Behaviour Change

VIDEO: 5 Lessons to Engage “New Consumers”: BBMG’s New Report “Unleashed”

BBMGRecently my husband and I were reflecting on how great it is to finally feel we are in the mainstream of collective thought.

Most of our lives we’ve cared about global warming, organic food, personal growth, alternative medicine, organizational culture. But we’ve also for the longest time, felt like we’re part of a fringe culture. A friend solidified this feeling by saying to me years ago, “I’m glad someone cares about these things.”

But it seems like the long journey has finally started to push our beliefs into the mainstream.

Today, we feel like we are a part of a huge tribe that shares our values. And that feeling was confirmed by the recent BBMG report Unleashed: How New Consumers Will Revolutionize Brands and Scale Sustainability.

Here are the report’s key takeaways for reaching the 70 million new consumers in the U.S.:

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Big businesses must adapt or disappear – Capitalism 2.0 will not be kind to the laggards!

Global Business Coalition Meeting With Secretary-General Ban Ki-MoonA summit hosted by Sir Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver calls for a radical rethink of traditional business models.

A gathering of sustainability leaders hosted by Sir Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver has been warned that big businesses will be swept aside by emerging social enterprises unless they start changing their business models and contribute more to society.

Boudewijn Poelmann, who founded the hugely successful Dutch Postcode Lottery, which now operates in Sweden and the UK, said that many major businesses would disappear over the next 20 years, to be replaced by emerging social enterprises, unless they took off their blinkers and responded to the environmental and social challenges the world is facing.

“Small companies that are passionate about creating change will take over if big companies do not adapt,” he said. “We already see that with energy, with so many small companies producing sustainable clean energy. The big companies are already starting to feel they are losing out.”

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Selling Sustainability to Consumers: An Uphill Battle?

A-1956-Chevrolet-car-in-C-007To move towards a sustainable economy, consumers need to want it and that’s a challenge for communication professionals

Advertisers have long since abandoned any effort to sell their wares on the basis of functional performance. Instead, they sell on the basis of dreams, of myths – speaking about our feelings rather than the facts.

In the myths of advertising, cars are not devices for moving slowly among thousands of other cars from one shop, school or office to another: instead they are expressions of personal identity that streak along deserted mountain passes, glide through chrome-plated Bladerunner cityscapes and jauntily position us at the centre of an unbearably exciting social life. And food is not a source of nutrition consumed in hurried mouthfuls between one demand and another: it is an opportunity for happy family time, or for luxurious indulgence, or for helping us to be thin.

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VIDEO: Is Sustainable Consumption a Myth – No Different than the Easter Bunny?

Eco-labeling

Eco-labeling provides consumers with socially and environmentally friendly choices, but it also encourages even more consumption.

Across the globe the concept of sustainable consumption is being touted as the way of the future, a change in lifestyle and values that promises “green growth”–Across the globe the concept of sustainable consumption is being touted as the way of the future, a change in lifestyle and values that promises “green growth”– economic growth that doesn’t hurt the environment. Though not without obstacles and controversy, this concept has been embraced by policymakers, consumers, and industry. The idea is that, by providing consumers with a choice of products reflecting their new environmental values, the market will self-regulate its way towards a more sustainable future, one in which supermarket shelves are lined with ecologically friendly products, and workers in developing countries are receiving fair wages for their labor. Eco-labeling, taxes on water and energy consumption, recycling incentives, education and communication campaigns, and advertising are examples of methods to promote sustainable consumption, all of which are endorsed by the OECD.

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Should Banks Tie Their Lending Practices To Climate Change Impacts?

Raz GodelnikIf someone is already working on the list of climate heroes for 2013, I’d like to add another candidate – Angie Kim. You probably never heard of her, but let me tell you this – a single letter she wrote earlier this month could prove more effective in weakening the fossil fuel industry than Bill McKibben’s divestment campaign.

In her letter of February 13, Ms. Kim, who is attorney-adviser at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) notified PNC that it doesn’t approve PNC’s request to omit a climate change shareholder proposal submitted by Boston Common Asset Management. In this proposal PNC was asked to provide its shareholders its “assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from its lending portfolio and its exposure to climate change risk in its lending, investing, and financing activities.”

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