Marketers need to bridge sustainability gaps

Marketing is trailing, rather than leading, in the sustainability effort at many companies, according to a new report which highlights significant disconnects on several levels. 

Three gaps 

In Marketing and sustainability: Closing the gaps, the World Federation of Advertisers pinpoints the following disconnects : 

• between an organisation’s efforts on sustainability and what their marketing departments are communicating;
• between consumers’ expectations of brands and what they perceive brands to be doing;
• between the acknowledged power of brands to make a difference and what they are doing to make sustainable choices easier for consumers.

Why is marketing trailing?

Hypotheses include: structural barriers, such as the lack of a chief sustainability officer; not measuring progress or not aligning metrics; the complexity of sustainability and a lack of knowledge/skills to talk about it.

What’s the solution?

The study identifies three core implications and action items:

• the need for education of marketing teams, giving them the confidence and language to speak clearly and confidently about their organisation’s sustainability efforts;
• the opportunity for behaviour change, as marketers can help consumers to buy and use more sustainably; and 
• the need for collective action, especially around developing a common language and set of metrics tied to sustainability. The WFA Planet Pledge forms part of this.

Key quote

“[Sustainability] isn’t just about convincing people to have shorter showers, eating less meat or using refills. It’s also about making sustainable choices simple for them, recognising that we haven't always made it easy for people to see both the value and the values of their chosen products” – Conny Braams, Global CMO, Unilever.

Sourced from WFA