What can Sustainability do for your Brand?

Our guest author writes about how a brand’s strategic shift towards creating sustainable impact helps beyond just mitigating compliance risks.

Creating a sustainable brand impact not only helps to create positive perceptions about the brand but also enables marketers to uphold sustainable growth in the long term.  A brand’s sustainability is in its knack to sustain and grow today, without compromising its growth prospects in the long term. It is more of a holistic strategic approach that emphasizes a long-term vision to excel rather than short-term tactics to increase sales yields.

It is a new paradigm that infuses the element of business responsibility in the brand strategy and gives an opportunity to differentiate it from the clutter of me-too brands.  While sales growth and market share are important performance indicators of a brand’s performance, it is also important how the company achieves them.  

When a brand creates a sustainable impact, it results in augmenting the benefits to the customers.  It emphasises on sustaining ethics and value judgements that help to improve brand communication with important stakeholders, mainly customers. It also encompasses the aspirational benefits that confirm their cultural values and ethos, a brand promise that assures safety and compliance and gives them a positive identity for owning the branded product. 

A sustainable thinking approach aimed at creating a positive and lasting impact helps the company address key material issues faced by the brand and identify the risks and opportunities. While a brand’s performance across the triple bottom line i.e. economic, environmental, and social, may sound immaterial to some, addressing the brand’s impact on it can help create a lasting impact in the minds of the target customers.

Ultimately, what you give, is what you get.  You deliver a superior value proposition to the customer with sustainable benefits, you get it translated into higher economic value for the firm. At the same time, it results in positive brand identity and brand loyalty. Customers are increasingly becoming conscious today of ethical practices, social responsibility, and impact on the environment, safety and health.  So, when a brand creates a sustainable impact on target audiences, the customers who own and endorse the branded product in the long term also become ambassadors to give a distinct identity to the brand. 

It creates a positive cycle for transparency and sustainability. A company or brand cannot think of it growing alone at the cost of the environment or customers or community at large.  The more the brand safeguards the interests of stakeholders, the environment, and the community, and takes risk mitigation measures sincerely, the more positive impact it creates in terms of the growth of the category and industry apart from achieving its own growth.

Increased awareness about climate change, sustainable development goals, and caring for the less privileged have greatly influenced the value judgements of customers.  In the long term, customers are willing to pay an extra brand premium for the brand that augurs well with their values and beliefs.  Hence, a brand’s strategic shift towards creating sustainable impact not only gives it an opportunity to mitigate compliance risks but also resonates well with the global shift towards creating a sustainable world.

This approach is more important, when a brand is striving for higher growth in the long term and natural resources are material for its growth and sustainability, or when a brand owns a cause and creates a big positive impact.  As every brand is different, and has different strategies, different opportunities, and different value proposition, brand strategists can proactively look for opportunities to achieve inclusive growth or create a major socio-economic impact. When sustainable thinking is infused into the brand strategy, it confirms wider acceptance among the target audience.

Stephan Covey rightly enunciated that, “there are three constants in life...change, choice, and principles."  This is the apt saying if we apply it in the context of creating sustainable brand impact.

The author Vaibhav Dholakia is a marketing and advertising professional with over 30 years of experience across a diverse range of industries. He is the founder of Brandure, a Vadodara based creative agency which specialises in sustainable brand communication.