The new brands are coming with sustainable products into different segments like fashion, home decor, food, personal care, and automotive. But sustainable products are not sustainable marketing. The way marketers promote socially and environmentally responsible actions, practices, products, and brand values are called sustainable marketing. Sustainable marketing can be for a specific point of the supply chain, product, or USP.
Sustainable marketing aims to form a sustainable bond between the company and the concept of sustainability in the mind of customers.
Strategies for sustainability marketing:
Consumer-oriented marketing
When a company markets products/services or creates a marketing strategy looking at the consumer’s point of view is consumer-oriented marketing.
Uberbats get the idea by seeing a number of increasing car ownership in the city with less parking area leads to removing green spaces. Through their #ParksNotParking campaign, uberbats aim to educate and encourage citizens to choose shared transportation. Uberbats marketing director said that “Just as cricket builds bridges and helps people come closer together, we remain confident our initiative will build communities united by a vision of promoting more sustainable lifestyles.”
Customer-value marketing
Customer-value marketing is when a company puts resources into continuously marketing what its customer builds value for. As the company builds value for the customer, in turn, the customer builds value for the company.
Unilever, the FMCG major, launched ‘Love Beauty and Planet’ range of skincare products to attract millennial thoughts of brands with purpose. Piyush Jain, Global Vice President at Unilever said: “I believe that we can deliver our products by creating brands that deliver great beauty results and also respect our carbon footprint.”
Innovative marketing
The principle of innovative marketing is creating real product and marketing improvement that never stops building better ways to develop products and markets.
In 2018, Lego launched blocks made from sugarcane for positive marketing about tackling the plastic crisis. The lego made their mission to be qualitatively sustainable by 2030 and make their bricks out of something sugarcane that can grow again.
Sense of mission marketing
Sense-of-mission marketing is a strategy that defines a broad mission in teams of society or long-run consumer interests rather than the product.
Ikea unveiled their last single-use plastic straw at London’s Design Museum to inspire consumers for taking small steps that will have a positive environmental impact. Ikea wants people to stand with them for such initiative by ditching single-use plastic straws and disposables.
Societal marketing
With societal marketing, the brands adapt marketing based on the ethical and social customer wants.
Ikea has revealed two large scale replicas of the Smakryp bath boat with Creekside Education Trust. Each of the boats uses ‘Orca’ technology that allows children and their families to be captain of the boat to clear 300 tonnes of rubbish from London’s waterways. Ikea will donate the ships to the sustainable charity, Hubbub.
In UAE, McDonald’s converted used-cooking oil into biodiesel for power trucks carrying supplies from its distribution center.
The essence of marketing does not underestimate the commitment needed for sustainable initiatives. These aren’t simple ‘buzz’ or ‘viral topics’ – they are initiatives dedicated to reducing carbon footprints for better prospects for the next generation.