Worldwide, has opened its inaugural Call for Entries in North America and Europe. The Positive Change Effie Award celebrates brands that shift consumer behaviour towards sustainability. Entry deadlines: December 4, 2014 – January 12, 2015. For more information, click here.

Image: A meteor streaks across the sky during the Perseid meteor shower at a windmill farm near Bogdanci, south of Skopje, in the early morning August 13, 2014. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski