Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
by the consultancy firm McCann Erikson asked the simple question 'Can sustainability
sell?' The answer is yes, but it needs to be effectively promoted. Advertising and
marketing clearly influence consumer patterns linking producers with consumers, and
the advertising, marketing and PR industries are renowned for employing exceptionally
gifted creative talents. Even so, Ries and Ries (2002) suggest in
The Fall of Advertising
and the Rise of PR
that advertising is in crisis. Consumers know that advertisers are
trying to sell you something and are automatically sceptical as a result. The authors
believe that advertising has lost public credibility and that, if an organization wishes
to build a brand or spread an idea, public relations activities, third-party endorsement,
positive accounts in the press or other media, and word-of-mouth communication
are probably more effective. Advertising is best for keeping a product or service in
the public eye once it has been established.
The issue for sustainability practitioners is finding ways of harnessing advertising,
marketing and public relations talents to produce attractive and engaging ways of
encouraging people to buy sustainable products and adopt sustainable lifestyles.
Agencies like Futerra, a busy London-based communication and public relations
company, specializes in innovative and creative ways of promoting sustainable
development. Its
Communicating Sustainability
(UNEP, 2005) gives clear practical
advice and guidance on how sustainability practitioners should seek to understand
what motivates audiences, how to address them, and ways the big vision can be
turned into personally meaningful and practical messages that also inspire a response.
In recent years there has been a growing concern to integrate sustainability with
marketing (Grant, 2007, 2010; Belz and Peattie, 2012). As Franz-Martin Belz writes:
Sustainability marketing aims at creating customer value, social value and eco-
logical value. Similar to the marketing concept, sustainability marketing analyses
customer needs and wants, develops sustainable products that provide superior
value and prices and distributes and promotes them effectively to selected target
groups.
(2006: 139)
There is a growing imperative for producers to meet consumer needs sustainably,
and many consumers are increasingly exercising discretion over what and from
whom they buy. Many consumers state that they would buy green if they had
sufficient information about functionality and pricing to enable them to do so. The
growth of fair trade and organic markets is testimony to this. The United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP, 2005) argues that some of the most heavily
advertised products are often highly resource-intensive, particularly food, personal
transportation and to some extent household goods. For UNEP, sustainable lifestyle
marketing covers three aspects:
•
Responsible marketing
: procedures and management systems developed to avoid
promoting unsustainable behaviours.
•
Green marketing
: the design and promotion of goods and services with an
environmental value added, which might include improvements over the life-
cycle of a product such as environmentally friendly sourcing, clean production
process, improved impact during use, reduced packaging, recycleability, reusability
or existence of take-back schemes.
