Reality and Perception

Congratulations to Marc Mathieu for continuing the current debate in the marketing world about the power of brands to drive social progress. This is about getting marketing teams to realise that when sustainability is made real, relevant and interesting to consumers, it can drive brand integrity and increase sales.

Step into the ring Puma and its clever little bag. This innovation, using 65% less paper than its old red shoeboxes, is a favourite: it’s genuinely ‘good’, it visually ‘good’ and it involves the consumer, who can use the bag over and over again. That little bag is a big platform for indicating to the world that Puma has values beyond profit. That’s why it’s so important that this kind of innovation is backed up by a credible strategy, and that’s also why it’s so relevant for corporate responsibility teams.

Mathieu has long been an advocate of the social power of brands. His latest suggestion is that marketing teams need to use a new language: one that’s more about people than profit objectives and targets. Those of you who read Greg Smith’s explosive resignation letter to Goldman Sachs this week might find that idea particularly topical. In it, he explained that he could no longer work for a company that talked internally about profit before people; that failed to put the interests of the customer at its heart. This is far from the image that the financial giant projects to its clients. So if the accusations are true, Goldman appears to have made its clever little bag before getting its house in order.

All this comes down to the simple question of whether the reality of a company’s values and sustainability is weaker or stronger than the image publicly projected. Sustainable Brands points to evidence that having a strong sustainability reality can reduce costs and risks, while achieving a strong perception of sustainability can drive up brand equity. Achieving both a reality and a perception of sustainability might seem the obvious thing to do, but too often those in charge of change fail to communicate it, and those in charge of communications fail to ensure the image they want to project is a reality. The current debate around the social role of marketing is good, but unless it sparks marketing teams to talk to strategy and corporate responsibility teams internally, we’re at risk of being flooded by greenwash.