The easy slide from sustainability pioneer to eco laggard
Keeping pace with the sustainability agenda, let alone keeping ahead, is a tough challenge for many businesses. Yesterday’s pioneering practices become today’s hygiene factors within what seems like the blink of an eye. So what themes are emerging that brands need to watch for and act on?
The first is that the pace setters are no longer just thinking ‘do no harm’ and are now saying ‘go for growth’. Brand leaders are shifting their views on targets from CO2, water and waste reduction to growth and revenue opportunities. P&G, Dupont and Philips all have sales or revenue targets from sustainable products and they regard them as mainstream, not niche. No longer confined to small segments, sustainability now has traction across the marketplace, offering major opportunities.
The whole vocabulary for thinking about sustainability is changing. The old lexicon of ‘reduce, minimise, optimise’ and the focus on cost saving and risk reduction’ is being replaced. Now it’s about positive impact and cradle to cradle design.
They leaders regard sustainability not as an adjunct to, but an integrated component of the brand. They are delivering their corporate sustainability commitments through products, like Unilever, or bundling up activities to fashion a cogent and cohesive sustainability story, faithful to their brand positioning, like IBM’s Smarter Planet.
New global power brands are being formed. Despite the recession, the clean-tech revolution continues apace and is expected to rival the digital revolution at the turn of the millennium. In the near future, a clean tech brand of the scale and significance of Google in the digital world, will emerge. Success will not just be about superior technology and a winning business model, but a smart eye for communication and customer connection.
Finally, sustainability is giving a fundamental shake up to the way companies look at their business models. If profits depend on increased use of resources and product obsolescence or waste, then companies are going to need to think again. Creating economic value has to go hand-in-hand with creating value for society, which means new models of enterprise. Pioneers like Grameen Danone are helping shape them. A partnership between Danone and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yumus’ Grameen Bank, this is a joint venture providing low cost, highly nutritious, low impact dairy product for the Bangladeshi market, produced locally and distributed through local channels. Rumour has it, these are the most sought after jobs in Danone and it has created a new vision for how business can be done. How long before it is one of many?
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