Hello, OptiMIST People!
Back at it again with KaMIST! Your weekly dose of insights into the latest marketing trends. In this week’s KaMIST we’ll dive into marketing in a sustainable world.
Do you think today’s marketing is compatible with a sustainable future?
As we all know today, many brands have taken a big step in becoming more sustainable, especially in their production process. With more companies starting to swap their old nonrenewable and non-eco-friendly materials for recycled and renewable materials. However, a number of marketing concepts many companies use are drifting us further from the noble goal brands are striving to achieve in the first place.
The global Chief Marketing Officer of Dole Sunshine Company, Rupen Desai, argues that many marketing strategies such as premiumization, upsizing, mass consumption, and profit above all else are “incompatible” with a sustainable future. He explains how premiumization, which often means using more packaging to charge higher prices to consumers, and upsizing, a marketing tactic to make consumers feel like they’re getting a good deal by encouraging people to buy more products in larger serves, are both damaging for the planet and the company’s sustainability efforts itself.
Desai stated that 21st century marketing gives meaning to desire, gives wants, and creates needs. An example of this is how a pair of jeans can be a symbol of liberation, the newest phone model can help you raise your status. It’s almost telling the world that to be happy, you need to consume more.
Taide Guajardo, Brand Senior Vice President Europe from P&G, has a different opinion. According to him, brands have made their marketing suitable for a sustainable world. P&G has made significant strides in its supply chain and operations which is reflected in its business marketing activities. P&G together with National Geographic Creative Works once launched a campaign to lower the temperature of washing water to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With communications and campaigns, marketing has an ‘exceptional power’ in the modern and sustainable business world.
This statement was again challenged by Desai by looking at the business reality, which turns out that we have not been able to answer all the challenges now. The ‘exceptional power’ of modern and sustainable business will emerge when business is closer to people, planet, and prosperity that depend on each other. Ultimately, the majority of marketers agree that today’s marketing is incompatible with a sustainable future.
What do you think? Does today’s marketing have the ‘exceptional power’ to actualize marketing in a sustainable world?
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