Sustainable Marketing Review via Catalyst Magazine by Sarah Duncan
This is a full review given by Sarah Duncan, author of The Ethical Business Book and Sustainability Consultant. You’ll find a review in CIM’s Catalyst Magazine too.
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The one sentence summary: In the modern age of authenticity, organisations ignore sustainability at their own peril.
WHAT THE BOOK SAYS
The environmental practices of a company are now the subject of greater focus and visibility than at any time in the past.
This book aims to introduce the principles that will help you evaluate your organisation’s current sustainability approach; help you develop, ‘own’ and lead the creation of purpose-driven marketing in your business; and ultimately achieve a company-wide philosophy of running a true ‘profits with purpose’ company.
After an introductory Situation Analysis, the book covers:
Sustainability and Leadership
The Importance of Stakeholder Engagement
Sustainable Supply Chain Management
Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility
Reducing Waste in the Workplace
Plastics – Reduce/Reuse/Recycle
Climate Change and the Carbon Challenge
Sustainable Energy
Sustainable Yet Innovative Packaging
The Importance of Effective Partnerships
These topics and themes are then drawn together at the end in an illustrated framework (The Marketing Sustainability Action Plan Model) with bullet points designed to help you actively manage sustainability in your organisation:
Marketing team to take organisational leadership
Ensure all stakeholders are engaged in planning
Consider your end-to-end supply chain and partners
Move beyond ‘Corporates Social Responsibility’ into real change
Look to reduce waste in the workplace / across your service
Plastic – reduce usage and dependency
Quantify and offset all of your carbon emissions
Switch to sustainable energy sources
Clean up your packaging / explore innovative solutions
Establish effective ‘like-minded’ partnerships
Each chapter follows essentially the same structure: Where are we?; Why companies need to do something about this now?; Things that need to be acknowledged as not perfect; a case study to bring it to life; a chapter summary; and then clear action points to consider.
All the action points are also consolidated at the end of the book, in one comprehensive Action Plan.
WHAT I PARTICULARLY LIKED ABOUT IT
This is a well-structured, diligently researched, and nicely written guide to the world of sustainable marketing.
Many books on the subject focus on a single issue, which can make their perspective somewhat narrow. This, however, is highly comprehensive and does full justice to this wide and complex topic.
It strikes just the right balance between realism and optimism.
The Marketing Sustainability Action Plan Model is good for people (like me) who appreciate a visual representation of the methodology.
And the combined Action Plans are highly practical and can help any business or brand use sustainability as a source of competitive advantage.
In addition to the Action Plans, other highly practical elements include:
a list of questions to ask yourself as a leader (or of your leadership team),
a checklist of things a responsible marketer should continue to challenge (of themselves and the brand).
This all-encompassing review will help any organisation wondering where to start in the field of sustainability, or in need of guidance on whether their efforts so far are up to scratch.
WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH
Nothing – this is an accessible, practical, and well put together guide. My only small query is the title. This book is to do with a great deal more than just marketing – more like Sustainable Business overall. So I would recommend it to anyone in business today (I certainly would have drawn insights from it when writing my own book had it been around in 2019).