Today’s marketing audit or marketing analysis is still a comprehensive review of marketing practice; but it looks quite a bit different than it did a decade ago for several reasons. The pace of change, especially in communications, makes promotional strategies obsolete very quickly. Additionally, the demand for transparency and responsiveness’ to stakeholders or other constituents means the process must look at more than just customers.

The modern marketing analysis should accomplish two core outcomes:

• Provide a simplifying and unifying focal point, and
• Identify ways to streamline and synergize current efforts.

The simplifying and unifying focal point gives the organization a guiding star by which to navigate in otherwise chaotic times. For many this is identifying the timeless customer need that is a through-line for all the organization’s products and services. It answers the question “What business are you in?” In other situations the focal point can be a specific strategy, brand initiative or the launch of a specific marketing program.

Identifying ways to streamline and integrate efforts is a particular challenge for companies that tend to create silos according to functional tasks like sales management, advertising, PR, Web and Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media.  Creating a unified strategy for promotion will help strengthen execution, create alignment and reinforce brand messages.

If you Google or Bing “marketing audit” you’ll likely find outlines and to-do lists for self-assessments. As of August 2010, most of what’s available is very similar to what you would have found at the library way back in 1990 when I first wrote about audits and starting doing them for clients.

In contrast to audit protocols of the past, today’s marketing analysis should cover:

• The core business that underlies your products and services. Is there ambiguity about this core or elements that distract?
• The regulatory or activist initiatives impacting manufacturing and distribution. Where do stakeholders’ environmental and social justice concerns intersect with marketing?
• Integration and alignment of sales strategies with traditional and new media promotion. Were your strategies for sales, advertising, pr, Web and social media designed to work together, or are one or more parts “bolted on”?
• The “Soft Stuff” – the human environment of marketing, including employee understanding of and/or commitment to current strategies and programs.

Beware the assessment that says you’ll get a comprehensive audit for $500 or even $1,500. Think about it. Most consultants charge $200 to $250 an hour. Do you think they can accurately assess your firm and its situation in 2-6 hours? More likely this is how long it takes them to plug your name and company details into a boilerplate report, that –surprise! – reveals you need to hire them for additional services.  Be willing to pay for a quality service that can stand on its own without obligation for further involvement by the consultant.

Be clear about your own objectives for the process.  How deep do you really want to go? Are you looking for a few new ideas? Or do you want a comprehensive management assessment that gives you high ROI recommendations?  I won’t even ask if you want a quick fix, because everyone does.  Are you willing to entertain a bigger fix if the audit suggests it? Are you pondering questions about your company’s strategy or direction, but don’t want to get bogged down in a long-term process? Consider your desired future end state and communicate that to the consultant as you engage in the audit process. Clear objectives at the start will help create a better end product.

Few companies argue that fostering trust with customers and other stakeholders is an important business task. Where there’s disagreement, however, is what specifically fosters trust, and the degree to which trust between customers and companies – particularly as it relates to green or sustainability claims – is suffering.

Our academic partner, Jenny Mish, PhD., assistant professor of marketing at Notre Dame, explored this and other questions in her doctoral research. Her study, which explored food standards and sustainability, resulted in insights about marketing behaviors that foster trust.

Mish interviewed a wide variety of individuals representing institutions engaged in developing or promoting the use of market-based product standards, such as Fair Trade or organic, that specify reductions in negative environmental or social impacts.  She spoke with people in large corporations like McDonald’s, in government such as the United States Department of Agriculture, and  smaller, grassroots organizations such as the Portland, OR-based Food Alliance.

The spectrum of types of trust she found span from the very impersonal and institutional, to the highly personal, local and dare we say “intimate.”  Large corporations tend to look primarily at repeat purchase behavior to evaluate the degree of trust they’ve engendered with customers. Some companies evaluate trust on the basis of their ability to fulfill key expectations of sustainability performance. Still others evaluate trust on the basis of direct, personal interactions with customers, and the degree to which they had actual contact with customers and other stakeholders.

Her findings suggest that marketers may be able to foster trust three different ways:

Preserving the Integrity of the Brand: The least personal form of trust is embodied in the brand attributes that create a predictable customer experience. This is true even when the context is not sustainability or green attributes.  This calls for organizational and channel alignment to fulfill brand promises consistently, which means full commitment to green or sustainability standards…not merely claims that show up in features and benefits.

Compliance with a Market-Based Standard: A company’s ability to merit certification such as the USDA’s organic standard or Fair Trade, creates a type of performance contract with customers that fosters trust. Marketers may encourage their organizations to qualify for certification, but ultimately this will require cross-functional collaboration to bring operations into compliance. Standards that inspire trust are those that are either objectively evaluated (by government or third-party) or that are developed and supported by a wide coalition of contributors/stakeholders.

Designing Highly Personal Forms of Contact with Customers: A company’s ability to deal directly and personally with its customers, such as “meet the farmer” programs, can foster the most personal type of trust.  These programs are common in “local” exchange relationships, such as those formed at farmer’s markets.

One implication of the study, as I see it, is that human interactions (personal) are where trust can be lost altogether, or maintained in either an impersonal or highly personal and reciprocal manner. Mish’s study was not designed to explore trust as engendered by the sales process, but we know from other experience that the quality of those interactions also impact on consumer perceptions. While they make good marketing sense, authentic interpersonal relationships are usually not driven by marketing goals. They usually reflect a sense of “this is the right thing to do regardless” in the company culture, as is the case with local relationships described above.  They manifest from the shared values of everyone in the company.

Ultimately fostering trust is not a matter of choosing between these forms. It’s bringing all types of trust-fostering practices to the marketing agenda. The assumption is that if the organization is large, then personal interaction is not possible.  If we believe, however, that it’s the right thing to do, then it becomes an opportunity for innovation. There’s the marketing challenge — creating trust-engendering relationships between human beings on both sides of the exchange process, regardless of company size.

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Jenny Mish’s dissertation is “Centralizing and Decentralizing Forces in the Development of Sustainable Markets: A study of Food Product Standards.” It was published in 2009, by the University of Utah.

*That builds on someone else’s theory

By Kathleen M. Hosfeld

Imagine a bell curve (or Ann Elk’s theory of a brontosaurus) which is very thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again on the other end.  On the far left point is a small group called “innovators.” To the right of the innovators are the “early adopters.” In the much, much thicker part we find first the “early majority.” As the thicker part begins to decline again we find the “late majority,” and finally at the thin-again part we have the “laggards.”

You may have heard the term “crossing the chasm” and wondered what it meant. It’s an insight that builds on the bell curve described above, which was the work of Everett Rogers , author of “Diffusion of Innovations.” Geoffrey Moore, who penned the book “Crossing the Chasm,” used Rogers’ work to help market new  technology. Moore’s book centers on a key insight that applies to many types of change, including – my theory — sustainability in business.

Innovators snatch up new technology even before it comes on the market. Moore says they do this because “technology is a central interest in their life.” Early adopters, like innovators, are able to quickly perceive the potential benefit of new technology for their lives. They look to innovators as guides for what is worth trying.  The early majority also relates well to technology, but tends to be more selective. Its members need references and proof of concept before they invest. The critical point Moore highlighted is that winning the early majority is the key to profit and growth. Yet, insofar as many technology firms are made up of innovators and early adopters, it’s often hard for them to relate and sell to those who don’t share their passion.

Proponents of sustainability may face a similar challenge. The innovators – the Body Shop, Ben & Jerry’s, Tom’s of Maine – and locally Harriet Bullitt’s Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat – were those for whom sustainability was a central interest of their life. They inspired the early adopters — Seventh Generation, Fetzer Wines, Whole Foods,  and others  –   many of which are now at scale and thriving. The next step beyond the second wave is to increase sustainability in traditional firms – to create the early majority.

But watch out for that chasm. The next step is a doozy. As Moore points out, a wide gulf separates the first two groups – innovators and early adopters – from the early majority, and the gulf has to do with motivation.  Innovators and early adopters love sustainability for its own sake. The terminology they use is “because it’s the right thing to do.” They want the potential early majority to love sustainability the same way they do, but the early majority doesn’t share their passion. As Moore says in his book, innovators and early adopters want revolution; early majorists want evolution.  They want proof that something works.  The chasm is built on these differences. To further sustainability, we need to find a way to bridge the chasm.

Three things will help:

Discernment. Companies that are just starting out are not going to be exemplary. They’re going to start small. The business community and media need to encourage nascent attempts and not crush them with premature accusations of greenwashing.

Empathy. A colleague of mine recently started a Seattle-based solar nonprofit. She came from a traditional business background but had an infectious passion for evangelizing solar energy. Members of the green community to whom she reached out for help treated her like an outsider.  The ability to take the perspective of others, understand their  frame of reference  is a critical success factor for creating change.

Experience. The early majority cares about what works in operating a business. The motivational bridge is the business case. In this regard, the best thing innovators and early adopters can do is share their stories of achieving and sustaining their own profitability, and how sustainability contributed to their success.

In a recently released MIT Sloan Management Review, most of the 1,500 executives interviewed didn’t have a business case for sustainability in their organizations.  Most said sustainability initiatives in their firms were a response to regulatory pressures. Regulation plays a crucial role in catalyzing change, but ultimately it only goes so far. Winning hearts and minds is the key to sustainability adoption, and that begins with meeting and respecting people where they are.

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Kathleen Hosfeld (Ms.) is a strategy and marketing consultant. She has a second theory.

Recently the radio industry was rocked by the results of using new listening measuring devices to monitor listener behavior. Called “People Meters,” the devices “listened” to the sound in the room of the person wearing them, and recorded what stations they picked up. Prior to the use of these devices, people kept journals of how many hours a day they listened to particular stations. What people reported was that they listened to National Public Radio stations and classical music stations. What the People Meters revealed however is they were actually tuning into easy listening , oldies and country western stations. This is something like reporting that you read National Geographic, Scientific American or Town and Country magazines, when in fact you’re actually reading People, Cosmopolitan or Seventeen.

The difference between what we know we should do and what we actually do is something that smart marketers have noticed for a long time. It’s a lesson many forgot in the dot.com bubble days when focus groups asked people to evaluate whether or not they would use a certain Web technology in the future.

The Hartmann Group, a Bellevue research firm, has explored the gap between our so-called “new thrift” and the actual purchase behavior of many consumers. We clip coupons for the grocery store, but then go out and buy an iPhone. This phenomenon helps us understand why people report that sustainability is very important to them, but their purchase behavior doesn’t necessarily confirm it.  Read more here.

By Kathleen Hosfeld

Freeze and wait. That’s been the reaction of many to this time of economic uncertainty. While that works for animals who camouflage themselves in their surroundings until danger has passed, its wisdom only goes so far in the human marketplace.

This strategy assumes that the “danger” will indeed pass, and that things will “get back to normal.” Early signs, however, suggest that the old status quo has been disturbed permanently. How much consumer and corporate behavior will change for good remains to be seen. Many agree, however, that this crisis has changed them in fundamental ways.

In this time those that are thriving are doing something fairly counter-intuitive. They are moving in the direction of their hearts, and doing the things they long to do. As a result, they are stepping out of stagnant eddies into places where new energy and activity are flowing.

I recently watched a short film called Lemonade that tells stories of people in the advertising industry who used their layoffs as a call to action. By unleashing the power of what was meaningful to them, their lives and careers were redirected in important ways.

Around Thanksgiving 2009, I wrote a small blog article titled “Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do.” It’s a challenge to counteract fear with a move toward what we love.  What do you feel called to do? Now is the time. Take your own career or your organization in a direction you have always longed to go. It may not make sense and yet it’s the right move.

Yesterday’s logic is to focus on the numbers – the numbers you can hit or the numbers you can earn. The new logic is to find the place where you can make a difference, the place that is meaningful to you, and let that energy carry you forward.

No-cost places to start include:

• Watch the Lemonade movie.
• Read the blog article I wrote and spend some time thinking about the beauty that you love.
• Reconsider your value propositions for key stakeholders.  Are they compelling to you? Do they speak to your desire to make a difference in the world?  Use our free value propositions worksheets for this exploration.
• Start a conversation in your workplace around the question: “How do we want to make a difference at this workplace, through this work, or using the assets and resources we have available to us?”

I’m interested to know what changes you decide to make. Let me know.

In the interview Simon said that buying a cup of coffee whose brand values include fostering a sense of community (the idea of Starbucks’ locations as a social hub or “third place”) does not mean you will actually experience community. This, no doubt, depends on how one defines community. Simon’s definition, as expressed in the interview,  includes democratic debate and dissent. Fostering civic dialogue is not a core element of the Starbuck’s store experience so for Simon it’s not creating “real” community. For many of Starbucks’ customers, however, community may be like the old TV show “Cheers,” a place where “everybody knows your name.” Being a “regular” at a particular Starbucks (or any other coffee place), where the baristas know your favorite order can lead to this type of community feeling.

As he concludes the interview, Simon raises an important issue for those of us bringing the values of sustainability into brands and marketing strategies. He says that the values to which brands try to appeal may not be values that can be realized through how we spend our money. My paraphrase of his statement from the interview is that it’s good news if people really want the values that Starbucks promotes, because the brand promotes positive social and environment change. He says, however, if we think we are creating those changes simply by buying Starbucks coffee, we’ve missed the point.

“If we judge our desires by what we buy from Starbucks – if we want a greener planet, if we want more connections, if we want social justice around the world – (these) are values that could build a more democratic order. The problem is we’re not going to get them through buying,” is my rough transcription of his comments.

Purchase decisions alone are not enough to effect the cultural and political change that we need to address society’s most pressing environmental and social needs. However, purchase decisions are not irrelevant. Does buying a sustainable product relinquish us from the responsibility to be citizens who vote and take part in civic dialogue? No. But every purchase decision is a tiny vote for the things we think are important, and a way to support those companies who are sincere in their intent to create meaningful change through their work.

Listen to the archived interview here. Reynolds interview with Simon starts at minute 34 in the Real Audio file. I’d like to know what you think.

I’m a fan of perspectives that make sense of seemingly conflicting points of view. This is why I love PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow by Chip Conley.

Conley, owner of the Joie de Vivre boutique hotel chain in California, writes about his own and others’ experiences in cultivating deeply satisfying relationships with employees, customers and investors (this book is a very readable compendium of stakeholder marketing ideas). His stakeholder strategies ultimately contributed to the survival of his company in the travel industry meltdown following 9/11. He based his methods on the teachings of psychologist Abraham Maslow.

“Maslow believed that human beings seek to meet base needs for sleep, water and food (physiological)” Conley writes, and that we focus on the lowest unmet need at a time. “As those needs are partially fulfilled we move up … to higher needs for physical safety, affiliation or social connection, and esteem.” Finally, we aspire to the top of the pyramid which is self-actualization.

Conley used Maslow’s hierachy to map out how his company satisfied these needs for employees, customers and investors (his key stakeholders). His book provides a wealth of detail on how his firm did this, how others have done it and how to apply this to your own firm.

So what conflicting points of view does he brings together?  Depending on your own view of human nature, as a marketer you may find yourself believing one of the following views about how to win customers: 1) customers act from their most base needs (bottom of hierarchy) or 2) customers act (or should) from their highest motivations (top of the hierarchy) and values.  This dichotomy shows up starkly in branding and advertising models, many of which assume we make all our purchase decisions with the most primitive part of our brain. There’s a tension between these and the strategies that try to sell products based on “doing the right thing,” assuming green or social criteria will make a difference. (They can and do, but sometimes not enough).

The truth that Conley articulates so well is that good marketing and good relationships address both of these polarized views and all the needs in between.

Take customer relationships for example. The most basic need a customer has, according to Conley, is that we meet their expectations. Our products and services have to do what they expect them to do. He points out, however, that this alone rarely creates loyalty or the more-coveted evangelism.  Fostering loyalty means identifying the desires customers have, which are typically desires for social connection/belonging and esteem. Evangelism comes when we offer customers the opportunity for transformation and self-actualization – to be more fully themselves, or the self they long to be.

This is solid advice for any firm that thinks it’s not tapping the full potential of its customer relationships. Start with the basics: Are we clear about what our clients expectations are for our product or service?  Are we meeting their survival and safety needs? Second, how are our relationships and interactions – do we provide warm customer service? Do we make our clients feel important and valued? Finally, do we offer our clients an opportunity to be more than just a consumer?

At Joie de Vivre, they meet the top of the pyramid by offering what Conley calls “identity refreshment.”  You stay at a hip hotel and you feel like the hipster you want to be. Through examples such as Harley Davidson, Whole Foods, Apple Computer, the high tech service group Geek Squad, as well as his own company, Conley provides numerous creativity-sparking stories and examples.  The book is packed with tips for how to apply these ideas in your own firm.  Equally valuable are his suggestions for building strong partnerships with employees and investors.

Can companies do reasonably well at the bottom or the middle of the hierarchy? Certainly. If you aspire, however, to levels of relationship that create evangelists for your brand, and resilient companies that can withstand volatile economic cycles, says Conley, you need to deliver value at all the points along the hierarchy: survival, success and transformation.

“Be the change we want to see in the world” is so often used, we have become somewhat immune to its message that it all starts with us. The place we make change most effectively is in our own lives.

As more of us seek to engage in creating economies and communities that work for all, it may be that hope associated with change isn’t enough to inspire us. We’re unclear about what changes are needed to create the world we want. The idea of change begs the issue of strategy. What will work? Which of the many issues I care about should I tackle first?

When such questions paralyze us into inaction, another approach is to move in the direction of what we love. What are we grateful for? What are we so grateful for that we want all to experience it?

The Sufi poet Rumi wrote about how the particular longings of our individual hearts shape our relationship with the Divine. In the process of spiritual becoming he said “A rose opens because she is the fragrance she loves.” We grow toward the beauty that most inspires us. We unfold more of ourselves, become more truly ourselves, as we release more of what we love into the world.

Bringing this sentiment to the workplace, to our relationships with clients, customers and other stakeholders involves taking time to ask: “What are we inspired to become? What is our highest aspiration for our work? What joy do I want others to experience?”

It’s not a simple process to bring such thoughts into practical application, and integrate them into our daily lives. But it’s an important process for this time. It means to live a life of faith. Faith in what? Faith in love. In beauty. In hope. In the basic ability of human beings to  work together to create a world that works for all of us.

In another poem, Rumi invites us to “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Many of us recognize that each person has his or her own unique gifts to give the world. Our individual lives can be a continual exploration of those gifts over time.

So, too, can we as companies and organizations act in service of the beauty we collectively love, and bring it to flower in the world for the good of all. When offered in the spirit of gratitude and generosity, our actions can truly be the change we seek.

~~~

The line “The rose opens….” Is from the poem Every Tree, translated by Coleman Barks in the book The Glance, Songs of Soul-Meeting, published in 1999 by Penguin Books.

The line “Let the beauty we love…” is published in The Essential Rumi, also translated by Coleman Barks, 1997 HarperOne.

~~~

Want a reminder to keep this sentiment alive in your life? Get the “Let the Beauty We Love” mug and we’ll send $5 to Kiva.org to support entrepreneurs around the world through microfinance loans.

Who Is This For?

These services are for companies that have already experimented with and seen benefit from waste and energy management practices, and that are looking for new opportunities for innovation, competitive differentiation, and strengthened customer relationships. Our stakeholder engagement services help companies tap the creative potential of relationships with customers, employees and other partners. Our rapid strategy services help clients get traction on new initiatives and design them for maximum return in value and learning.

Companies that would benefit from these services are those that seek to:

• Convene a team to develop and implement a strategic action plan quickly
• Tap the creative potential of employees, customer and other partners for breakthrough ideas and strategic insights
• Learn more quickly from experiments by measuring what matters
• Increase accountability and follow-through for strategy implementation
• Build capacity for dialogue, collaboration and partnering as they do real work (not in a classroom)

What Strategy Services are Provided?

Rapid Sustainability Strategy – We enable companies and lines of business to accelerate the development of new sustainability oriented products, services and business models. We accelerate and invigorate the planning process so that participants are emotionally and intellectually connected to your strategy and its successful implementation. As a result, you can realize returns and value from your work more quickly.

Stakeholder Experience Strategy — We enable companies to tap the significant business benefit of stakeholder loyalty and trust. We combine principles of stakeholder marketing and Total Customer Experience management to identify all the ways the company engages with stakeholders and the corresponding opportunities to create transformative partnerships with them. We engage the intellectual and emotional commitment of team members, leading to effective follow-through and acceleration of results.

Stakeholder Marketing Strategy — We work with our clients to design stakeholder marketing systems, strategies and action plans that accelerate the realization of value from stakeholder engagement. We help companies use stakeholder marketing approaches to tap tremendous potential for innovation, trust and loyalty. In the face of increasing complexity and potentially competing stakeholder needs, we help clients clarify their objectives, build their capacity to manage stakeholder dialogue, and implement strategic change quickly.

For detailed information on these services, please download our brochure here.

Many are the challenges facing today’s marketing practitioners as they seek to cultivate relationships with customers in a volatile economic climate.  As a chief point of contact between the company and its customers, marketing is a place where trust is either won or lost.  As many consumers cut back on spending, trust is one of the critical factors underlying purchase decisions. But research shows that decades of intrusive, coercive demand-creation efforts have created layers of resistance that are now compounding companies’ woes.

Is sustainability a business strategy than can transform marketing practice and begin the process of rebuilding trust? Sustainability, for the purpose of this article, is the management of an organization’s performance in service of financial, social and environmental objectives, with the intent of meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (Brundtland World Commission).

Transformed marketing is the emerging model of marketing practiced by high-integrity organizations, a subject I wrote about in The Transformation of Marketing. The relationship between transformed marketing and sustainability depends on the ultimate goal of both initiatives – for businesses to operate profitably in ways that create benefit for many diverse stakeholders.  In early stages of sustainability adoption, however, this shared interest may not be quite as evident. As engagement with sustainability deepens, the qualities of transformed marketing begin to appear.

What are the Stages on the Road to Sustainability?

The notion that organizations implement sustainability in stages of increasing engagement is held by a variety of consultants and thought leaders.  The Leadership of Sustainability, a study authored by Pat Hughes, (to which I was a contributing analyst) offered a five-stage model of sustainability development based on interviews with leaders from diverse companies. The five stages in that model were:

• Stage 1: Values (Awareness) Develop the will to take action.
• Stage 2: Action (Experimentation) Begin with a single project or experiment.
• Stage 3: Deepen (Systems Thinking) Explore implications of sustainability for all operations and decisions.
• Stage 4: Sustain (Resource Commitment) Commit to comprehensive plan with resource allocation (management focus, money), tracking and reporting.
• Stage 5: Learning and Advocacy (Sharing) Leadership and advocacy in industry; continuous learning.

Since the publication of The Leadership of Sustainability, at least two other staged models have been published highlighting different aspects of organizational engagement with sustainability. Peter Senge’s organization offers a model that describes the emerging “drivers” that push organizations deeper and deeper into engagement. Avastone Consulting offers a model that describes similar stages of engagement from the perspective or organizational perspectives or “mindsets.”

While not in exact agreement, these three models offer a surprisingly congruent picture of increasing degrees of intention and engagement.

Marketing’s Transformation on the Sustainability Road

Each stage of engagement with sustainability presents its own marketing challenges and opportunities. See Diagram. Large Format PDF Early engagement with sustainability is focused primarily on operational and administrative changes that reduce waste and conserve energy. The primary goal of most companies in the early stages is to save money.

At the Awareness Stage, marketers become conscious of consumer interest in “green” products and the role of environmental and social issues in purchase decisions. There’s also increased interest in cause-related promotion events that may have an environmental or social justice focus.

At the Action Stage, companies’ experiments with sustainability may not yet translate well into promotional or brand messages. Still, marketers begin exploring how to leverage the value of these experiments for marketing purposes.  They start to explore “green marketing” techniques (those tactics that have an environmental impact) and  eco-branding (building environmental values into brand image). They may explore the process of publishing sustainability reports, and take more concrete steps toward refining product/service line value propositions based on social, environmental factors. At this stage, they are also concerned about accusations of “green washing,” in which companies are accused of promoting superficial efforts of sustainability merely for their image/PR benefits.

At the Deepen Stage, however, both the organization and its marketing team are invited into the initial stages of what may lead to deep change. At this stage, the leaders we studied began to see the interconnections between their operational waste and energy strategies and “everything else.” They started to see the impact of such changes on their vendors or suppliers.  They began to see the potential response from community partners. They start to see the opportunities for collaboration in the community and industry to accomplish sustainability goals. According to other models, at this stage, companies also begin to see the opportunity in developing entirely new business strategies that integrate sustainability. Here we see a form of stakeholder marketing start to take hold as companies realize they have to manage increasingly deeper levels of conversation with the community, vendors, suppliers, and industry colleagues, not to mention  customers.  New business opportunities begin to emerge as companies realize consumers’ interests in seeing social and environmental criteria integrated into the company’s core products and services.

As a result, marketers who step up to the challenge may find themselves with new opportunities to lead conversations about the redesign of products/services for social, environmental factors and articulation of new pricing strategies.  Design and pricing conversations lead invariably to engagement with standards and certifications that assure truthfulness in marketing claims. As they begin to appeal to customers with sustainability oriented values, they’ll also be challenged to re-evaluate marketing tactics that are perceived as coercive or intrusive. And as companies grapple with multiple stakeholders and holding financial, social and environmental values simultaneously, they may determine that the metrics they’ve historically used are no longer adequate.

The Shift from Technical Change to Adaptive Change

As companies and their marketers continue to deepen their engagement, the changes that they are asked to make move from technical change to adaptive change. In technical change, we don’t fundamentally alter how we work. We add knowledge; we make incremental improvements in what we are already doing; and we stick basically to the strategies we’ve been using.

On the journey to sustainability, as in the path to transformed marketing, there’s a point where we are asked to begin to think differently about how we work.  Fundamental assumptions are challenged. We embark on new initiatives and enter new territory where few have gone before us. We have to take risks and learn together.

At the Sustain level of engagement, for example, marketers that have never before had to account for externalities in their pricing or product design strategies must now reframe the entire cost/value proposition of products and brands. An externality is a cost that occurs as a result of a commercial transaction that is not directly paid for at the time of purchase (the cost of waste disposal of an obsolete machine is one such externality).

Embracing the rationale for why companies should account for externalities is the right thing to do is a radical reframe of the role of the business for many. At this stage, companies also commit resources to developing strategic partnerships and fostering internal and external collaborations that bring additional expertise to bear on specific tasks.

At the Learning/Advocacy stage, companies are beginning to hit their stride in sustainability and are thinking about their businesses in fundamentally different ways than they did at the beginning of the journey. Sustainability is not something they “do,” it’s part of their core identity. As a result, marketers are often engaged in processes to rebrand and reposition the firm and its offerings in light of this full commitment. Additionally, companies are increasingly seen and act as thought leaders in their industries – advocating for sustainability practices, and sharing knowledge about their experiences.  Creating open standards and sharing expertise, rather than protecting company secrets for competitive advantage, is one of the adaptive challenges  of this stage.

Arriving at Transformed Marketing

At the Deepen, Sustain and Learning/Advocacy stages, we see an acceleration of change that results concurrently in transformed marketing. Changes that took place prior to these stages were necessary precursors to the adoption of transformed marketing. These changes raise the three key issues we previously outlined in The Transformation of Marketing:

Embracing a Systems Perspective – Companies began to embrace a systems perspective at the Deepen stage. An emerging web of relations and interconnections – in customers and markets, in the dynamics between community groups and strategic partners – continues to unfold for them as they gain experience.

Creating Social Good – By this stage, sustainability is less about something the firm does to make money, and has become more a way of life. The intrinsic value of building social good into the purpose and mission of the organization has become self-evident.

Living the Brand – The alignment of values, strategies and operational practices has advanced much more deeply, and as a result the company’s brand and image has authenticity and integrity. Trust is often a core brand value, and the company’s promotional practices are measured against that value.

At this stage of engagement, the coercive, intrusive, unethical and wasteful practices that undermine marketing have been eliminated by engagement with the values of sustainability. Additionally companies have cultivated relationships with stakeholders that allow for timely feedback on whether company practices are compromising brand promises or shared values. This feedback allows the company to self-correct more quickly and restore balance and integrity to its marketing practices.

The Road Less Travelled

The current business and political interest in sustainability makes this path toward the transformation of marketing likely the road more travelled.  Some companies that currently practice high-integrity marketing did not get there via sustainability, but rather through an ethic of care for all people they touch in their day to day interactions.  As I wrote in The Transformation of Marketing “we are fortunate in this time that research… is confirming their collective hunch that a seemingly radical commitment to marketing that works for all also turns out to be a good way to make money. “

As always, we invite your comments, experiences and stories. Please write to us.

See the related article: Fulfilling Sustainability’s Potential: Growing the Top Line – about the role of marketing in creative strategic sustainability innovation.