Marketing’s Role in Promoting Sustainability

Generally accepted to mean meeting our needs today without compromising the quality of life of future generations, sustainability is without doubt a big issue that all of us must address. But what role can marketing play in achieving sustainability? And to what extent can we influence this enormous subject area?

Heres something that may surprise you: IT equipment is responsible for approximately 2% of greenhouse gases—roughly the same percentage as emissions from all the world’s airlines. With this in mind, it is important that IT organisations be part of the sustainability agenda, not only by employing sound business practices and being themselves well regarded as sustainable enterprises, but by ensuring that the services they provide educate, promote, and enable sustainable practices for others, whether employees, customers, or shareholders.

One trend that has been under the spotlight in recent years is offshoring. Incurring both positive and negative social implications for both home and host nations, the balance with regard to sustainability appears to lie in the way a company employs the practice of offshoring—and the company’s actions towards the various people and communities affected. If your organisation is the provider of offshoring services, your responsibilities are viewed by many to extend even further: Not only must you ensure that your own actions are responsible ones, you must ensure that your customers are using your services in a responsible way, because their actions can affect your reputation. When you consider the relationship between reputation and brand and the effect it can have on business performance, the reason we must help drive strategy in this space becomes increasingly clear.

A brief look down the list of companies included in the Dow Jones Worldwide Sustainability Index demonstrates that a good number of us take this subject seriously. According to Ninder Takhar, head of marketing sustainability at BT Global Services, “For a number of years, BT has been working towards operating in a way that either sustains or enhances society, the environment, and the economy. Our leadership in the telecommunications sector of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the last six years is recognition of our efforts in this area. We will now be offering consultancy and solutions to our global clients to help enterprises to develop sustainable operations inside their organisations and externally with suppliers, customers, and stakeholders.”

Sometimes trying to convince a client of the importance of sustainability can be an uphill struggle if his or her own organisation has not yet opened its arms to the idea. In a special report, CIO.com suggested that the secret to getting more CIOs to take sustainability seriously is to demonstrate that it is an opportunity for them rather than yet another cost or bureaucratic burden. Although changes to the data centre setup, for example, rarely directly affect the CIO (power costs typically sit within the remit of facilities), there are certainly areas where CIOs have achieved the holy grail of business practice: turning cost centres into revenue streams. One such example involves the disposal of old equipment. The implications of the EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive will be seen by many as adding extra cost to the business, but through a considered IT asset management strategy, including upgrades for internal use and sales to the second-hand user market, it needn’t add cost.

In summary, strategy, balance, and a long-term view are essential for an organisation to have credibility when it comes to sustainability. It is more than a one-off message or PR spin, and it is more than an internal view; sustainability is about ensuring that the products and services we offer uphold sustainable practices in the organisations we provide them to. If we get this right, the world really will be a better place.

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