5 Roles Played By Conscious Brands
There is a widespread notion in the corporate world that the demand for conscious brands is latent. Companies feel it is too early to get into conscious branding strategies for their entire portfolio.
However, there are some brands that are fully exploiting the opportunity at hand of taking a leadership position.
These are the roles they play in their consumer’s lives while expanding their market share.
Educator
Consumers’ understanding of the need to lead a conscious lifestyle is sometimes non-specific and confused. Knowledge of global warming, rain forest depletion and toxic waste is general, with a bit of urban banter thrown in.
Conscious brands educate consumers to understand what they should be worried about, why they can and should act, and what they can usefully do.
They take on the role of educating the consumer on why they should make sustainable choices, while provided brand choices from their own stable.
Leader
People feel powerless regarding environmental threats. They want to depend on someone – the government or companies – but they don’t have role models that they trust enough to follow.
Consumer brands can play different leadership roles depending on their objectives and legitimacy. They may invite consumers to follow them based on what they do themselves or what products they offer.
Tangible examples are essential; complete conversion is not. Consumers recognise Toyota as a leader because of its hybrid cars, although they are a small part of its business.
Facilitator
Consumer brands have a big role to play in making the desired behaviours easy to do – as they have done successfully with Fair Trade. ‘Easy’ here means accessible, prompted, effortless and assured. As a consumer, I don’t have to go somewhere else, ask, do an extra transaction, or scrutinise the details.
Contributor
People are strongly concerned about perceived fairness. They are happy to take a share of the responsibility, but not an unfair share. Consumers expect their providers to share the burden. They propose unprompted, for example, that for offsets, providers should match consumers’ payments:
‘If they match the offset for every person who paid it, that would be a big incentive.’
‘It’s like, they’re contributing to [the problem], so they should be matching what I’m doing.’
‘What about sharing the responsibility? If it’s $50, what about $25 each? I’m fine with that.’
Marketer
People are realistic about the difficulty of paying extra for climate responsibility. They recognise that making environmentally friendly choices for their cars and homes will mount up their living costs. So there is an element of selective offsetting.
Marketers are needed to encourage consumers to pay cash for something with no intrinsic gratification. It sounds tough, but has many precedents, from Fair Trade to insurance.
Adapted from : Serving the climate-change-conscious consumer by The Climate Group.
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