Several weeks ago, I attended an EpE conference about the environment in the communication to consumers. This led me to write a series of three articles sharing some of the ideas I find important to communicate without falling into the hazardous greenwashing sink.
Here is part one on how to initiate a communication program based on the environment:
Bring all your stakeholders on board
Becoming more environmentally friendly starts by integrating environmental issues into the company’s strategy and governance. The example of Kering with its Environmental P&L illustrates the importance the group grants to the environment in its governance up to indexing bonuses to sustainable development goals.
So, clearly, the environment is not only a topic for marketing communication managers. It usually involves a good coordination of all the functions in a corporation in order to modify your offer or your approach. But you also need to get the input, buy-in and help of external stakeholders in your value chain and more generally from your ecosystem to establish and support your communication.
For everybody to row in the same direction, working groups,internal trainings and communication are necessary as well as the assistance of external consultants that is recommended to facilitate the process (which pleases me intensely:).
Be transparent
A good starting point to your communication is to simply be transparent about the current environmental features of your offering. You may not realize it but you very often have some components in your offer that are already environmentally friendly. For instance, I remember the case of a company in the industrial equipment business that had designed a machine using much less water than its competitors. The company was not communicating on this point as it did not seem critical. However, by highlighting the reduction of water use in its communication, the machine rapidly found numerous customers, whereas it had difficulty in finding buyers previously.
So, review all the steps of the life cycle using the famous 4 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Repair and Recycle). Some companies will be more advanced in cleaner manufacturing processes, others will have a nice track record at packaging reduction or responsible sourcing of raw materials. On this basis, you can already start communicating. But above all, do not communicate before you actually have gathered the elements or implemented the innovations that support what you say.
Moving forward, you can start measuring the environmental footprint of one range or of all your products and use it as a differentiating point in your communication.
In the end, you can opt for a more radical approach by modifying your product or service offer to make it more environmentally friendly and communicate about this change. This is the option that SEB, a French small appliances manufacturer, decided to take, making all its products fully repairable up to 10 years after purchase.
Overall, for a communication strategy about the environment to be impactful, it is important to define a clear, consistent and sustainable message, that is strong enough to stand long term. That way, your products will enter your customers’ decision process allowing them to consider, evaluate, purchase and eventually advocate your offer.
In the next article, we will analyze the type of content to use in a communication about the environment, stay tuned!
Coming soon: Far from greenwashing: communicate, yes, but about what?
| WHY COMMUNICATE ON THE ENVIRONMENT? Overall, 77% respondents in France(1), 71% in the UK(2) and 76% in the US(3) reported some level of concern about climate change in different opinion surveys conducted in the past few years. From those who say they worry “a great deal” about global warming to those who worry “a fair amount”, an increasing amount around the world are willing to transform society by consuming more environmentally friendly and healthier products. To be fair, consumers are first thinking at their own health before expanding their concerns to the health of the Planet. Nevertheless, companies that want to be successful in the future, whether in the FMCG or BtB markets, have no choice, they must communicate on how they contribute to protect the environment. (1) Havas-Ipsos 2015 – (2)BEIS 2017 – (3) Gallup 2017 |
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