Is it time for traditional marketing departments to integrate with corporate sustainability and corporate communications?
In my experience each of the above departments in large corporations have been responsible for their own nuanced messaging and communications to separate audiences. For example (a very simplistic example!):
Marketing target consumers to drive purchases.
Corporate sustainability target investors & stakeholders to drive investment.
Corporate communications target the industry & employees to drive PR & internal engagement.
But is it time to combine these public facing (audiences aside) messages into one source because everyone is (should or will be) concerned with how large corporations are doing business; whether they’re being responsible towards people and planet, and what impact our purchases have?
Nearly 1 in 3 consumers claimed to have stopped purchasing certain brands or products because they had ethical or sustainability related concerns about them.
Sustainability & Consumer Behaviour 2021, Deloitte
Consumers are becoming more aware of the impact they have via the brands they do business with.
For the last few years there has been heavy messaging around the reduced use of plastic straws and plastic packaging. This obviously helped brands sell more products and increased their reputation but it’s just one element of a much larger picture. Consumers are seeking out this type of information ahead of purchasing decisions because they’re ready to make responsible decisions. They care about reducing carbon footprints and waste, ethical working conditions, and protecting human rights.
Businesses have this information available across departments, but it’s usually siloed and packaged ready for different audiences. If it was all made available to the ‘customer marketing’ department, knowledge could be shared to everyone that is interested.
There’s a definite competitive advantage to having one marketing channel to share your sustainability journey because the days where only ‘business’ people read company news or only a select few invested interests in business performance are gone. We all need and want to know how a company operates and performs because our future is impacted by it.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still important for each department to continue to address their audiences with appropriate messaging but customer marketing needs to be addressed too as part of a wider consumer marketing strategy.
It’s going to take time and skill to adjust all company messaging to be consumer facing but the public are interested. The era of marketing just for sales is over.