Sustainable Marketing

Sustainable marketing is the process of promoting products that are environmentally safe at the retail level and touting a company's commitment to sustainable practices at the public relations level. It applies traditional marketing techniques but in a specific context. This category of marketing seeks to capitalize on the increased value consumers place on eco-friendly products and companies that have a perceived commitment to sustainability in its production and supply chains.

Marketing that promotes a company's sustainable initiatives serves as a bridge between corporate responsibility and profitability. These initiatives often require a significant capital investment to change the way a company does business or to innovate its products and services so they have a more positive impact on the environment. Investments in sustainability are only worthwhile to a corporation if they result in increased profitability. While social goals are admirable, a corporation has a fiduciary duty to maximize profits for its stockholders. Sustainable marketing assumes this investment is viable by crafting messages that tap into this consumer concern with the expectation that it can be translated into purchasing decisions.

For example, a company that produces laundry detergent can design a product that has less volume, needs less packaging, and uses natural ingredients instead of chemicals. This product innovation costs the company a significant amount of money to accomplish. It will only make this investment if it believes that consumers will value the product and make a purchasing decision based on its new features. Sustainable marketing at the product level is designed to bring these new eco-friendly features to the consumer's attention. At the public relations level, the company can report to its shareholders and customers that it is a responsible corporate citizen that is concerned about sustainable product innovation for the sake of future generations.

In this way, business analysts consider sustainable marketing to have a triple bottom line, resulting in benefits to the customer, the environment, and the corporation. The real impact of sustainable marketing is still debatable, however, because consumer concerns that are identified through polling and research do not always translate into actual purchasing decisions. Purchases of sustainable products are often impacted by outside forces, such as comparative utility, cost, and availability, that can skew the impact of marketing. Sustainable marketing is as concerned with identifying when a consumer can afford to make a sustainable purchasing decision as it is in crafting the awareness message.

Now that the concept of sustainability has taken hold in the mindset of consumers and has become a value proposition to corporations, environmentalists want to move the definition forward. They would like to see it changed to reflect corporate responsibility to market in a sustainable way, one that is profitable but responsive to actual worldwide need rather than rampant consumerism. Ideally, sustainable marketing would stop encouraging irresponsible over consumption in developed nations simply to improve profits.

The End Note

Lalitaji’s Surf has served its company well. When Hindustan Unilever’s (HUL) detergent portfolio was battling cut-throat local competition and price increase a few years back, Surf Excel (yesteryear’s Surf) stayed on course, analysts point out. HUL has lined up this year’s campaign for the detergent brand in tune with its theme for the last eight years-that stains are good (daag achche hain). Replacing iconic campaigns such as the Lalitaji one and Dhoonte reh jaoge (You will keep on searching for stains in vain), this line of creative rendition has the brand advocating that mothers should give their kids the freedom to get dirty and experience life, and rest in the knowledge that Surf Excel will remove those stains. Different situations, invariably involving muck and mud, showed kids not worrying about getting their clothes soiled.

The new campaign shows how his ready wit helps a kid get one up on the senior boys in school. Priya Nair, vice-president, laundry, HUL, says, “Detergent is a category where dirt and stains have always been made out to be bad. We wanted to play on a paradox of dirt being good by showing children doing good deeds and getting dirty in the process.”

In the ad, produced by Footcandles Films, a group of older boys bully a team of kids playing cricket into giving up the pitch. As one of the kids argue with the bullies, another comes along to soothe the frayed nerves. But he is pushed into the muddy ground. Just as the kids’ team and the audience think that the game is lost, the kid who was pushed into the puddle, smears on some more mud and runs after the older children with a proposal to hug and makeup. The bullies flee and the junior lot hug each other triumphantly.

Nair says, “We wanted to occupy the emotional space in a category that has always harped on functional benefits. Only a brand which is confident of its functional attributes can move on to emotional benefits. Our brand tracks have shown mothers instantly connecting with the various executions of the theme we have presented over the years.”

Arun Iyer, national creative director with Lowe Lintas & Partners, who created the campaign says, “In this day and age of rampant violence, we saw merit in depicting righteousness or badappan as it is called in Hindi. The ad shows that not only are stains good but love too is better than violence in conquering challenges.”

Analysts have pointed out that Surf Excel has not been subjected to the same pressures as HUL’s other detergent brands in the last few years. Launched in the 1950s, Surf Excel has undergone several avatars-from the plain vanilla Surf to Surf Excel and its variants.