Sustainability marketing vs sustainable marketing
I've been noticing that the terms, “sustainability marketing” and “sustainable marketing” are often used interchangeably, but they actually have different meanings!
Sustainability marketing is using your marketing to share details about your organisation’s positive impacts from its products and services plus ESG and sustainability initiatives.
At its heart, these initiatives recognise that when meeting the needs of the present, we must do so without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Sustainability isn’t a stand-alone campaign topic, but an ongoing and consistent conversation that runs across an organisation’s marketing and communications. It transparently shares what you’re doing to reduce your environmental impact, your progress (successes and challenges) and acknowledges what’s yet to be tackled.
Marketing teams are uniquely positioned to understand what their organisation stands for, what it is pursuing in terms of ESG and sustainability initiatives and how they fit into sustainability development plans and frameworks.
They should also be across the guidelines covering the areas in which they operate (such as the ACCC Making Environmental Claims guide in Australia) so greenwashing is avoided.
And, by knowing their customers, they can create a sustainability dialogue that uses the terms and language that resonates (eg rather than talking about circularity or closed loop systems, messaging can focus on reduce, reuse, repair behaviours).
Sustainable marketing is how marketing is making its own activities more sustainable and recognising how it contributes to its organisations’ own scope 1 emissions and its supply chain’s scope 3 emissions targets.
Sustainable marketing, ensures marketing strategies and plans are aligned and delivered to further their organisations’ sustainability agendas.
It ensures a responsible lens is cast over all marketing activities and communication so ensure it stays within relevant guidelines to avoid greenwashing and/or green hushing.
It explores analysing, reporting and reducing an organisation’s marketing digital carbon footprint - collaborating with internal colleagues to keep activities within carbon budgets and actively supports their reduction.
As examples:
🎥 Reducing the length of videos saves on the energy needed to host them as well as the energy needed by viewers to watch them.
🗼 Optimising your website’s SEO both increases traffic to your site, and can reduce the time visitors spend searching thereby reducing the energy and carbon they use.
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My mission is to support B2B companies that make a difference to people & the planet. Together we can make the world of tomorrow an environmentally better place for future generations. Feel free to DM me if you’d like chat about sustainability marketing or marketing sustainably in your organisation.