Modern media can help companies talk directly and honestly with customers about their sustainability credentials. It can prove a high-wire act

It all began with an “ah-ha!” moment, sparked by a short video about a sustainable cotton collective in Europe.

What grabbed Rick Ridgeway’s attention wasn’t the slick production or clever graphics. The film had neither. It was the voices. They weren’t corporate. Nor were they entirely positive. Instead, they heralded from cotton growers themselves.

The experience triggered a question in the mind of Ridgeway, vice-president for communications and environmental initiatives at the US outdoor clothing company Patagonia.

He says: “What if we created a website for our customers that allowed them to tour our supply chain themselves through videos, slideshows and other multimedia?”

Finding a way to engage its wide customer base in issues related to sustainability wasn’t new for Patagonia. Previously it had invested heavily in putting together a corporate responsibility report along traditional lines.

But the report got shelved. Why? Ridgeway felt uncomfortable with it. One-way communication, he states, carries the implication of being “less than completely transparent”.

“Companies are explaining everything that they do well. There’s an element of posing,” he says.

Instead, Patagonia followed up on Ridgeway’s hunch. The result is the Footprint Chronicles, an interactive website that traces the impacts of the company’s products throughout the company’s value chain.

Web users can immediately access text and video footage from suppliers and other interested parties. The site has been a runaway success with consumers and the general public – two constituencies who would never go near an orthodox corporate responsibility report.

Go where the audience is

The benefits of going beyond the “usual suspects” on sustainability issues and engaging a wider set of stakeholders are manifold. Get it right and a brand’s profile and sales can skyrocket. From a sustainability perspective, it means more people out there are beginning to “get it”. Yet genuine engagement is tricky. Recent years have seen a flood of experiments by corporations, and few seem to nail it.

Start with the basics. Where are people already talking and what are they discussing? How are they engaging and why? Is it entertainment, social interaction, filling time, averting boredom?

The answers to some of those questions led US footwear company Timberland to launch its Earthkeepers Network a couple of years ago. The initiative has multiple strands to it. A blog forms the anchor. The company posts its own environmental activities as well as what “really jazzes” its employees.

However, when it comes to sparking genuine interaction with the public, the Earthkeepers campaign has found more success with social media formats such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. The latter saw membership jump to 175,000 users in six months, five times what Timberland predicted.

“We were doing wonderful things around environmental activism but we found ourselves talking to the proverbial choir,” explains Margaret Morey-Reuner, senior manager for values marketing.

“In order for us to break out of this mindset and reach a broader base … we realised we had to go where the dialogue was,” she adds. In this particular case, that meant social media.

A word of warning, however. Neither sustainability as a theme, nor social media as a communications format, mean the old rules of communication can be ignored. Customers and the public won’t be interested just because a company establishes a fancy Facebook account. They need to be won over.

“We try to take the same approach to these sorts of issues as we would engaging people on TV programmes, broadband services and so on,” says Graham McWilliam, group director of corporate affairs at media group BSkyB.

In practice, that means being engaging, entertaining and always keeping the intended audience in mind, he says.

Little catches the general audience more than celebrities. And so it was that BSkyB packed off actor Ross Kemp to Brazil to film a documentary about illegal logging. In a similar vein, it sent pop singer Lily Allen to the Amazon to be filmed learning about deforestation.

Neither is an expert, McWilliam admits. But both “cut through” with a non-specialist audience. The stars are learning as they go and the public buys that.

“No one is that interested in listening to a suit,” he states. Environmental experts and established campaigners might balk at the fact, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

McWilliam is trenchant in his belief that entertainment is as valid an education tool as the next. He says: “Our job is to make something like deforestation accessible to non-specialists. If that means simplifying it, then so be it. We’re not embarrassed about doing it in an entertaining way.”

Rowland Hill, corporate social responsibility manager at UK retailer Marks & Spencer, backs the call for simple language, saying: “The mainstream audience is very different and inevitably complex concepts have to be simplified.”

But he adds an important caveat: “Just because the language is simplified, it still has to be robust.”

And there’s the rub. Simple language should not translate to simplistic messaging. Get the balance wrong and charges of greenwashing will quickly jump up to bite you.

Credible messaging

To avoid accusations of false advertising, companies obviously need to do what they claim. And McWilliam is not blind to the point. “Clearly what you don’t want to happen is when you probe beneath it, you find that it’s all hype and no real substance.”

Underlying BSkyB’s Rainforest Rescue campaign, therefore, is a grassroots programme led by environmental charity WWF. The media giant also produces a detailed annual corporate responsibility review for those who really want the numbers.

“Any good marketer will know that a successful marketing campaign has to both leverage and reinforce the reputational capital of the company,” says John Swannick, executive director of the European Academy of Business.

He cites the example of power company EDF. Recent months have seen an ambitious TV advertising campaign around its attempts to green the London Olympics in 2012. As a leading generator of nuclear electricity, the strategy isn’t without its risks.

“EDF knew if its own house wasn’t in order then attempts to engage the public on the green agenda could easily backfire,” Swannick observes. So far, the approach has worked.

The involvement of opinion formers, accreditation providers and credible partners in engagement activities also helps avoid charges of greenwashing.

Again, BSkyB provides a good example. The media group recently organised a series of debates on business’s role in sustainability. To do so, it teamed up with the highly respected Royal Society of Arts. Representatives from sources as diverse as international bank HSBC to regional UK brewer Adnams were invited to share their thinking.

Of course, one sure-fire way exists of getting consumers to believe in a company’s engagement efforts: be honest.

In an age in which consumers can “ferret out” information about companies, transparency doesn’t require bravery, Patagonia’s Ridgeway argues. It simply needs common sense.

There are, then, some simple rules for developing an effective and credible strategy.

First, be open: in today’s age of transparency, companies need to be upfront with customers and the public about who they are and where they are coming from.

Timberland learned that lesson through its Earthkeepers initiative. Not wanting to be seen as “too preachy”, it chose to launch the programme under a sub-brand. Two years on and the company is now integrating Earthkeepers into its global corporate website.

“We learned that you can’t hide. You have to say who you are … My advice is to go with your own brand all the time because it cycles back to your brand eventually,” Morey-Reuner says.

Second, be ready: again, Timberland’s experience is instructive. Get your consumer engagement right and people will come. Possibly in floods.

Timberland had to temporarily backtrack on a tree-planting project initiated through Facebook because of the massive public response. The company only clawed back the confidence of its consumers when its chief executive went online to speak directly to them.

The web-chats brought the reforestation work of WWF Nepal to the company’s attention. The two are now partners. It’s a case of a company using consumer interaction to save its overall consumer engagement strategy – a neat circle.

Lastly, put the onus back on consumers: if companies really want to effect change, they themselves must become more sustainable. But so too must the public at large. Companies should spell out as much.

Sharing platitudes or received wisdom will not spark consumers and the public into action, argues Giles Gibbons, chief executive of consultancy firm Good Business.

“Instead, companies must provide a new piece of information that makes consumers sit up and change,” he says.

Take Ariel’s “Turn to 30” campaign. Brand owner Procter & Gamble let it be known that using Ariel at 30C would wash clothes just as effectively as at 40C. The response in consumer behaviour was immediate and widespread.

Encouraging two-way dialogue with consumers and the public will get people talking. Genuine engagement needs to achieve more than that. It should promote action too.

Sky Rainforest Rescue: http://rainforestrescue.sky.com
Timberland Earthkeepers Network: www.earthkeepers.com
Patagonia Footprints: www.patagonia.com/web/eu/footprint/index.jsp



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