Marketing for sustainability

More recently, as I go for chartered status with The Chartered Institute of Marketing, I am working towards being a sustainable marketer.  It fits well with my personal values, lifestyle and ambitions. Let me explain.

Marketing has evolved at pace since the 1970s. From large scale broadcast advertising to engaging in digital conversations, the world of marketing is distinctly different to when I arrived at a London advertising agency fresh from university over 20 years ago.

Direct marketing, sensible not sexy

Back then, direct marketing was the thing.  Direct response advertising, or below the line advertising, while nowhere near as sexy as above the line, pre-empted the shift to data-driven, customer focused marketing.

While the big advertisers continued pointing their budgets at TV, bus backs, radio and press, our above the line counterparts propping up bars in Soho with their clients on a Friday afternoon, we worked late into the night on detailed pitches in an attempt to educate clients that direct response advertising was the sensible thing to do. 

Targeted marketing reduces waste

Through direct marketing, clients could be more targeted in their approach.  Convey the right messages to the right audiences and reduce waste - of time, money and breath. Clients could begin to know their audiences by virtue of personal data – names, addresses and telephone numbers. They could build a picture their customers using demographics and behavioural data.  They could create basic personas.

I remember vividly the project I led when one client decided to ditch their above the line marketing altogether and divert spend solely to direct marketing.  Nervous as I stepped off the train at Canary Wharf to start the hand-over process.  Worried that the incumbent agency would try to trip me up. But all worry fell away when the Group Account Director confessed that they saw it coming.  That direct marketing was the future.

Soon clients began so understand the importance of customer insights in order to segment their audiences and speak to their potential and existing customers in a more personal way. Then came digital marketing, as digital transformation took businesses by storm, and the discipline of marketing took on a new direction.

Digital marketing helps build communities

Alongside the regular campaign cadence, we now communicate with our audiences in real time on social media, wading the tide of diminishing customer trust in wave of influencer marketing and paid collaborations.  Clients no longer push products, they create communities.  They converse with their public, invite communication and strive for connection.  In a world of instant gratification and online consumerism, loyalty is low and customer life-time values are ever harder to calibrate.

Overlay that with the climate emergency and now messages of sustainability are a compelling way of capturing attention and communicating with today’s discerning digital natives.

Can marketing save the planet?

The rise of purpose led business is not only fundamental to the future of our planet, but to the success of the businesses themselves. Sight of the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) is now a necessity, not a marketing tool, as today’s conscious consumers do their research, see through the greenwash and vote with their pocket.

"What is going to solve the problem is when small businesses lead the way in culture change, so it becomes normal to do the things that dramatically change the carbon equation."

Seth Godin

So, while marketing itself cannot save the planet us marketers can help support the planet if we selectively choose to work with and support those organisations that can.

Marketing to support a sustainable world

So I’m not talking about sustainable marketing in the sense that marketers need to lead with sustainable messaging, I mean sustainable marketing in the sense of choosing to work with organisations that take their position on the planet seriously, that really do give a damn about the communities that they serve and go about it in a way that is driven by their sustainability ambitions. 

Marketing support for organisations that are purpose driven, sustainability focused and who have a real drive and determination to mitigate climate change in both their product or service and in their business practice.