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Fighting for the Sustainable Consumer: A Conversation on Branding, Economic Growth, Risk & Value Propositions

11 Friday Jul 2014

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Do consumers care about sustainability or the sustainable attributes of products and services? Would you book a “greener” hotel if the prices were comparative? Did you start paying more attention to labels after the Rana Plaza fire?

When the discussion turns to issues like purpose, risk and connecting consumers with sustainability, Henk Campher becomes fidgety. The Senior Vice President for Business + Social Purpose with Edelman has been at this for a while. Between working with brands like Starbucks, Levi’s, Best Buy, Abbott Labs and REI and leading the Oxfam International Coffee Campaign, Campher has built a reputation for challenging the status quo while operating within the trenches of corporate corridors.

Recently, he wrote a DoShorts book titled Creating a Sustainable Brand: A Guide to Growing the Sustainability Top Line [get 15% off by using Campher15 in the voucher section] to put some of his strategies and ideas on paper. We sat down for a conversation on the ideas he presents in the book, why he believes that consumers have bought into sustainability, where he sees the PR industry headed as well as his thoughts on separating the chaff from the substance of sustainability claims [Full disclosure: I was one of the reviewers of the book].

Henk_Campher Excerpts:

You write that the problem is not that consumers don’t want to purchase sustainable products, it’s that brands are unable to bring sustainability to life for consumers. Tips?

The most common mistake companies make is to lean too far to either the sustainability of the product or focus too much on how it comes to life for the consumer. The sustainability of a product is only one part of the story – the what part of a sustainable brand. To bring it to life for the consumer, you have to balance this with how this relates to them.

It is a delicate balance but extremely important. Think of the what part as showing the consumer the arms, legs, etc. of the product. It only tells them what it is but it doesn’t create a connection. To bring it to life we should show the personality and all the quirkiness of the brand – the how – to help them connect and care about the product.

Sustainable branding is very much like dating – you don’t go on a date because the other person breathes and resembles a human being. No, you go beyond that to try to make a connection with how that person relates to you and how you can build a relationship. It will be nothing more than a brief fling if you don’t have that connection.

The same for a product – you need to become a sustainable brand or else you will remain a cheap date and/or brief fling. The model described in the book is meant to be a guide on how to build this long-term relationship AND an insider’s guide on how to keep the relationship fresh.

 

Materiality matrices don’t matter to consumers but they’re proving important in helping companies focus. How can they use these to also engage their consumers?

Start balancing your materiality assessments a bit more. Too often the voices of stakeholders heard in materiality assessments are the loudest and not necessarily the most important voices. Activists, NGOs and sustainability influencers are the ones measured and engaged to inform the materiality assessment. But consumer and customer voices are almost completely absent.

Yet, they remain the most important stakeholder – they bring in the money and add to your business top line! Bringing in their voices will help you determine what areas are truly most material to your company and your most important stakeholders. It will tell you where your major threats and opportunities are as it relates to consumers.

Of course materiality assessments suffer from only focusing on the impact of the product on the supply chain. However, that is only part of the story.

As I argue in the book, you can create the most sustainable cigarette but it is still a cigarette. You have to give equal weight to the impact of the product itself. This will help you determine the weaknesses in how something is made as well as the actual impact of the product itself and help you dodge the dreaded claim of greenwashing.

But how sustainable the product itself is only tells you one side of the story.

It tells us what we should focus on when we engage the consumer but not how we should engage them. The next step will vary from brand to brand – determining how sustainability comes to life in the brand. What is the unique value proposition of sustainability in the brand? How deeply is sustainability embedded in the brand identity? How does it show itself to the consumer? Is it disruptive in engaging the consumer or more reserved?

That’s the model I develop in the book – merging the what and how to create a sustainable brand that resonates with the consumer.

Campher_tips

Getting used to failure is tough – you offer a healthy dose of how the best of brands have gone through it. Some tips for our risk-averse private sector?

Failure isn’t tough – it is part of being in business.

Companies who say they are risk averse are doomed to fail. They will still be making the same boring product that increasingly fewer people buy in the future. It was a risk to create the first iPod. It was a risk to create Tesla. It was a risk to create TOMS. It was a risk to take Dove to where it is today. Sustainability folks are risk averse because they are selling sustainability instead of selling a business opportunity.

And I don’t mean improving the bottom line. That has been done and there is no risk left there. Sustainability folks need to step out of their box and become part of business from a product and brand perspective and deliver against the consumer opportunity.

But it’s not just the sustainability people. It is also the communications and marketing people. They think throwing more money at advertising, PR, social media, etc. will create the breakthrough they need to survive. That isn’t risk. That is table stakes and nothing different from what your competitors are doing. At best you can hope for a better campaign.

We need these groups to understand how sustainability can add to the simple question people ask when they buy a product or service – why should I give a damn?

The answer is more complex than a pure sustainability story but sustainability is absolutely part of the answer. Communication and marketing people speak a different language than sustainability people and in the book I try to bridge that gap to get them to both speak “business.” And business is all about calculated risk taking.

 

“We’ve embedded sustainability into the very core of our business.” We’ve heard this classic line or a similar version of it a million times by now. It’s classic PR speak – but is there any organization out there that could truly say that and demonstrate it?

Lies, damn lies and sustainability PR.

My other favorite line is “sustainability is in our DNA.” No it is not. Making money is in your DNA.

Jokes aside, the simple answer is yes there are companies with sustainability at the core of their business. Method, Seventh Generation, Tesla, etc. were created with a specific sustainability goal in mind. They aren’t perfect but it is absolutely at the core of who they are. But a true answer is a bit more complex than that.

In the book I create a framework to show how sustainability can come to life in a brand. Sometimes it is truly at the core but in most cases it comes to life in very different ways. I identify eight ways in the framework– from ignored to designed. Method is an example of a brand that was designed with a sustainability goal in mind – absolutely at the core of their business. A brand like TOMS was inspired by a sustainability challenge while a brand like Dove aligned itself with a sustainability challenge.

In short, sustainability isn’t a simple black and white world and it constantly changes. And sustainability isn’t perfect.

The only cliché that might be right is the “journey” bit. But it is crucial that we acknowledge and show the different ways that sustainability is part of a brand, as it will direct the kind of engagement we should have with the consumer. You can’t just go out and hit the consumer (or anyone) over the head with a “sustainability is core to our business” baloney. No one will believe it. Know how it is part of you and then find a way to express it in a way that is relevant to both the consumer as well as the brand itself.

A few weeks ago, you participated in a Twitter chat we hosted on the confluence of business sustainability and economic growth. How would a “sustainable brand” approach the conundrum?

I think the “conundrum” is a bit of a red herring.

We can absolutely not consume the way we consume at the moment and we have to understand how to create sustainable economic growth. However, economic growth isn’t a problem when it comes to sustainability. The problem is that the way the economy is growing currently is unsustainable. For instance, in the U.S. you have an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor. A more equal distribution of the wealth created by economic growth needs to happen.

It can be done – look at Germany, gap between CEO pay and average worker pay is much lower, they have a much higher minimum wage, outgrow the U.S. economy with higher taxes, more social benefits for the poor, a balance of trade in favor of them, etc. Everything that pundits say will undermine economic growth is flipped on its head in Germany – and it’s working.

It is only a “conundrum” because of a lack of political and economic will to address the unsustainable elements of the economy.

On the consumption side, the world will be fine if people consume more of the sustainable stuff. TOMS and Timberland instead of cheap knock-offs on the streets. Levi’s and GAP instead of fast fashion. Fresh fruit and vegetables locally grown instead of fast food. A Tesla or Leaf instead of a gas guzzler. Renewable energy instead of coal. Method or Seventh Generation instead of high pollutant chemicals.

There’s no problem if growth is based on more sustainable choices. How do we get consumers to do this? Well, like I say in the book… more sustainable brands that look at product and brand!

You’ve worked with numerous companies on brand development over the last two decades. What has shifted?

Firstly, social media and the connected world have redefined how brands interact with consumers. Twenty years ago, companies owned brands and sold that to the consumer. Today, they are merely custodians of the brand and consumers own it. The more agile businesses realize that the easier it will be for them to be trusted as the custodians of the brand – the more consumers will give them their loyalty.

Secondly, price Campher_LRand quality have become increasingly meaningless parts of a brand. Companies know that it is almost impossible to compete on price and have brand value. They would love to think that there is a huge quality difference between them and their major competitors but there isn’t. For instance, the difference between most cars in the same category is almost meaningless. So how do consumers make their choices? According to the value proposition offered by the brand.

Finally, the ways in which brand value proposition comes to life for the consumer has shifted. The days of the big advertising campaign is gone. Today they want you to not only be part of their lives but also do things that are unexpected and disruptive. Consumers are flooded with information and visual stimuli each day. How you break through all of that clutter is key. And that goes beyond simple shiny objects. You have to build it into your brand identity and value proposition – so it is as much strategic as tactical.

 

What remains as challenging?

The single biggest remaining challenge is how most companies remain paralyzed by fear without them even knowing it. Companies’ inability to think outside of their walls and being frozen inside those walls are their biggest failures. They are still navel gazing and seeing the world from only their perspective instead of truly understanding the world.

It comes back to the risk question you asked before – you won’t win if you don’t take risks. But so often companies will say they want to win but don’t really have the guts to do it. This is the difference between good brands and winning brands. Like an athlete – Dick Fosbury (go look it up!) changed the world of high jumping because he was willing to by-pass conventional thinking. Apple and TOMS did the same.

Yes you can point out all their faults but they kicked your backside because they weren’t afraid. Why? Because they didn’t look at what you were doing but rather looked at the problem and the consumer and created something to fill that void.

The other major challenge is how shareholders continue to drive company leaders instead of customers. This problem is too obvious to even state but they are so focused on the next quarter and shareholders that they forgot why they even exist. Imagine if they put as much attention to what their consumers truly want.

You work at the unique cusp between classic public relations and responsible brand development. Where do you see the PR sector headed in the next 20 years?

Sustainability will be like digital skills. It will be part of every single part of the PR sector. It won’t be a separate practice anymore but we are still a very long way from achieving that. Too many PR hacks think they can just make it up as they go. Create a cause here and a consumer campaign there. They will get burnt so many times until they move on and the industry really starts to up-skill all of their people.

Remember, agencies are as vulnerable as any of their clients. The hyper transparent world means that any consumer and activist can look at what agency is behind the greenwashing. No one expects perfection but they better start waking up before they are hit by their own BP-style disaster.

My biggest fear is that PR agencies don’t realize that their people are highly under skilled to handle the shifting world and impact of creating a sustainable brand. The industry will be caught out if they don’t start relooking at what they do and whether their people are geared towards the changing world.

And, of course, for them to be a sustainable PR brand, they will need to start asking what the impact of their service is. The model created in this book goes beyond products – it covers services, software, social media and everything else in between.

A main question remains – do you have a sustainable brand?

The answer for the PR sector is the same as with most other sectors – simply, no. But follow the model and you can start creating your sustainable brand. [Grab a copy of Creating a Sustainable Brand: A Guide to Growing the Sustainability Top Line – get 15% off by using Campher15 in the voucher section.]

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on May 8, 2014.

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Changing Business from the Inside Out: How to Pursue a Career in CSR and Sustainability

07 Monday Jul 2014

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What does one do to get a job in the field of corporate social responsibility? And moreover, how do you excel at something so nebulous and undefined?

I’ve spent the last eight years trying to decode these issues and report about what companies are doing to not only embrace the essential message underlining CSR but also integrate a sense of responsibility within their culture. I interviewed practitioners, researched numerous CSR reports, and conducted multiple surveys on the issue to identify what exactly translates into a “CSR career” or “CSR job”.

While feedback, comments and social media indicated that my reporting was helping raise awareness and compelling professionals to think about their choices, I realized that what we needed was a reference guide, an encyclopedia of sorts, a How-To of practical tips from executives who are embedded in large corporations and have experience influencing change, leading behavior change and staying patient when the profits vs. CSR debate rears its head.

Turns out, Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Treehugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations is the handbook I was looking for.

Written by Tim Mohin, Director of Corporate Responsibility at AMD, the book offers critical pieces of advice and practical tips for current and aspiring professionals who believe they can make a difference through their careers.

Tim_MohinAnd that is the segment that Mohin wants to target. He told me a couple of years ago that he wanted to write a book aimed at people who “want to change the world through business.” Then, jobs were  few and we were struggling as an economy. Occupy Wall Street was yet to take shape.  And corporations were focused on surviving a deep recession not worrying about their social responsibility quotient.

But as we know today, this recession has not only furthered the divide between consumers, employees and corporations on a whole host of social, environmental and economic issues, but also pointed the finger to each and every one of us. Where does the blame lie? How did we get here?

In this vacuum of trust in the marketplace, Mohin’s book is a much-needed antidote for professionals and students who want to restore our economy, while protecting the environment and benefitting society, but lack the practical advice.

Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Treehugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations

We sat down for a heart to heart about the book, his tips, his journey at AMD and much more.

“The book is meant for people who want to use their careers to change the world. I want to enable the next generation to create the change they want to see happen,” he began. For Mohin, a vocal co-supporter of student-led organization Net Impact whose conferences attract thousands of job seekers, students and professionals each year, the field isn’t as “rosy as it looks.” [Note: Net Impact members get a discount!]

“Increasingly I felt that people who wanted to have a meaningful career didn’t understand what the field involves. There are certain sets of skills that need to be acquired,” he added.

The CSR field is growing. And companies are starting to respond to what was primarily a movement driven by activists, students and academia, by creating CSR departments and integrating corporate citizenship into business strategy.

Each of these points of integration, implementation and planning however, requires specific skill sets. And as more job opportunities emerge, Mohin believes it is up to the incumbents to educate and mentor an “army of professionals who can work in CSR and sustainability.”

Should Companies Create CSR Departments?

He likened the evolution of CSR to the quality movement in the 1980s when every company responded by starting a quality department. “Today, large companies realize that they must have someone in charge of CSR. It’s not a new department per se but builds upon the community, public affairs or environmental teams and adds on other parts of corporate citizenship,” he said.

Now, the question of having CSR departments has always triggered opposing reactions among professionals, executives and job seekers. Should CSR be a separate department? Or an integrated element of everyone’s job description? Or a C-suite led initiative?

For Mohin there is no debate, contrary to what several of his peers in corporate America have told me.

“I do think we need a department: it should be senior, small and strategic. Fundamentally, what that department is doing is setting direction, vision and key performance indicators [KPIs]. But the real work is being done by traditional line management functions.”

“For example, most companies need to have a CR council and together we work through top-level  goals to meet our vision, execution and measurement. When you look at CSR, it’s too broad for any one manager to manage. By nature, it’s a cross cutting service group that works with others to get the job done,” he emphasized.Tim_Mohin_Book

“But if there is no one in charge, it gets lost and nothing gets done.”

Preparing for a Career in CSR

But many of the skills, programs and business processes are transferable outside the CSR function, as I discover every time I interviewed a CSR executive and analyze their career’s trajectory. Mohin concurs. “Remember that most CSR functions simply report the news,” he told me, adding, “The news, though, is created in line management and mainstream corporate roles like procurement, HR, legal, and supply chain.”

Mohin’s advice hits home. For years, I have advised students and professionals that to forge a career in CSR, they must first develop a sector expertise, a specific skill set and then decide which element of CSR they can fit into. Using “I want to work in CSR” is never a good starting point.

For the author, it comes down to “Skills, Processes and Programs.”

“In chapter one, I identify how CSR has evolved at companies and how organizational structure affects the practice. Use this to figure out where you fit. Then turn to chapter two, where I list out the skills necessary for a successful career in CSR,” he said.

Once you’ve identified where you fit, chapter three and four offer a crash course in CSR strategy and how to respond to emerging issues. The rest of the book focuses on the many different programs under the umbrella of CSR. “So pick the one that applies to your skills and passion and then understand how to excel in that particular field,” he explained.

Apple, Gap & Nike: Supply Chain Crucial Area for CSR Jobseekers

For example, supply chain is an area that Mohin has devoted part of his career to while at Apple. But his emphasis – two long chapters – on the area of supply chain has more to it than passion or experience. “For me, this area is the No. 1 growth area in corporate responsibility. When you see the trend starting back a few years ago with Nike and Gap’s supply chain woes, and now Apple in the electronics industry, the critical importance of supplier responsibility becomes clear,” he said.

“Now it’s becoming embedded in companies more so than ever before because of outsourcing. Companies have found outsourcing to be cheaper and strategically more efficient for them. But accompanying that, we need a supplier responsibility program, therefore the growing demand for professionals who can understand all the nuances of both supply chain and social responsibility,” he said.

Another important reason that there are jobs in this area: Supplier responsibility is a big, complicated task. “One that requires quite a large team of skilled professionals. At Apple, it started with just me and I quickly hired a small ream but if you compare to Gap, I believe they have about 70 people in labor standards. Disney has even more,” he said, adding, “Now, imagine the scope and scale of managing all social responsibility for suppliers of all the Fortune 500 companies.”

Running a Data-Driven Program: Leading Through Influence

In order to drive a CSR program, however, whether it is supplier responsibility or environmental impact, every project requires a robust method set in place for the collection and analysis of relevant  data that can feed strategy and project the achievability of goals.

And that’s where Mohin places his bets for success.

A common thread at every company he has worked for, including Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Apple, is managing data-driven programs. The ability to set quantifiable goals and measure progress has been a crucial aspect of his career in corporate responsibility. “[Data] has been a hallmark of my career,” he said.

So much so that Mohin has devoted an entire chapter on the need for establishing meaningful goals and knowing what to measure. In the book – chapter four – he uses the examples of Intel, Coca-Cola and Starbucks to exemplify his emphasis. In our conversation, he referred to lessons from his tenure at Intel.

“When I was the environmental manager at Intel, the first thing I did was establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so that we could start measuring our global environmental performance and forecasting the future. As soon as we figured it out, senior management wanted to know. And because we were focused on the data, we were quickly able to identify the process changes and reductions that decreased our emissions even while production was increasing,” he recalled.

His advice?

“[You] need to be able to understand what’s important for your business and your stakeholders and how you can quantify progress in these areas to be successful. These metrics together become a dashboard seen by senior management regularly so they track the success measures and identify areas to improve. Running your program this way ensures that you will get the engagement and buy-in needed for a successful corporate responsibility strategy,” he said.

“Once you start to measure what’s important to your business and your stakeholders, you start to see alignment.”

Finally, I asked him to list the top skills he believes anyone aspiring to excel in CSR and sustainability must have. [Buy the Book]

In Mohin’s words, you must be:

1. A Lifelong Learner

“In corporate responsibility, you have to be flexible and curious. You’re often working in areas that are not your strong suit but if you’re open to new experiences and unafraid to be the dumbest kid in the class, this field is for you. Not everyone has that kind of personality. You have to be comfortable in your skin. And, it helps to have a thick skin.”

2. Able to Lead & Influence Without Being the Decision Maker

“You must be able to lead and influence when you’re not making all the decisions leading up to the end goal. You must be able to understand the system well – such as identifying and building relationships with those who have the budget and the authority to get things done – and be able to work with them and influence across a broad spectrum of people and groups to work toward a common goal.”

3. Able to Communicate Well

“It is one thing to know your business and another to describe it to someone else who may not know your business as well. It’s like talking to your mother about CSR. To be able to do this job, you have to be a good communicator. It’s a critical skill in many fields but absolutely essential in CSR. CSR leaders are like the ‘de-coder ring’ in many companies because they have to understand the inner workings of many business groups and explain it to others.”

4. Social Media Savvy

“The world of communications has changed in fundamental ways and the future will be very different too. We need to stay on top of were communication is headed – and right now, that’s social media.”

“What I learned from social media is that I get more out of it than I put in. I learn something new every day through social media. Communication is happening in real-time with real content and being social media savvy is an essential element to be effective in many fields.”

5. Able to Understand the Importance of Stakeholder Relations

“Remember that the field of CSR is new, it’s evolving. But also remember that social media and hyper transparency are becoming the new normal, which makes stakeholder engagement not just a priority, but essential.”

“The world is watching and CSR is about our behavior as a company. If you’re not asking people ‘how you are doing?’ and ‘how you can get better?’ then you’re flying blind.”

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on August 16, 2012.

Occupy Wall Street & Corporate America According to Michael Moore

25 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Interesting segment of Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN with Michael Moore in the hot seat and a live town hall to discuss Occupy Wall Street. Some of the highlights that made me think:

Who is to blame for today’s mess?

MM: One hundred percent corporate America. I don’t blame the government because corporate America funds and rules the government. The politicians act as their funders ask them to so blaming D.C. isn’t going to help anyone. The root cause is corporate America.

Are the “Occupiers” against capitalism or capitalist greed?

MM: Depends on who you ask. For students, this is about the debt they have when they graduate. For the parents, it’s the mortgage they owe on a house that is worth less than half of what they owe in debt. For many others, it is unemployment, lack of affordable health care, the manipulative bank industry and so much more.

Apple has more employees in China today than domestically and in many ways the company has become emblematic with capitalism. Isn’t China at least part of the problem?

MM: Part of the problem yes but do you know how much debt a student has when he/she graduates from Peking University? Zero dollars. American students? An average of $35,000.

It all started when General Motors decided that making $4 billion in profits wasn’t enough. That they had to stretch it to $5 billion and to do so, they would have to migrate tens of thousands of jobs to China.

And guess what, if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were two entrepreneurs trying to start Apple today, they would have received no help from their local or national banks. That’s the America we are living in today.

——————

Also on my radar, the excellent coverage on CSRwire’s Talkback lately re: Occupy Wall Street:

Occupy Wall Street Considers A New Economy
Is the Occupy Movement a Call for Sustainability?
For Responsibility, Occupy Government as well as Wall Street

As Steve Jobs Departs, A Review of Our Love-Hate Relationship With Apple…and Sustainability

24 Wednesday Aug 2011

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As we slowly recover from the stupor of the not completely unexpected news that Steve Jobs has stepped down as Apple’s CEO, here’s a post from recent months that’s worth a retake.

Context: At Business for Social Responsibility’s (BSR) annual conference last year, Edelman’s Managing Director for Corporate Citizenship Carol Cone released the 2010 Good Purpose Study with a dramatic declaration: “Cause marketing is dead.”

The main overarching finding of the study, as regular readers will recall, was this:

87 percent of consumers worldwide believe that business needs to equate at least equal weight on society’s interests as on business interests.

Accompanying Cone at the release were panelists from Levi Strauss, PepsiCo and a personal favorite: The Economist‘s Matthew Bishop, who amid the hype and hoopla of the report, quietly asked: “Are we really going to stop buying Apple because of its crappy environmental policies?”

An excerpt, originally published on Vault’s CSR blog: In Good Company:

The GoodPurpose study by Edelman

“Cause marketing is dead”

That controversial statement is how Cone opened the panel, adding, “That [cause marketing] world is way over. Purpose has replaced cause marketing and branding.” Companies aren’t building marketing plans around a cause anymore, she argued. Rather, “they are infusing their very strategy and business model with purposeful corporate citizenship.”

Defining real purpose

Picking up where Cone left off, the always-entertaining Matthew Bishop began with a prediction: “If we continue the current road toward demanding transparency and corporate social responsibility, within the next five to 10 years, we will begin to see corporate board meetings being live streamed to select people.”

Chuckling about the ambitiousness of his own statement, he went on to note, “Likewise, the real question is how much of this data [in the Good Purpose study] is picking up on aspirations rather than real choices [of consumers].”

PepsiCo: Performance with Purpose

Alleging that PepsiCo’s latest mantra of “Performance with Purpose” was indeed a verification of this shift from cause marketing to purposeful corporate citizenship at companies, Communications Director for PepsiCo Americas Beverages Melisa Tezanos gave high points to CEO Indra Nooyi for pushing for a company-wide cultural change that today drives all their business functions.

[READ: Pepsi Takes Performance with Purpose to Heart: An Interview with Chief Personnel Officer Cynthia Trudell]

“However, Nooyi is completely unapologetic about giving ‘performance’ as much importance as the ‘purpose’ part and she makes no bones about it,” said Tezanos, adding that this helps everyone across the company stay committed to a culture of profitability with purpose. Explaining the drivers behind PepsiCo’s highly successful Refresh project, she further stated, “For millennials, social responsibility is huge. We’ve seen through research again and again that their purchase intent goes up significantly when the brand is associated with a good cause.”

And finally, referring to the findings of the Edelman study—and Cone’s earlier comment, she said, “Marketing used to be blamed for being short-termism. Today, marketers are the biggest defenders of long-termism.”

But would you give up Cola…or Apple?

Bringing the conversation back to a level plain field, Bishop concluded with a sobering thought, “But what is real and what is fake with purpose? Will Pepsi ever move beyond the heart of its products, i.e., increasing obesity? Are we really going to stop buying Apple [products] because they have crappy environmental policies?”

———————————–

Just some food for thought as we go on a whirlwind ride with the media in coming days on the history, the present, and the future of America’s favorite company, Apple. Don’t forget to add your perspective by leaving a comment or connecting with me @AmanSinghCSR.

And if you haven’t already, share your opinion on whether social media engagement make better brands or more effective leaders by taking this new BRANDfog survey on social media and leadership.

More on Edelman’s Good Purpose study: Encompassing 7,259 respondents in 13 countries, the study was conducted by consulting firm StrategyOne with the objective of analyzing whether—and how much—purpose plays into purchase decisions worldwide, and further, how these transform into consumer activism via social media.

Sustaining Timberland: An Interview with VP of CSR Mark Newton

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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When one of the country’s few purpose-based and values-driven company announces new sustainability goals, chances are you won’t be as excited as you would be if it was BP, for instance.

Because we expect ambitious and aggressive goals from leaders, and at Timberland, this expectation is part of everyone’s job.

Before the boot maker announced its new set of revised sustainability goals earlier this week, I caught up with Timberland’s new Vice President for CSR Mark Newton on his new role, the goals, as well as their latest efforts at stakeholder engagement: Timberland’s new Communications Portal.

Sustainability: From Apple and Dell to Timberland

Newton, who has spent his entire career working on sustainability at electronics giants like Motorola, Apple, and most recently Dell, understands that the road ahead will be rocky as Timberland completes its merger with VF. VF owns several outdoor brands like The NorthFace, Wrangler, Jansport and Nautica.

We started with the new 2015 goals. What’s new about them?

“Focus,” said Newton. “Moving forward it is very important that we create focus for our companies, including a commitment to innovate from cradle to cradle.”

Timberland’s 2015 Sustainability Goals

Set in four broad categories of Climate, Product, Factories and Service; the goals are ambitious and aggressive, if not new or radically life-changing. I asked Newton the purpose of each category.

Climate: “This is a topical focus for us if not so much a functional one. But we’re not saying we’re going to be singularly focused on climate change but that this affects our customers and decisions and therefore, we must equip them with decisions and the right products.”

Product: “At some point we all want to start creating innovations that have a zero footprint. The idea is to move toward a vision of a closed loop product lifecycle. You can see where we are and where we want to go. It is directionally correct.”

Factories: “We have an obligation that is not just transactional to our suppliers, employees and other stakeholders. The whole idea of sustainability is to stay in business. In perpetuity, we cannot do that without treating our employees well and scaling our business properly.”

Service: “Timberland was founded on the idea of commerce and justice, of giving back and creating value. We offer our employees 40 hours to volunteer every year. Today we are asking what the impact of that workforce is. Where are we going with this, how do we prioritize our efforts and do it well?”

What underlines all of these goals and their success, however, is engaging and changing consumer behavior.

Changing Consumer Behavior: Timberland-style or VF-style?

Earlier this year, at the Annual GreenBiz conference, Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz said that sometimes companies have to lead consumers by taking a stand on what is right. “You cannot always wait for consumer demand to dictate your decisions,” he said.

Now with Timberland becoming a part of the VF family, are dynamics shifting? Will the merger bring a renewed and united effort in the apparel industry to shift consumer behavior or lead to inertia and inaction?

I put the question to Newton, who while new in his role, is a veteran in the consumer products industry. “We are having several conversations around this. We are Timberland and we will always be that. This is the reason people are interested in EarthKeepers and we will continue to move the needle,” he said.

What about Swartz’s inspiring declaration? Newton offered Timberland’s EarthKeepers product line as an example:

“The ultimate goal of every company that is working on sustainability is to be able to drive top line growth because of its sustainability efforts. It’s very rare to see top line growth associated with these things, many companies are running leaner and end up staying within compliance. At Timberland, our EarthKeepers product line is actually doing that with double-digit growth in the first quarter.”

Authentic Communications: Engage the Consumer, not Just Inform

With skepticism already high in the market, there is a fine line between selling more units and ensuring responsible consumerism. EarthKeepers seems to be clearly bucking the trend and providing a new, profitable way of doing business sustainably.

Was this growth the result of consumer education, eco labels, or increased communication?

“Authenticity. We’re finding success because it is authentic. We are intentionally focused on products that are environmentally friendly and socially conscious. And we are committed to continually communicating that. We’re not waiting for everything to become perfect, we’re putting it out there and calibrating it as it evolves,” he said.

Examples? Newton offered the eco-index, which Timberland was instrumental in creating and pushing out. “We are promoting the index so we can create real change and movement. That’s exciting and offers us a chance to drive real, calculable change,” he added.

What VF brings to the table then is scale. “VF has been a partner for years on making the process much more efficient. Now the merger will allow us to collectively drive things that Timberland alone simply cannot do. This bigger opportunity is huge for us,” he emphasized, adding, “It’s also not just forward-looking things and what we can do upstream. VF has a very efficient process in place because of their brands. We have had limited impact there but now we can have much more.”

Timberland’s New Communications Portal: CSR in Real Time

With Timberland already being aggressively visible and vocal in the consumer marketplace, why did Newton and team feel the need to launch a new CSR communications portal?

“We’re segmenting the conversations on our website around products and around topics so everyone has a better sense of clarity. Even though our authenticity ensures that sustainability conversations become natural in all parts of our business and you don’t have to go to the CSR portal to have a CSR conversation, we felt that different stakeholders have different perspectives. You can still go to the products portal and have the same conversation as you would on the CSR portal, because the intentional design, how we conduct business with suppliers and community issues are woven into the product and the product description.”

Why then is the new portal necessary if sustainability is so intricately embedded into the work culture at Timberland?

“We are having conversations with a very vast and diverse spectrum of people, from wholesalers and retailers to direct consumers. They all come with very different demands and perspectives and we want to offer them the opportunity to engage in the language they understand best,” he explained.

Fully integrated with social media tools, the portal is designed for consumers looking for details on green products, interesting stories and much more. Not only can you go to the redesigned portal and discuss Timberland products, you can also discuss the team’s CSR efforts, join ongoing conversations through their Bootmakers blog, and chime in on more topical discussions around the Green index and climate change.

Admittedly, many companies continue to struggle with this balance between preserving the granular stuff and promoting more general conversations around products.

For Timberland, the answer was to lead in both.

“People can go granular as they want or stay as generalist as they’d like. What’s different about the portal is that we are not starting conversations by discussing one of our pillars or metrics but focusing on stories that matter and then getting to the things that are underneath those stories; this marks a fundamental shift for our website,” Newton added.

Being a communications geek, I can definitely attest to Newton’s excitement about this new portal. The ability to throw open your business practices and product lifecycle to your stakeholders takes gumption and a resolute belief in transparency.

The Timberland team knows that this throws the door open to endless questions and scrutiny but Swart’z recruits are used to that and know that open engagement is the only way to maintain authenticity and empower their stakeholders toward sustainability and a zero impact footprint.

This is mission critical for Timberland.

As Newton put it, “Regardless of what happens post-merger, we are all in this together. Our values are integrated into all of us and everyone who works here. Jeff Swartz might be the leader but you can expect to hear the same things from all of us.”

This is Timberland’s — and VF’s — opportunity to drive the apparel industry toward a more sustainable future. The 2015 goals are the means to an end, a future that VF and Timberland can now together impact much more powerfully.

Comments? Leave a comment, email me or connect @AmanSinghCSR.