Arancha Cordero shares how a personal take to sustainability can enact real change
As part of the #CMO Reboot Playbook: Activating Brand Purpose, Arancha Cordero, SVP, Chief Growth Officer for Danone Waters, shares a play on how sustainability can drive simultaneous change for both the environment and the business and how its marketing can be just as exciting as it is for any other industry.
Check out more plays from top CMOs and brand leaders here. This transcript has been edited by Adweek and may not reflect the audio-recording exactly.
THE CHALLENGE People are pushing businesses and brands to address sustainability in tangible ways, even so after COVID. Consumers believe that corporations and brands should have a positive impact on society and the planet. This has even exacerbated with #Covid. More than 2/3 of adults want the world to become more sustainable and equitable. They want to change the world and believe brands can help them. Some people go further and #DEMAND brands and businesses to take action.
More and more, people are putting their #money where their hearts are, and they are using their purchase power to vote for the #world they want. This is why doing the right thing is linked to business success and great #results in the long term.
2 out of 3 #consumers globally now say they’ll pay more for brands committed to sustainability.
There is evidence that brands with high sense of #purpose have experienced up to twice the growth of competitors. And we are seeing the same type of pattern with our #Danone manifesto brands which are growing up to three times faster than the rest of our brands.
BCG has published a study in France creating a new index to measure #SocialEngagement (IES) and it shows a clear correlation between environmental commitment and company performance.
The case for #sustainability is clear. We all have demanding targets and our job is to drive profitable growth for our brands, so how do we #make it happen?
THE APPROACH
Start by learning and do it personally. It’s critical to understand the impact of your brand and product or service. End to end: what are the carbon emissions generated from the #production of ingredients and raw material still it gets in people’s hands? Where did the ingredients come from? Is the #packaging recyclable? Does it actually get #recycled?
Get involved and be confronted with it. You only really get it when you understand the impact of your brands yourself. How you #approach sustainability is radically different after you have experienced it personally.
Commit to action and start making it happen for real. Sustainability can feel scary as you will not have all the answers or resources to make it happen as fast as you want. If we wait to only commit when we #feel totally comfortable, we will never commit. With that lack of commitment, we will be constantly tempted by the short term and the innumerable hurdles we will inevitably find along the way. Do your homework, get informed, and think through carefully what you can commit to but then go and commit. Do it #publicly, tell everyone. That #commitment will drive your creativity and energy to find ways to make it happen.
Then, it’s all about starting action for real. This is not a #PR or marketing stunt. #Critically, because consumers see through it. They see through it always, but in the case of sustainability, even more. Make #sure that every step you take is real, honest, and rooted in real actions and real impact. Once you have started to act, you can decide how to #engage with people about it, but this is certainly a case of talking the #walk.