Design Your Dream: Innovative Solutions for Every Home
The 4 best sustainable marketing challenges
From Greenwashing's debt to prices from hurdles, joint challenges for sustainable marketing organizations force their environmental claims to prove their environmental claims and at the same time maintain a competitive advantage.
As many consumers expect brands to use environmental protection and social justice, many organizations have used sustainable marketing strategies. For example, marketers could promote the use of renewable energies, recycling programs or partnerships of their brands with local organizations. Although this strategy can help brands to combine with environmentally friendly and socially conscious consumers – especially millennials and generation z -, challenges are introduced to marketing plans.
Marketers should understand the most important sustainable marketing challenges that greenwashing and bluewashing, measurement, pricing and quality as well as greenhushing are.
1. Greenwashing and Bluewashing
Sustainable marketing can lead to reputation damage if marketers assert false claims on the effects of their organizations on the environment or society. Wrong environmental claims are known as Greenwashing. Wrong claims about the effects of organizations on social problems are called Bluewashing – A term that plays on Greenwashing and refers to the blue colors of the United Nations flag.
Modern consumers have become suspicious of the green and bluewashing and quickly call them out.
Modern consumers have become suspicious of the green and bluewashing and quickly call them out. These accusations can lead to legal punishments such as multi-million dollar fines and bad press, including viral social media contributions that represent organizations in a negative light.
Greenwashing and Bluewashing can be intended. For example, Volkswagen once created and installed software to cheat on the US federal emission tests. But they can also be unintentional.
For example, a fictitious beverage report promotes its products as plastic -free after it has been converted into biplastic bottles on a vegetable basis. Despite the company's honest attempt to make its products more sustainably, the marketing team forgets to explain the bottle cap, which is still made from conventional plastic. Although this is less malicious than the Volkswagen example, this is also Greenwashing.
To help companies, to make sustainable marketing claims responsible, marketers can comply with the following principles:
Reliability. Support claims with documented, scientifically solid proofs.
Relevance. Promotion of important sustainability improvements instead of emphasizing smaller ones. For example, an oil company should not create a green marketing campaign for the use of energy -efficient devices in its offices.
Clarity. Avoid vague terms and use a precise language that consumers can understand. Instead of saying environmentally friendly, for example with 80% recycled materials.
Transparency. Open the production methods, the information and restrictions on the supply chain. For example, a brand for personal hygiene customers should know whether recycling options for your shampoo bottles are only available in certain regions.
Accessibility. Create important sustainability information, e.g. B. Details on CO2 footprint or the procurement methods of a product that are easily available at the time of purchase.
Consumers want companies to support sustainability claims with data, but they often have difficulty measuring this data due to their complexity. Organizations influence the environment and society in a complex way, including direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (THG), energy and water consumption as well as waste – all that should follow brands if they want to establish their claims.
THG emissions. Organizations that burn fossil fuels to drive offices and produce products2) and methane in the air. Brands that want to promote low or reduced greenhouse gas emissions in their products and operations must measure their area 1, the scope 2 and – depending on their size and geographical location – scope 3 emissions.
Scope 1 includes direct emissions, such as B. those of company vehicles and manufacturing processes. SCOPE 2 includes indirect emissions made from bought electricity, heat and cooling. The emissions of areas 3 include all other emissions in the value chain of the organization – from upstream activities such as the procurement of raw materials to downstream activities such as waste disposal. This scope requires advanced calculations, so that many regulatory authorities do not request that companies report them to report or limit reporting to large companies.
Brands typically measure CO2 Emission reductions of the kilotons. Auditators of third-party providers and carbon accounting tools can help you to track emissions closely.
Energy and water consumption. Organizations consume energy in various forms, such as natural gas and electricity, to supply their operations with electricity. You can also consume water for cooling systems, product productions and toilet farms.
In order to measure the use of these resources, companies can implement energy management software, audits from third-party providers and intelligent measuring devices that pursue energy or water consumption in real time. As a rule, companies measure the energy consumption in kilowatts per hour and water consumption in cubic meters or liters.
Waste. Companies can create a lot of waste, including office materials and dangerous by -products from manufacturing. In order to support claims to reduce waste, companies can work together with third-party auditors and implement waste management monitors and tracking tools. Regulatory authorities and examiners usually measure waste by weight, e.g. B. tons or kilograms.
3. Pricing and quality
Due to the materials, processes and certifications you need, sustainable products usually cost more production than other products. As a result, many brands pass on the additional costs to the consumer, which makes pricing less competitive.
In order to avoid extremely expensive products and services, companies can take the following best practices into account:
Buy resources directly from manufacturers.
Buy in large quantities.
Implement energy -efficient technology and devices for long -term savings.
Limit the overhead costs such as business trips and large office space.
Offer sustainable products in different price levels, not just at luxurious pricing.
Take into account that sustainably associated loans that offer cheap terms for organizations that meet certain criteria, such as: B. Investments for renewable energies.
Even if companies implement these practices, their products can still cost more than the offers of their competitors. In this case, marketer campaigns can concentrate on distinguishing features such as superior product quality or permanent potential.
In addition, you can use social media and influencer marketing strategies to clarify consumers about the environmental or social difference features of your company. These strategies can create brand loyalty in which consumers are willing to pay a brand that shares their values of premium prices.
4. Greenhushing
Greenhushing is calm about sustainability when marketing teams are being called for Greenwashing. This practice has become more and more common because Greenwashing and regulatory examination increase allies. Many CEOs and Chief Marketing Officers fear setbacks if they do not achieve their sustainability goals or accidentally use the false terminology in campaigns.
Greenhushing can reduce a certain risk, but it represents the organizations for those who promote their sustainability initiatives more effectively. Consumers prefer brands that correspond to their values, and it can be disadvantageous to hide the efforts to combat climate change or social injustice.
In order to overcome Greenhushing, marketing teams with legal and sustainability professionals can work together in their organizations in order to create sustainable marketing -best practices and guidelines. These guidelines may be that you start with small goals, collect empirical data to your sustainability initiatives, avoid vague terminology and add open mistakes.
Tim Murphy is a site editor of the Searchcustomer Experience and SearchContentmanagement -website of ITTARGET.
