Circular commerce and retail: Greener the better
More and more consumers are prioritizing sustainability over price in their purchases, driving growth for retailers with green practices.
The tone of advertising is changing, at least in Germany, where I live. For a long time, brands clung to the motto “stinginess is cool” and promoted products through clichéd images and perfectly styled models. But today, sustainable marketing comes with a new visual language.
Ads show people across generations loving vegan products, electric cars convey the joy of driving, and curvy models confidently show off lingerie and swimwear collections.
Without a doubt, sustainability and diversity are important selling points today.
But even the most sophisticated marketing campaigns can’t succeed if a company lacks sincere consideration of environmental and social concerns in its corporate strategy.
Like sustainability itself, sustainable marketing can mean different things. Sustainability has become a priority for more and more brands, which is reflected in their marketing campaigns.
More and more consumers are prioritizing sustainability over price in their purchases, driving growth for retailers with green practices.
Patagonia has a long history of promoting sustainability, including its Don’t Buy This Jacket Black Friday ad in 2011 and its more recent “Buy Less Demand More” campaign.
Other examples include:73 percent of digital natives are involved in B2B product or purchase decision-making, and about one-third are sole decision-makers. Learn how to win their trust.
Consumers quickly recognize greenwashing and empty promises. Here are some revealing statistics:
Sustainability and fashion appear to be on opposing catwalks destined for collision. Fashion is a $2.5 trillion industry, producing 10% of global carbon emissions, 20% of global wastewater, and vast biodiversity loss. Consumers are demanding change, forcing sustainability in fashion as a requirement, not a trend.
Sustainability extends beyond consumer behavior. Environmental social governance is rapidly gaining importance in business relationships between companies.
Whether investments, supply chain design, or recruitment of young talent, marketing campaigns — no matter how polished — can’t withstand insincere consideration of environmental, social and governance aspects.
The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 criticizes the fact that on the way to climate neutrality, many companies fail to follow up their promises with action.
Ukraine conflict further exacerbates the problem: It’s pushed climate protection off the agenda, and shown how dependent Germany and Europe are on energy supplies, especially from Russia.
In addition, soaring inflation, unstable supply chains, material bottlenecks and the threat of gas shortages in winter are causing headaches for many companies.
Accordingly, the issue of sustainability has fallen behind in many places and achieving the global sustainability goals hardly seems possible anymore. I hope as many people possible are as concerned about this development as I am. There’s no Planet B!
To achieve real benefits, companies need to embed sustainability into their business practices and processes. Learn three ways to do it.
It’s more important than ever to take climate protection seriously.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recently called for an explicit intensification of all climate protection efforts: “Compliance with the 1.5-degree target can only be achieved with the greatest possible effort. This means that we must now act decisively and quickly,” the IPCC report said.
Given that 77% of the world’s business transactions run through our systems, we’re aware of SAP’s high responsibility for a sustainable economy.
We want to raise awareness of the fact that companies today no longer have to choose between sustainability and profitability. This attitude has been anchored in SAP’s DNA for 50 years now, and we’re working to communicate it more strongly.
In addition, we’re of course working to make our own marketing activities more sustainable. In doing so, we’re guided by three principles: #ZeroWaste, #ZeroEmission and #ZeroInequality.
Some starting points: the climate-neutral design of our events, avoidance of unnecessary promotional gifts, and diverse composition of our marketing teams.
And with brand campaigns such as ECOnomics, we’re bringing these issues even more into the public eye. Together, we can have an impact!