Blog posts tagged social responsibilty

How do you communicate your green credentials?

This is part two of a series of three. Part one can be read here.

According to the experts, Egg – a branding & marketing company in the States, just 7 per cent of consumers are socially responsible to the core, but 70 per cent of the population (I’m assuming they’re talking about the population of the USA) will recycle and occasionally seek out organic food. So there’s a huge market out there for offering sustainable products. But you can’t badge your company “green” and hope that your product will walk off the shelves – there simply aren’t enough consumers that care to their core to make that happen.

No, what you need to do is engage your client with your values. And that’s why I asked you what shade of green your business is. Consumers are looking for brands with values that they identify with, plus communicate with them honestly and create transparency. And that’s why you need to put your brand values at the heart of your marketing plan. And if “green” in whatever form is a part of your brand values, then you’ll find it much more authentic to market your green credentials than if it’s a periphery activity.

If I think about brands that place green at the heart of their marketing strategy, I think of Dorset Cereals, Abel & Cole and Riverford. Their marketing communications are about so much more than say, how good the oats and raisins are in the cereal. They’re about community, sustainability and the environment. Dorset Cereals, in particular have taken their brand values much wider than food, their communication is about “simple pleasures”. They build edible playgrounds for schools and they team up with like-minded businesses who share their values.

How clever is your communication? Dorset Cereals don’t continually bang the drum that “we’re green, we’re green” – it’s implied through their activities, their copy, their packaging and their design. Is your marketing strategy as sophisticated as that?

Fiona Humberstone of Flourish