Sustainability
Sustainability is a competitive advantage. It’s an opportunity to lower costs, increase efficiencies, gain loyalty and edge out the other guy. Sustainability is also change, and change doesn’t come without risk, emotion and carefully managed communication.
For the past six years, Cohn & Wolfe has conducted Green Brands, the foremost survey on what consumers – not scientists – think about the importance of sustainability. This year, we interviewed more than 9,000 consumers in nine countries, and found out which brands worldwide they considered to be the greenest. Yes, that’s right – the brands consumers consider to be the greenest, which is often different than what you’d expect.
It’s these insights that help us guide clients in their sustainability communication strategy, which has become a high risk balancing act: undersell your efforts and you’ll be quickly trumped by someone else who is willing to raise the bar. Oversell your position and consumer backlash may build into a movement against your brand.
Of course, when it comes to sustainability, the stakeholders are many and agendas are broad and deep. You need to be at once bold and measured; ambitious and humble; comprehensive and clear; and, above all, genuine and transparent.
You need a partner with both the knowledge and imagination to help businesses create necessary change for our economy, our environment and our communities.
You can find out more about Green Brands 2011 and Cohn & Wolfe’s Global Sustainability Practice at the links below.