Our friend Peter Salmon of
Moxie Design is involved both here in New Zealand and internationally in shaping “green” and “sustainable” brands. Recently, while attending the
Sustainable Brands ’09 conference in Monterrey California, he became acquainted with Duke Stump of
The NorthStar Manifesto. Thanks to Peter and Duke, a crowd of Auckland professionals interested in brand identity got to hear an interesting discourse on the future of companies and the products they offer.
According to Duke Stump, who had worked previously with Nike and
Seventh Generation in the U.S. before setting out on his own, green is (surprise) getting overused to the point of greenwash. The word sustainable has likewise lost much if any meaning it might have had previously. So how is a company interested in “doing the right thing” to market themselves?
Good question. According to Duke, it is about developing a better, more meaningful brand. A brand with less hype and more action; less words and more proof. The challenge over recent years has been how to get beyond the gloom and doom brought on by legitimate environmental/social concerns, and instead focus on the inspirational and innovative spirit that will solve these concerns. It breaks down to inspiration vs. desperation, and has been a challenge for people working in this industry space to get their heads around.
It turns out we need to lose our intoxication with “green”, not so much in its essence, but in its usage. Duke advises focusing less on the terminology and more on the effects of what brands are trying to achieve.
How can an imperfect company change? How do they tell the story of their transformation? How do they seek the insight of their customers and stakeholders through that process? How can positive actions and negative setbacks be balanced, put in context, acknowledged openly, and used to help focus the development of a brand?
These are all thoughts on the minds of people working in the space. The answers of those questions and their outcomes are what should be informing the brand strategy. It is about better, smarter, more efficient, naturally inspired, honest, forward thinking, realistic solutions, and creating a world of abundance.
It means putting old paradigms aside once and for all and focusing on innovation. As preeminent blogger Seth Goddin put it, “Safe is risky.” In our era, we have no room to rest on rotting laurels hoping issues will just disappear.
As KoAnn Skrzyniarz of Sustainable Life Media (the organiser of Sustainable Brands ’09) put it, we are amidst an enormous shift, the largest since the Industrial Revolution, one that will shake out many businesses. Indeed, with the likes of GM on the ropes, a pretty clear future is starting to emerge. Start taking climate change, increased energy costs, resource depletion, and social issues seriously. Ignore these issues and history will deal to you accordingly.
But what about those who say that, especially during a recession, “green” costs money and businesses need to focus on tightening the belt? From
Andrew Winston, author of
From Green to Gold, now is the time to be innovating. By getting leaner and smarter, companies not only make environmental gains, but also save economically. Everything costs money, and so called green initiatives should not be judged merely on an upfront cost basis. Innovate, find efficiencies, cut waste, save money.
He advocates taking operational savings and plowing it into further innovation and people in a virtuous cycle. In a video streamed at the Auckland event, Andrew said that many international companies including Starbucks are throwing the old rule book out the window. And why not… it’s a recession, what better time is there to change ways then when you’re at rock bottom?
Duke’s talk echoed many of those same sentiments. He advocates that business strategy and marketing should be focused on optimizing resonance and relevance of those you serve. It’s not about creating a “good thing” or “stuff” but rather creating a feeling or relationship with the audience you have. This is enabled by the people you have working for you, by the company culture created by those people, and the outcomes of that culture—it’s products and services.
Duke cites that more and more, especially younger audiences who have witnessed unparalled political and corporate shenanigans are on a search for meaning: when they shop, when they work, when they play. As a result, business too has to shift more towards offering something meaningful, elements that are values lead that people can latch on to.
There’s no room for fudging and this critical audience will call out anything that isn’t authentic or dishonest (e.g. greenwash and so called “astroturfing” initiatives meant to make a company look green when in fact it is trying to do something underhanded). Brands of the future will be defined by their attentiveness to this trend and offer something real, honest, and transparent. As Duke put it, “People don’t want perfection; people want honesty.”
The critical message driven home by the talk was to rethink, reframe, and redesign not only our society and our notion of business, but also this thing called sustainability that we’ve grown so accustomed to referring to. Taking a holistic view of what your brand is and what it offers is useful because reputation accounts for 60% of the brand’s value. In this context, and with the high visibility the internet provides, everything matters. Just ask the folks at Dominoes Pizza.