Sunday, 20 May 2007

Making Marketing Sustainable

Diana from Clownfish pointed this out to me last week. Stunning idea, check out the footprint of your intended media schedule (the paper, the transportation etc.) http://www.noughtilus.com/

Here's a list of stuff which you might also think about, specifically looking at the sustainability of marketing (rather than the marketing of sustainability):
- Not encouraging excessive consumption; eg lastminute.com are advising people to get their 5 breaks a year
- Not marketing excessive products eg 4x4s
- Avoiding immorally cheap pricing
(where future environmental costs are not factored in)
- Wasted purchases; eg 2 for 1 offers on perishable goods
- Wasted packaging, carrierbags etc.
- Travel, transport, foodmiles
- Labelling and transparent information
- Greenwashing
- Recycling policies
- Wasting energy eg illuminated posters
- Local issues and sensitivity
- Representation and exploitation
- The ethics of media which you advertise in
- Production: for instance advertising shoots in New Zealand, because it's winter in Europe (but could it have been shot last summer?)
- Use of paper. Copy rotation. Other issues of material production and media choice
- sins of suggestion eg misleading claims (calling it 'natural' when it isnt)
- sins of substitution: chocolate is sexy, the car for the great outdoors
- product churn, built in redundancy, fashion cycles
- vulnerable and impressionable audiences eg kids
- treating customers fairly eg supermarket price slash claims vs reality
- overrusing and hence cheapening of green cultural codes and claims
- bad advertising as creative pollution

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