 Hello, good afternoon. My name is Judith Mason and I'd like to welcome you to today's webinar Express. Sustainability, is it time for marketing to grow a conscience? Organised by CIM Midlands. Before we get started, I'd just like to go over a few things so you know how the event will work and how to participate. The presentation will last for approximately 30 to 35 minutes, followed by a short 10 minute Q&A session. You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the Ask a Question chat box in the Q&A panel, which you'll see on the right-hand side of your screen if watching on a laptop, or across the top if you're watching on a tablet or smartphone. You can send in your question at any time during the presentation, and we'll attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end. If you want to share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag CIMEvents, the webinar is being recorded and we'll share the link to the recording with you over the next few days. And finally, you'll also be emailed a short feedback survey after the event, which we'd love you to complete. It'll only take a few minutes and all survey responses are anonymous, so please do let us know your thoughts. So I'd now like to hand you over to Sarah Duncan, who is our guest speaker today. Thank you, Judith. Hello and welcome to the webinar today, which, as Judith just said, is sustainability. Is it time for marketing to grow a conscience? I'm a Sustainable Business Development and Ethical Marketing Consultant and also an expert advice trainer. I'm the author of the Ethical Business Book, which was printed in 2019, and I'm delighted to say was won a commendation in this year's Business Book Awards. It's a fast moving topic and I'm actually in the process now of updating and adding whole new material to the book. Talking of fast moving, this is an express session today, so we don't have much time and I'm going to pack quite a lot in. Over the next 30 minutes, I'm going to look at climate versus COVID crisis, why bother being better, the role of marketing, the power of purpose, challenging the brief, paying it forward and sustainability in action. What do we mean when we talk about ethics and sustainability? Now, that might seem like quite a straightforward question, but actually, I think things have changed quite a lot over the last couple of years. If you go back to 2019, a lot of the conversations I was having, particularly in the boardroom, were all around the climate crisis and the spotlight was very much on environmental issues. We had the likes of Greta Dunberg, Extinction Rebellion, Pushing the Cause and campaigns like War on Plastics. People were talking about carbon footprints, carbon neutrality, reaching net zero. And in terms of businesses, it was those businesses that were seen to be trashing the planet that were being exposed and vilified for that behavior. But if we fast forward to now, we have the COVID crisis. And one of the things that's done is somewhat shift the spotlight from just the environmental stuff to the importance of the societal stuff. We have a newfound appreciation for our key workers in the NHS. And we've seen governments able to suddenly do things for humanity that they weren't necessarily racing to do in the past. For example, the Everyone In program in London, which tackled homeless people during the pandemic, certainly the early part of it. And we've had this new focus on community. But it's also exposed a big area of inequality in the world. We've seen the Black Lives movement come to the fore. And we've also realized that the pandemic has had a much greater effect on those people in poorer scenarios. So from a business point of view, that shift, if you like, has gone from businesses being vilified for how they treat the planet to businesses not doing right by their people being exposed as the villain. But what it has done is it's helped us, I think, all understand this interconnection between the planet, the environment, people and society. And that one doesn't work without the other. He puts it brilliantly. He's written a book by Gatenborough in his recent book, A Life on Our Planet, which I really recommend, by the way. He says, we often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is we must make sustainable changes to save ourselves. Whether without us, the wild will return. In other words, the planet has been around for a long time. We're actually a really quite immature species. We may damage the planet to the extent that we can't safely inhabit it, but the planet will go on. So I think sometimes the conversation here, we've forgotten that we need the planet for us to be able to be safe and to thrive in the future. This is another great look at it from a lady called Christiana Figueres, who's the author of The Future We Choose by the former UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change. And she very rightly looks at it and that we're facing two world health issues. We've got COVID-19, which is an acute condition, hence it's getting so much attention at the moment. But we mustn't forget that we've got the climate crisis, which is an underlying chronic condition. It's not going away. It's really important for businesses to be treating both of those and not lose sight of one or the other. One of the best areas that I always fall back on when it comes to this area of sustainability and understanding this connection between people and the planet is the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals. I could talk about this for hours. I don't have time today, but these are the goals that the United Nations Member States adopted in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. And the interesting point here is that they're not just about climate action, life on land or below water, but they're also about people's right to quality education, gender equality, zero hunger. So where do we go from here? Well, we have an issue with business, with this embedded psychology around growth and short termism. We know from businesses that we're constantly saying, how can we grow next year? How can we do more? How can we sell more? But equally, we have this short termism with quarterly reporting. And those are those things could be said to be the enemy of sustainability. So there's a real challenge there. Having said that, there's a lot of talk now about green recovery. And this is how to recover from the pandemic in a responsible way. Just this week, we've seen the UK government pledging 12 billion for their green industrial revolution plan, which includes boosting UK manufacturing of electric vehicles, becoming a world leader in carbon capture and storage technology. And the goal for the city of London to become the global centre for green finance. We've also seen Prince William and David Attenborough come together with the EarthShop Prize, which is encouraging people to innovate in the area in a sort of entrepreneurial way. 50 million has been offered to support 50 environmental projects around the world over the next 10 years. So there is certainly a drive for things to be to be better in the future. Why are we bothering to be better? Why should a business want to become more ethical and sustainable? Well, to set the scene here, humanity currently uses the equivalent of 1.6 planets to provide the resources necessary to produce goods and absorb waste from humans. And that's set to increase. So, as brilliantly put in Paul Gilding's TED Talk, The Earth is Full, infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is unsustainable. We are living beyond our means. And I'm sure many of you will have seen things like World Overshoot Day, which uses the same calibrations from the global footprint network and says that this year it was August. By August, we have used up all the resources on the planet. Anything after that, we're kind of in the red. So when asking businesses why they should be better, the answer should be because they know they're potentially depleting natural resources or encouraging over the consumption, party even to exploitation of people and contributing to that whole area of inequality. But let's be honest, that's not the case with many businesses. There are some businesses, don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic startups that have been built around really strong moral principles. And there are bigger businesses now that are being driven, great changes is being driven through really enlightened CEOs. But a lot of the businesses I talk to, they're doing what businesses do and that's react to market forces. And it's these market forces that I find really interesting and they're really compelling. There is a rise in more conscious consumers and we'll be talking a lot more about that in a moment. But also we're seeing employees being more attracted to and committed to companies perceived as having a higher moral purpose, standing for something beyond just making a stack of cash. And good businesses tend to keep good company. So we're seeing like-minded companies working together, which is great from a business-to-business point of view. There are cost savings to be had by cutting out inefficiencies. And then a really interesting area of managing risk, with as governments step up to those responsibilities that they've promised through the sustainable development goals, we will be seeing or should be seeing good behavior being incentivized and poor behavior being penalized. So by getting our house in order now we're potentially stealing a march on future legislation. And then there's the fun bit, which is improved marketing. What comes with that authentic compelling and engaging marketing that comes with that? Now, one thing I should say is I'm not against business at all. I help businesses. I help businesses, but hopefully do well by doing good. For me, profit is not in itself a bad thing. Businesses need to be commercially viable. There's a great quote, it's hard to be green if you're in the red. So it's not about profit being bad, it's how you make the profit and what you do with it that matters. And here's something that probably many of you have seen. It's a structure called the triple bottom line or the three P's. Again, I could talk about this for for hours, but I'm going to skip through it here. The most important thing here is it's a business model that prioritizes healthy profits, but also by maintaining healthy people and a healthy planet and balancing those three things and encouraging businesses to set really clear and tangible goals for their social responsibility, environmental responsibility and their economic responsibility. And the key thing there is particularly when it comes to the non financial reporting area which is not as established as financial reporting, but there are tangible goals for serving society and preserving the planet. But we're here today to talk about marketing particularly and is it time for marketing to grow a conscience. Okay, so brace yourself. This is a quote from a book called Good is the New Call. Marketers have helped to create a culture of materialistic excess has led to a cancer of overconsumption. And even today, marketers are all too often guilty of greenwashing or brandwashing. Marketing their brands and corporations as paragons of virtue while ignoring insidious practices and reprehensible behavior behind the scenes. Ouch. I first read that and it really resonated with me because as someone who's been in marketing for most of my career it did make me question whether I was indeed a super villain and how in my role as marketing I could have a more positive impact because I think there has been times in my career where I have been a bit of a super villain as well as being a superhero as well and I certainly wanted to encourage marketing to take on the role of more of the superhero. As C.S. Lewis says you can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the end. This comes from a book called Authentic Marketing by Larry Webber and it takes us on a little history trip back to the 1860s through to the 1920s the production era where companies essentially pushed products at people believing that if they developed a quality product it would sell and by and large it did. If we then look at the 1920s to 40s we saw supply often exceeding demand and this meant that companies had to turn up the volume on the hard sell. We then enter arguably the more sophisticated marketing era in the mid 20th century and this is where there was a shift from the needs of the seller to the needs of the buyer and we saw broadcast advertising emerging and giving companies new ways of capturing attention to interrupt and to manipulate but we also saw this being done way more creatively. Then as you evolve into the mid 1990s we had a recognition that acquiring new customers was more expensive than keeping current ones and so the marketing began to value the role of relationships and brand loyalty. We started using data for a lot more and became way more sophisticated with audience segmentation and then of course the internet came along and social media changed everything the power shifted firmly into the hands of the consumer and they now had the strongest and most important voice in the conversation so it's all about engagement. In his book he suggests that we now are evolving into a new age the age of authentic marketing and as he says he believes the missing critical piece is moral purpose because this has the potential to propel companies by adding values and ethical impact customers crave and demand so it's responding to that rise in more conscious consumerism. I'm sure anyone on this call who is in a marketing capacity will be having to think about what conscious consumerism means for their sector and as I said earlier focusing this people and planet that is not just is my product green enough for the conscious consumer but is it thoughtful enough is it caring enough for the conscious consumer? I love this quote from Mary Portas every pound spent is a vote for how we want to live and that's really what conscious consumerism means but I think that there's more than just the sort of dark green conscious consumer already there and already making their purchasing decisions based on these thoughts about the people on the planet and the impact. I think there's a growing number of conflicted or compromised consumers now these people are still buying products they're buying them because the quality is good the price is good it's convenient but potentially they're conflicted or compromised by something about the brand that doesn't sit comfortably with them that could be tax avoidance it could be dubious supply chain credentials it could be the packaging something comes in whatever it is it's sitting uncomfortably with them and they'll continue to buy their products at the moment because of those other factors but the minute someone comes along that does all those things but also has a more ethical or sustainable approach to their product that has a moral purpose it'll be an easy switch so that really is the competitive advantage element without purpose without ethical credentials I think someone comes into your marketplace and matches all those other quality price convenience points but is able to display more care, more attention it will be an easy switch for people and I think we'll see a lot of bigger companies falling foul of this over the next few years some already have I mentioned there the P word the purpose word being used a lot at the moment and not always brilliantly I have to say it's not easy establishing a purpose it's talked about a lot and I'm afraid has been hijacked a little bit by marketing just to say here and again I could talk about this all afternoon but your moral purpose your brand purpose should be greater than the products you make or the services you provide if it's used to simply boost a brand image or attain a short term goal the impact will be short lived to this is not something that can be brainstormed in half an hour this has to be something that is riven into the very fabric of the business it's that thing that sits above the product or the service it's the thing that customers can buy into that employees can buy into that sets you apart from the competition you have to live it purpose minus performance equals simply PR this is a framework that I feature in my book it's originally from the Conscious Capitalism Field Guide and I think it's a really nice template for helping businesses establish what their purpose could or should be and the most important question here for me is where can we have the most meaningful impact which big problems or needs in the world are we capable of solving and I think if you can establish that and then layer over what you're passionate about what you're good at and what people are prepared to pay you money for then you can get closer to this elusive brand purpose that so many people are talking about at the moment the question at the beginning of this session was is it time for marketers to grow a conscience or is it actually going to push that further and I'd like to think can marketers become the conscience of a business and I think they can as marketing people we should have the skills of persuasion of communication to be able to help people consume better and I think that's where we become the superheroes but first of all we've got to change we've got to stamp out green greenwashing we can't be complicit to making people believe that a company or a brand is doing more to protect the environmental society than it really is we need to uphold the reputations of the brands that we're working with and ensure that they're not greenwashing to protect their brand reputation and it's not just out and out lies it's asking whether a marketing claim is too little it's too insignificant in the grand scheme of things and it sort of makes this look a bit ridiculous is it too triumphant is it an isolated claim that we're making an overly big fuss about or is it too late the competitors have been doing this for ages and it just highlights how late to the party we are so it's all about challenging and using using our understanding of consumers and conscious consumers to challenge the marketing claims this is a framework that I've recently put together with some clients and it's designed to help professionally challenge and interrogate marketing claims because it's not always easy sometimes people feel too junior to challenge sometimes in a client agency relationship an agency may not feel comfortable challenging too much they may think it comes across as negative but I think it is our responsibility to challenge everything that we're putting out to consumers and so this allows us to look at things from first of all a legal point of view legally can we say this have we checked the source have we validated it particularly with parental claims that some of these can be highly scientific and I think it's really important that those claims are verified by people who know what they're talking about they're not biased if you do feel that you don't have the authority sometimes I think it's good to be able to fall back on something like this to say can we get this wording signed off can we make sure we know that we have everything completely and thoroughly checked so that's great if we've got that legally we can say this that's fine but then morally should we say this are we overstating are we missing something out and for me something that's really important is asking what could customers be wary of here and do they have any right to be wary and should we address that I think if you can answer all those questions and you've done everything you can to make sure that you're not complicit in sending out bad messages but if any of those things come up with negatives or unsure answers then go back check clarify, challenge further and change where necessary I'm hoping that or I'm sure some of you out there are working for companies are very progressive in this area and really mindful of how they operate and if you have influence is something called pay it forward we are after all only as good as the good we do now paying it forward was something else that I first read in Larry Webber's Authentic Marketing and what it does is ask of the brand who in the world would most benefit if they had access to our products or service brackets but can't afford them and how can we set up a program to provide access to our products to those people who really need them this is done brilliantly and very effectively by a number of brands now and it's like a sort of bog off reinvented if you remember if you go back as far as I do we used buy one get one free to encourage people to buy more stuff they didn't need in this instance it's buy one give one free and there are many great examples of this this is just three from that I cover in the book Tom shoes for every pair of shoes you buy they give a pair of shoes to someone who really needs them as well as other things now mindful chef they have their one feeds two program with every meal purchased they donate a school meal to someone to a child in poverty now at the time of me writing the book that was one million they've now donated over five million just through that program and hey girls which tackles period poverty in the UK by giving a free box of sanitary towels to women who really need them for every box purchased we can all do our bits and I think all brands can can embrace doing this better and become more heroic I'm going back just to finish up the session to our sustainability goals the UN sustainability goals these are a great area to get inspiration of how your brands can get involved but they can be a bit sort of lofty and feel quite removed so I encourage everyone to have a look at the good life goals which were established by the world business council for sustainable development and they've taken the 17 sustainable development goals and they've made them much more accessible they've changed the language it's the language you could use at home with the kids in a school room or in business and they have some fantastic resources including a whole area for business if you look at here's one of their cards that they have for each of their goals this one is each better which comes from the sustainability goal zero hunger and it gives you five very tangible ways in which you can get involved from a marketing perspective here's how Levi's example has taken one of those goals save water one of the tangible areas which is save water when brushing your teeth washing and cleaning and taking that as inspiration for their don't wash your genes campaign so that's a really good example of sustainability working through interaction thank you for spending the time to listen to me today I know there was a lot in there but I hope it has given you something to think about if you are interested in the ethical business book then if you use the code ethical business book 50 you can get 50% discount off the book from lid publishing and the details are there and hopefully we'll share those with you afterwards as well talking of free things I also have an online assessment tool on my ethical business blog it's about 45 questions it takes about 5 to 10 minutes to complete and what it does is just give you some initial feedback on your business on areas of opportunities potential resources that may be able to help and I do give bespoke feedback to anybody who uses that resource and if anyone has any questions on this I could talk about this all day as you can probably hear but if anyone has any questions after today I'd happily look forward to hearing from you Sarah at sleepinglion.co.uk that's great many thanks Sarah we're now going to have a short 10 minute Q&A session this is a good one and where can consumers and I suppose nowadays we've got a lot of marketers who've been on furlough or may have lost their jobs and may be looking for a new role how can you identify which are the most ethical and sustainable businesses yeah I mean there are lots of sites now that you can find that we're going to the good and bad of particular sectors I would probably head to the ethical consumer the ethical consumer is I think it's quarterly magazine and website and it has tables on all industries and it ranks them based on their FE score and it looks at environmental staff, animal welfare political staff and how businesses treat their people so it is subscription based but it's a really really fantastic resource okay thank you you mentioned about marketers having a role in influencing obviously there could be resistors in a business have you got any recommendation of how to deal with those resistors and I'm sort of thinking it could be from the top down the management team or if you're managing up I do think that marketers are in a difficult place here because they are often just sort of handed stuff and said go out and make the most of this claim or this product and I would like to see marketing get a much higher seat at the table when it comes to product developments because you are the connection to the consumer but I do realise that's not always the case my most important bit of advice is speak the language of business this area doesn't work in my experience doesn't work if you take too much of a holy of them now approach to it you've got to go with the facts go out and find out what your customers really feel about ethical issues ask the questions get the data and use that data to be able to challenge the board and say we need to do things differently otherwise we're going to be we're going to be losing customers the whole area of the conflicted consumer use the data use the facts and actually in the book there is a section on overcoming resistors as well so people are still skeptical about these things but there are some really really compelling arguments so use that and use the language of business I guess this question leads on from that there's a clear tension between marketing as you mentioned earlier the objective of selling more products and responsible consumption can you give examples of how this can work yeah I mean again this is I could talk about this for about a day but marketing can only do so much but it can influence and I would encourage people if this is a topic in an area that's important to you or important to your business there is a conflict there so I would really encourage you to think about things like or investigate things like the circular economy because most businesses can have a in some way can try and reduce the amounts they are taking in the first place in order to make their product and reduce the amount of waste that comes out at the end so switching from the traditional kind of linear economy to a circular model where we extract less and we waste less there's things like that that marketers can help influence how companies may look at how they make things how they do business and there are lots of really interesting models we're now seeing a lot more leasing of products rather than buying not everyone needs to buy a fancy dress or a drill not everyone needs to own one people can rent them and we're seeing this more and more in fashion we're seeing it in car pooling schemes where they're subscription based so there's still profit to be made and still good business to be made but the whole idea of just buying loads of stuff that ends up being trashed that's the bit that's challenged so I think if marketers could get involved in that conversation more I think it will ease the conflict and the tension Next question is could you highlight any particular sectors of business or industry that are leading and embracing on these concepts and perhaps give us a couple of examples Interestingly if you look at designer fashion there is a lot of really good work being done in that area now it's easier for them because I mean the whole idea of owning something for longer and responsible use of a product fits nicely into designer fashion but that's a good place to look certainly the ones to watch out for are fast fashion in terms of businesses we have our heroes and unfortunately there's not so many of them yet that these don't already spring to mind but Unilever have done amazing things under the initial guidance of Paul Palman IKEA do wonderful things Interface is probably one of the the leading companies that people look up to in terms of purpose led business circular economy I mean a Patagonia is another one that has for many years been challenging the norms so I think a lot of industries most industries or sectors are having to tackle this in one way or another whether it's finance or FMCGs but in each of those there are people doing it really really well and again going back to the ethical consumer if you want to find the people who are doing really well but also the ones that aren't that's a really good place to start okay it's interesting now although your talk has embraced concepts much broader than measuring carbon footprints and so on as much more about ethics and ways of doing business we've got a question now asking about carbon offsetting could you explain what that is and would you recommend it yeah it's a question that I'm often asked when I first go into businesses that their objective is and I ask what their objective is they say right we want to be next zero or we want to reduce our carbon footprint because the focus is very much on the environmental stuff and I often sort of challenge that with the human side of it as well basically with carbon offsetting it is a good thing don't get me wrong as you control your carbon footprint you will get to a certain stage in your business where you can't cut out anymore and in order to offset what you can't reduce you can fund activities or financially support activities that do good things that capture carbon or that help to be carbon positive so you're essentially you're offsetting the last bits of bad that you can't control by supporting projects that are positive in that area and I do think that they're a good thing I do it myself with my own travel and the book and in fact sort of my lifestyle we offset every year but it shouldn't be an easy thing it shouldn't just be a fall into I think you need to really think about it and it's a last resort and be really mindful of working with companies that are reputable it's had a bit of bad press I think back in 2016 there was a UN report that said as much as 85% of projects then weren't necessarily as having the impact that they claim to have so be mindful make sure you find a reputable consultancy to help you with that one but more importantly try to reduce your carbon footprint in the first place and I think we've got time for one final question I think setting this in the context of where we are in 2020 just been an unusual year by most standards we've all made a lot of changes in our personal behaviour that's been enforced upon us by lockdowns of various guys across the country a lot more focus on homeworking like Microsoft Teams which we're using today for this seminar with your crystal ball out how would you envisage future behaviour has it become a habit that will be long term are these going to be permanent changes in behaviour and what would you predict going forwards at the end of all of this I think absolutely we've changed the way we conduct business and I think the biggest areas there as you rightly say travelling to and from a place of work which we've now proved that many many of us do not need to take unnecessary travel just to be in a place of work we can conduct business online and that in itself has a big impact on one's environmental footprint through not using cars certainly not using international travel and planes to get to places so there's some really good behavioural change I think there there's a downside to all of this and that is there are industries there that will suffer because we're not moving around so much and so we do need to be mindful of there's always cause and effect in this debate which is why we need to continue to be having the debate for me I'm encouraged by the fact I made the point I made earlier about how we're now thinking more about communities and humanity as well as our impact on the planet I'm encouraged by the fact that that debate is becoming very balanced and I hope it's that side of things that will also have a really really bigger long term impact on us all Excellent that's brilliant Sarah thanks very much for some great questions there and some really insightful answers and we've all got some food for thought to carry forward after this session and as a reminder Sarah said she is willing to have any follow-up questions via email address that she's given out earlier so if you have any follow-ups please get in touch with her later on and so I'd just like to close this session now by saying thank you to Sarah for today's presentation to see I am Midlands for organising the event we hope you found it interesting and worthwhile our next webinar Express the UK food and drink market 2020 and beyond where to now is on Thursday the 10th of December at 1pm hosted by the CIM food, drink and agriculture group you'll find it listed on the events page on the CIM website where you'll be able to find out more information and to register for the session once again you'll shortly be receiving a survey on today's event and we'd really appreciate it if you could provide your feedback so on behalf of CIM thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day