Contemporary sustainability

Last month I held a seminar for all our clients about green marketing. We did a lot of research and the wonderful team did such a great job on this. One of the points that surprised us was actually how conscious the consumers were about sustainability not just being a “make good” thing, but had to be a strategy worth following for the companies. As one of our focus group members said, if it is not a good deal for the company then they can’t keep doing it. And further more they noted that we, as consumers have a huge role in this, because, where we put our money decides which solution is sustainable in the long run.As Peter Ingwardsen, director of danish fashion brand Noir, said in his issue of co-editing Eurowoman,  ”Everytime we buy, we vote for the world we want to see.This point is also stressed in Faris’ post on the bias in CSR where he adress’ the nature of CSR as a mean to a goal. “Of course they are. They are businesses. All they care about is money. That’s the function of business - to generate profits. (The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.) It doesn’t matter whether or not you think Milton Friedman was right. That’s the way businesses operate - their responsibility is to deliver profit for their shareholders.” Quote from Faris’ post on CSR.

When the rollercoaster reaches the top..

Last friday at the agency we had our fortnight management briefing, and came to discuss how the global financial state will impact the danish economy and our business. We can hear some of our clients being very concerned and some seems to don’t care at all. Those who care acts in two ways - pressing the speeder to defend marketshare in a more competitive environment, or some just stand on the break. It was an interesting discussion and made me think a lot about how we can better help our clients in this environment. Is there special competences we have to nurse and how do we help solve their challenges when the “going gets tough” in a cost efficient way.  

 

In my search for ideas and knowledge on this I fell over David Armanos recent post on this in a cool little prsentation. The presentation is 10 slides with each a point on how to thrive through a recession. See the post here or download it on slideshare here.