According to Philip Kotler, “the concept of sustainable marketing holds that an organization should meet the needs of its present consumers without compromising the ability of future generations to fulfill their own needs.”
To his words, we will add that sustainable marketing must be able to fulfill the core objectives of its activity, generating wealth for the business and the community in which it operates, responding to customer needs, without jeopardizing the future of the next generations, both in environmental and social terms.
In fact, there are several studies that focus on marketing and advertising as an activity with a cultural impact, whose influence can dictate the adoption, normalization or change of social behavior. The message disseminated by a brand is one of the most powerful tools that marketing has, and therefore, when talking about sustainable marketing, we speak of the power that marketers have to generate awareness and influence more sustainable purchase decisions, creating a new consumer culture.
When deciding on its strategy, a company chooses the path of sustainability, the role of marketing becomes even more crucial and goes through much more than communicating that the brand is “green”.
Thinking the offer:
Marketing must work directly with product managers, using insights about their typical customers to create an offer that responds to their needs, concerns, and constraints. By putting its key departments to work together, the company will be able to combine sustainability with profit, not giving up the core objective of its business, but always considering the function and life cycle of the product, both in environmental and social terms.
Generate awareness:
Sustainable marketing must assume its mission of influencing the public, but also stakeholders and investors. This is his role as an educator, making known the benefits of choosing a strategy in which profit goes hand in hand with the concern for the future of the planet and the common good of society.
Consider partnerships:
In a world of sustainable growth, cooperation plays a decisive role. Companies realize that together they can create greater impact and that sustainability is more easily achieved when we move in the same direction. Rivalry and innocuous speeches about who is “greener” must be replaced by meaningful collaborations that can lead to improvements in legislation, which is still long overdue in these matters.
Are there challenges? Many! Marketing is a pioneer in the sustainability journey. The effort to show its benefits and educate a company’s decision makers and investors is a daily effort and, for this, a coherent plan is needed, with return on investment, and that always contributes to the brand’s reputation – communicating that we are green, without being truly transparent and truth regarding the product or service that the customer purchases, does “more harm than good” and has nothing to do with sustainable marketing.
Digital Marketing
ABC Sustainable Luxury Hospitality