Sustainability and Marketing - 19th November 2019
Tuesday 19th November saw a jam packed event for The Future Economy Network. With a completely full house, this business breakfast was held at Alec French Architects in central Bristol. Despite a freezing cold morning, an engaged and active audience arrived bright and early to discuss Sustainability and Marketing and to tuck into delicious pastries!
Katherine Piper, Director of The Future Economy Network welcomed attendees, highlighting the benefits of subscribing to the Network and also sharing exciting updates about The Future Economy Group’s Carbon Neutrality Hub in Bristol, Future Leap.
Ruth Smith from subscribers Sustainable Results Lab was the first to speak on marketing. Ruth focused her talk on sustainable approaches to growing your customer base, and the impact that the climate emergency is having on marketing professionals. On one hand, it is leading to new innovation and services, but on the other it is leading to a rising concern in green washing. She outlined the importance in businesses having an ethos that balances people, power and profit. Ruth noted that she will turn down customers if she feels they do not align with her environmental values, and others in the audience supported this decision. She also spoke about what a digital carbon footprint is. Ruth linked her talk to her exciting research on what a sustainable approach to digital marketing looks like, you can download her full report here.
Next up we saw Michael Green from Luna 9, a creative problem-solving agency. His company looks at complex ideas and makes them more visual so they are better used and understood. He implemented a small experiment called "The Curse of Knowledge", where he "knocked" a famous song into the wall and asked if anyone recognised it. No one knew - highlighting the fact that we dramatically overestimate our communication abilities. It is always worth simplifying the message to make it clearer. Michael's equation is "knowledge = information + context". Different audience groups will have different interpretations of your information. If you can identify your groups, you can adapt your style to suit that particular audience. Sometimes however, a business cannot identify their group - he used the NHS as an example, who serve the whole UK population. He also explained that the NHS has lowered their public website reading age to eight years old. They have found that it is more damaging using jargon than it is being patronising. In summary, Michael explained the hierarchy of information. Whether your customer has 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or an hour, everyone should be able to digest the most important information from your product. It is all about simplicity - edit, edit, and edit again.
Jenny Briggs from subscribers Greenhouse PR joined us next to speak, looking at social media for environmental stories. Greenhouse PR are a communications consultancy focused on environmental change from the ground level up. Jenny highlighted the growth in eco-anxiety, and that this has led to many communications being hard to implement due to fear, feeling overwhelmed and unable to help. She talked about the importance of fear and hope and how either on their own will alienate people. It is really important to let the audience "see themselves" in the story, to create an emotional attachment. She stressed the importance of the call to action and grabbing attention – but to never preach information without giving the recipient ideas/opportunities on what to do to fix the problem. She gave some examples of successful campaigns they have ran, such as #unfriendcoal and their plastic periods campaign. She then spoke about the strong impact videos have and how essential it is that they have subtitles for maximum reach. Finally, she spoke about the importance of quality over quantity. It is better to have 30 genuine reactions/comments that have made a real difference, than it is to have 100 reactions on a post that no one cares about or has used to promote change.
Finally, we welcomed Keith Seward from subscribers Compass Video, who looked at storytelling and the importance of linking this to a business’ mission statement. Keith spoke about how it is better to not be too explicit about environmental outcomes when winning certain clients and instead, he uses the tactic of highlighting other co-benefits which are more of a priority to the customer. When Keith worked for JCB he was part of a team that influenced the fuel consumption-based marketing for JCB. He ran through a case study of his project with JCB, who wanted to have higher sales. He helped them create a campaign where they highlighted that JCBs run longer on less fuel using a video experiment. Keith also spoke about his work with Brunel Group, and some practicalities they could put into place to be more sustainable in the workplace. He looked at laptops as an example of power saving, the different settings they have and how the average office environment could put in simple, practical steps to saving energy.
The seminars finished off with some fantastic in-depth questions from the audience, followed by a lively 60 second pitch session from attendees. The event concluded with some valuable networking and finishing up the delicious sustainable selection of pastries, fruit and refreshments.
If anyone is interested in sponsorship opportunities at the Festival of Sustainable Business 2020, please email us at festival@thefutureeconomygroup.co.uk
The Future Economy Network look forward to seeing you at another event soon! Details of upcoming events can be found here!