I like to start every conversation about branding with a quote by the author of the famous book, ‘How to make friends and influence people’, Dale Carnegie. He says when dealing with people; remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion. ” This is because the decisions made by consumers about brands are not rational but emotional. The question, therefore that many marketers should be concerned with today is how to create strong emotional connections that turn products into brands.
Wikipedia defines sustainability brands as products and services that are branded to signify a special added value in terms of environmental and social benefits to the customer and thus enable the differentiation from competitors. Sustainability branding emphasizes the notion of brands, which have built their brand image upon sustainable business practices that consumers value. According to a recent consumer marketing study by Edelman, a global PR firm, 92% of people want to buy, use, recommend, and support brands that share their values. These values could be defined as, among others, health and safety issues resulting from direct or indirect product use as well as the conditions under which a particular product is produced and the physical protection and well being of people at work i.e. employees as well as workers within the supply chains. All these are important indicators of sustainability brands and sustainability marketing in general, which adheres to the triple bottom line of environmental, social, and financial sustainability.
With the increasing concerns around population and consumption growth, resource depletion, water shortages, and climate change; the importance of sustainability marketing cannot be overemphasized. Sustainable brands should offer an improved social and ecological performance during the whole product or service lifecycle and at the same time, they have to satisfy consumer needs and wants. Many global companies are already involved in building sustainable brands. P&G began looking at the total energy of all its product lines, quantifying the total energy that is involved with the use of the products. The company found that P&G’s main environmental footprint when its products are used, at a whopping 80 percent, was the energy used to heat water for laundry. With that in mind, the company invested in two years of development to create Tide Coldwater, designed specifically to allow users to wash in cold water without a tradeoff in performance. P&G hopes to convert 70% of all washing machine loads to cold water by 2020. Closer home, Unilever South Africa, through its Sunlight brand, is installing solar-powered water heaters to low-income homes in Durban in a bid to reduce energy consumption, promote renewable energy and provide a reliable source of hot water for households.
Bob Collymore, chief executive officer of Kenya’s largest mobile operator, and board member of the UN Global Compact stresses the need for sustainability to become a standard practice in the business environment. He believes that with government support, sustainability will ensure a thriving economy as businesses can no longer thrive without due consideration of issues such as governance and values. Local companies such as Imperial Bank, who recently became members of the UN Global Compact, are already embracing sustainability branding.
The problem, however, that companies and marketers face is to find better ways of bringing sustainability to life for consumers in ways that will resonate with them. Research firm Millward Brown’s Chief Global Analyst, Nigel Hollis writes of his findings on How Strong Brands Can Lead to a More Sustainable Future by stating that sustainability needs to be ingrained to businesses and brands. The more people trust a brand, the more likely they are to be inspired to action by it. A business that has sustainability cast into its brand is in the best position to motivate people to buy greener and more sustainable products. Connections are cultivated through the passion points of consumers. A good example of this is the Pampers brand. There is good reason to believe that Pampers could inspire people to more sustainable behavior because the brand already inspires them to action in another arena. Catherine, a blogger at Alpha Mom, reports on Pampers’ mission to eradicate neonatal tetanus. The Pampers/UNICEF “1 Pack = 1 Vaccine” program has helped provide more than 100 million vaccines that protect moms and babies in developing countries from maternal and neonatal tetanus. Catherine was so inspired by this program that she offered to personally match other people’s donations to the tune of $500. This is the sort of passion that a strong brand can inspire when it takes a stand on something.
Sustainability branding is more effective as a two-way conversation, rather than a one-way announcement. Inviting consumers to enter into the dialogue about the sustainability process strengthens the brand-consumer relationship. The task that marketers face is telling brand stories that are less about product features and benefits and more but more about people’s passions. This can be accomplished by continuing to create strong emotional connections to brands. Brand love comes from a deeper and long-lasting connection to a brand. Brands that inspire brand love are in a good position to adopt a true sustainability agenda and have a positive impact. There is therefore a big opportunity for brands that are household names in Kenya to address sustainability offering not only the opportunity for cost savings today, but also the possibility of creating new value in the future.
